Lynn wrote

 Francois is concerned about apex seal life with the PP.

The apex seal does not seem to suffer and abnormal wear from Pport

operation.

I have one in the old car and it had the same seals in it for two

years,

and

those seals came from a side port engine. Those were the carbon

seals. I

have

a set of the ceramic seals for the side port engine. They are harder

than

Chinese arithmetic.

You run 2 springs under them and they still have far less drag than

either

stock or carbon race seals. They do not bounce even at 10,000 + RPM.

They do not

wear the rotor housing at all. The stock iron seals wear grooves in

the

rotor

housings. They are heavy compared to the ceramics.

Both the carbon and ceramic seals will run on giant Port openings

without a

problem of any kind.

In the event of a top oil failure the carbon seals will loose tiny

flakes

from the trailing side, and leak a bit. But not enough to stop the

engine. I did

not screw up that bad on the ceramic seals but I think they will get

enough

lube from the fuel that no damage at all would occur. As in the fire

wall oil

tank runs dry, or you forget to premix a fuel load.

The end product needs to have ceramic seals, even if you have to

make a

set

that have the corner piece like the stock seals. I don't know how

that

would

wear on the cast iron. They are one piece for racing.

Lynn E. Hanover

Do these one piece seals still use the stock round corner seals? How
important are the corner seals?

I am just designing a model wankel engine (I got the plans for the one

from

VTH.de and want to make one a little bigger). I was thinking of making

side

seals from a a ring of cast iron. Don't know yet whether to bother with

oil

seals. It is only going going to run for a few minutes at a time.

Regards,
Mark

Mark,
A great project - mind if I make a suggestion ?

I noticed that the side seals are the same thickness as Bi-metal hack-saw
blades, these blades don't break like side seals do, as they are much more
flexible and are very cheap. They will require grinding to size, but for a
one-off that should be easy enough.

I would continue the seal groove into a solid side seal ( also grooved for
the apex seal) I don't think you could successfully do a round (one piece),
however I could be wrong!

George ( down under)

 
The Rotary Engine NewsLetter.  Powered by Linux.
ACRE NL web site. http://home.earthlink.net/~rotaryeng/            
Copyright 1998-2004 All world wide rights reserved.