Fixing the BIGGEST Problems of the Rotary Engine

so you want to know the secrets to making a rotary engine reliable well i'll tell you what they really aren't secrets they are the basics and one of the coolest things about youtube is that you can take all my years of experience and then condense it into a video like this and i can share that with you and so you get to save all the years and frustration understanding how to make this engine way more reliable than it actually is there are a lot of misconceptions and this video assumes that you know the basic concept of this engine this video assumes that you've seen the gifts or you see the engine doing triangle shapes you know it doesn't go up and down like a piston engine it assumes you know the memes about apex seals breaking and all that and so we're going to start and talk right about how to make this engine reliable it is not about how to tune it it's not how about to build it it's about how it is built that can make this engine so much more reliable and makes so much more power than people assumed mazda was put in a really shitty position when they created this engine and it has to do with the exhaust i believe that emissions and making this engine interesting to people that don't understand rotary engines were both the reason the engine worked and its ultimate downfall as to being considered a good engine what am i doing here that's working somehow obviously i don't have a race team or anything that why is random ass dude that used to do computers doing so well with engines not blowing up and making tons of power let's go through all the major problems of the design of the engine and what you can do to solve them relatively easy and continue on without having to buy tons of random weird this is our favorite lovely little rotor and these are all rotors with a different type of problem that have occurred and i will be harping on this the most this is carbon deposits it's that crap just like when i was at valve lane's engine lab last month all these deposits are a major no on rotary engines there's a couple major causes one of them being coolant getting into the engine as well as regular gas this is another really fun one you would think that this is the problem i'm going to point out and that's from detonation that's denting of the rotors that's actually not as big of a problem as you think it is it's a result but not as much of a problem the thing i brought this rotor out for was actually a very small issue right here that little edge of wear is not good at all that means that this engine was wobbling and the rotor actually touched the housing the rotor touched the side of the motor they kissed and that is not good for race engines finally is this third rotor here has a lot of pitting i've cleaned it off wire brushed it and done all that not the vertical lines but the actual dots on this that's from coolant rusting on there we're going to talk more about that type of problem as well we start getting into more the more insane types of problems with the engine and again here comes our best friend the coolant system now you may have seen a vehicle that we just got running this week and you saw the beautiful white smoke trailing behind it [Music] yes that is isaiah's rx-8 and it's not just an rx-8 thing it's a rotary thing where the coolant traveling inside of this area is able to get into here this is one of the coolant seals that's where all this rust comes from and the engine ignites or attempts to ignite it and it turns to vapor it's not water it's glycol and water that creates that wild white smoke and of course drains your coolant on the other hand this engine also suffered the same problem on the outside coolant was somehow able to get past the outer coolant seal and leak if either these seals break and go down into the oil pan you'll actually see your oil turn into this like milky frothy stuff doesn't taste good it's not a good milkshake i wouldn't recommend it coolant seals to me are a major problem of the engine and also the best problem to have because the engine is not actually broken if you notice we loaded all four of us in my mate fancy to skid in the parking lot here with his rx-8 the engine was running just fine we'll talk more about how to resolve that this is one of my favorites because this is when you start making power you start cracking what are called the irons this is cast iron as the name suggests there's cracks in it this area right here is also kind of this area up here these areas crack and there is 120 psi oil sitting in there ready to be free finally everybody's favorite the rotor housing you can see down here the rotor housing has been under some extreme wear and that can actually be from lubrication of the apex seals as well as there's some chatter mark this is perfectly fine the thing's actually still running slightly lower compression but we'll talk about the proper ways to avoid that infamous problem that starts to get into the issues with this here this is a tension bowl it just tensions the motor this way also dowels this is a stock mazda dowel pin and i heard somebody say this once before and it stuck so well with me they call it a locating pin and i would actually like that name more because what you're really doing is locating the pieces together with this and then ass hats like me are using that locating pin to try and hold the engine together that is where you set yourself up for some heartbreak these can crack it's very hard to see but this one is actually cracked there's a hairline crack right somewhere in here it actually will start to fight like right there it's binding ox it's not circular anymore so it's hollow because oil needs to pass through that and we'll talk about some of the upgrades for that and then every internet meme this is the infamous apex seal well at least 90 of it anyway this is a stock two-piece apex seal with a hundred percent of its piece on there this is the most common problem you can have when you are upgrading and tuning a rotary engine these are not as bad as you think they are but they are kind of the canary in the mine shaft when the engine starts having problems this corner chips off and then that goes through the engine and in a beautiful rinse cycle rips up this housing rips up the rotors and can also destroy your turbo that one actually did that is when that little trunk broke off and then it kissed the wall just destroyed everything this is another wonderful thing we've covered this already but these are bearings this is a bearing where i had some metal inside of my oil coolers and that metal then went into the bearings obviously metal going into any engine is bad so it's not rotary specific but i wanted to show you that over here is corner seals this and this are stock corner seals this one has the rubber still in it but that rubber starts to eat away like this if you have ethanol we'll talk about it that's not as bad as you think it is this one right here is a corner seal on meth actually it's not it's a corner seal on detonation you can see that it cracked the corner seal in pieces normally it'll crack kind of at the very weak spot down here but that one cracked up at the top and it did a nasty number on that in the same vein these are apex steel spring these go underneath the apex seal and hold it to the housing that looks like a normal one it's not it's actually flattened we take a look at this one this one looks almost like a normal one it's not that one's been shortened it looks like it's meant to be which is what's confusing but it actually broke off it hit this corner here flattened and then broke a little chunk off and then that chunk goes flying as well finally this one is over years of incorrect wear it starts to flatten the seal out it wears it down here and it gets thinner apex seal springs do wear out over time those are all the major problems of a rotary engine let's talk about the solutions because all of those have beautiful solutions and i don't think there's one video that just clearly says here's how to fix a rotary engine your tuner can screw all this up too your builder can build this incorrectly but this is the inherent design for the engine and here's how to fix almost everything the disclaimer is this does not necessarily help you with emissions a lot of these will not affect emissions so if you're trying to keep your engine bone stock you can almost do almost all these mods and get all the upgrade and none of you worry about not passing emissions probably one of the biggest killers to me which is all of this nasty carbon here i would love to show you why this carbon ship matters but my my torch my butane torch is missing that's what you get when you're surrounded by smoke weed in the shop what happens is these sections of carbon are almost like little candles that hold a little bit of heat and instead of you just having spark plugs you now have these little chunks of carbon that are holding in heat and can cause the gas to pre-ignite before it was supposed to that causes the engine to jerk backwards or try to and then everything gets destroyed you get dense you get apex seals to break corner seals get flattened into a point where you can't even remove them the rotor wobbles those are all major problems when you have that happen so how do you solve this well first of all e85 e85 is something that i saw a lot of the old guys on the forum saying oh man it's gunking up all these engines and there's a little bit of gunk let me show you this this is a rotor that was running some e85 but then crankcase oil got into it these are the rotors from the four rotor they're perfectly fine not touched there's no cleaning done to these you can see the oil is falling out of it still these are perfectly fine this is e85 and premix with it that's what comes out of the engine there is no to pre-ignite on this it's a wonderful thing all the issues that i've seen people complain or worry about with c85 are honestly e85 has cooling properties not only intake temperature cooling but also cooling like engine cooling like radiator coiling the engine does not run nearly as hot as well as timing issues that you can actually go more aggressive in timing that's why you make more power with the 85 than regular gas regular gas has a lot of random impurities random in it if you're trying to instantly make this engine that much more reliable that is the biggest thing that you can do obviously you can't just swap the 85 into it that requires aftermarket electronics that is hands down the biggest thing that a rotor engine benefits from second major one pre-mixing let's look at this stuff right here you guys know i almost basically use this as mouthwash this is velveen's vr1 2050 full synthetic oil everything that makes this oil amazing at what it does is everything that makes it bad for a rotary engine whoa hold on you're working with valvoline you use it why are you saying it's bad this oil is meant to sit in that beautiful oil pan down there or your dry sump tank and lubricate these bearings lubricate the e-shaft lubricate these gears on the sides of these rotors it is the best stuff arguably the absolute best stuff in my opinion for rotary engines there's an inherent flaw to rotary engines that make that the engine's worst nightmare that is right here this little hole does in fact go into the engine a lot of you already know some of this that is an oil metering pump that is an oil injection hole it actually sucks up oil from the crank case and of course i'm sure not all of you use valine so you're even using any other type of oil that oil is being sucked up from down there and being injected into the engine here to lubricate the apex seals so these apex seals don't get lubrication any other way and so now you've got this being lubricated there well what's going on that's exactly where the gas is going and so you're taking oil that is formulated to stay under 300 degrees fahrenheit and now you're burning it and i would argue and i could be wrong but i would argue that the better the oil is the worse that that would create deposits because now you have all the zinc phosphorus all these other cleaning agents those are meant to stay under a certain temperature and do their job not be ignited so the second major thing i would do is not cough syrup or lean this is a two-stroke oil this is an oil that is literally meant to be ignited just like a weed whacker this oil is designed to lubricate but also combust cleanly or at least much cleaner than this this stuff would probably suck ass as crankcase oil it would never touch valvoline on doing what it needs to do for high rpms and whatnot this stuff would suck but for lubricating apex seals pre-mixing with two-stroke oil whether it's the stuff meant for gasoline or e85 is the second major solution major solution to rotary engine reliability so number one is e85 number two is pre-mixing oil disconnect and block off your oil metering pump that was designed to make a rotary engine a consumer based engine it was meant to get into a lot of people's hands and sadly that was both the rotary engines opportunity to live and its ultimate downfall i believe is that you're increasing the amount of that's going into the engine itself it's just a horrible thing some rx8s you can actually disconnect that system and have it basically pull from a little bucket and have the engine pre-mixed for you but most of us we're like scientists pouring that into your gas tank when you're filling up or premixing it into my one ethanol pre-mix and e85 are two of the biggest engine improvements but let's talk about how the engine is built the next major thing you clearance the corners on the rotor and that's something that a lot of people are really secretive about for no reason i'm not gonna lie not to me just in general this is done out in new zealand in australia they put in a lathe and they take this corner and they bring it up about five thousands uh i think collectively on both sides so it's whatever this size is two and a half thousands or so they narrow it down and that happens when the rotor is in here and it's spinning like this right well it's on a gear and then it starts getting so much power that it wiggles as the combustion is so insane and you'll actually rub against the side of the engine if you were to rub hard enough you know that would cause friction that would be devastating race clearance it the next major thing which is related to that same issue is talking about how do you prevent the rotors from wobbling as much and of course having higher oil pressure would definitely help that the fd actually has pretty high oil pressure from the factory but that little bit more getting it up to 110 120 is actually pretty solid let's talk about the oil system in general there are a couple major flaws with the stock engine this plate right here with this modification makes this crack not matter this is actually i think a decode 20b this is supposed to be the strongest plate mazda made for a three-rotor the issue is they crack here and they crack there like i said earlier so the solution is safe screw it we know that these will crack let's not allow oil to go through here and so one of the best mods that you can do hands down is what's called an external oil mod where you have oil coming in you basically have your hoses split from oil and then go out to the front bearing reroute the middle bearing the rear bearing the turbo all of that so you avoid having oil going through here so if there's no oil through here this can crack all you want and the engine's fine why does this crack you've solved the result that it can crack and you go this is sitting in here trying to do its job this comes down to the next major issue which is tension bolts do one thing and they do it decently well but they aren't supposed to do only one thing this is something that i think mazda maybe 30 years ago made a compromise on or just realized that hey for 200 300 horsepower this is not necessary this is the tension bolt the tension bolt is straight up designed to sandwich the thing together like this but as you make power the engine doesn't give a about coming out like this anymore because the tension pulls doing its job it starts to do this sitting in front of all that horsepower and torque is two of these just going well i picked the wrong job to do and there's not enough of them these being hollow they crack like i said earlier without modifying the engine too much you can a move to a longer version of that or b the granddaddy of them all a 16 millimeter solid dowel so you'll hear when people say oh you're solid doweling the motor you're actually kind of doing two things at once one is you're now making a dowel go through that block there and two you have to do the external oil mod because oil can't transfer through a solid piece of metal pineapple racing sells actual stuff machined and ground for that exact this is raw i get it from machine shops it's a lot cheaper but i have to do a lot of work too would do a solid dowel kit that would be a major major upgrade as you start making power but there are a couple upgrades for the tension bolt itself i hate to say this and these are really good friends of mine but this is a kit from atkins atkins does a lot of things very well but this i don't think has the place in my shop where i would want it this kit comes with a drill bit and a thread to make these threads larger that they don't fit on there now that comes with a tap it doesn't solve the problem that i was trying to solve you look at the stock dowel that is doing nothing in the way of preventing torsion or rotation or bulging or anything like that doing zero well this sadly doesn't do much better it's stronger it's gonna keep that clamped in stronger so that's a major upgrade but you're modifying your engine and you're already doing all this work and you're not addressing the the issue there upgrade if you got these that they're not too expensive either i would consider them but honestly to me not worth the the money this is basically an ar p bolt turbo makes this this is a wonderful upgrade and this actually solves the same problem in a different way it says screw it let's keep these threads the stock thread right but let's make it much stronger bolt it is slightly thicker than the stock one so it does require no machining but it doesn't solve this problem but they are stronger in many other ways the thing that these are really good for is upgrading your setup a little bit like this now you've got a thing sitting inside of your dowels you machine the dowel out and you've got the tension this way and the dowel is preventing torsion this way that requires you to machine a big hole like this into the block that's honestly the beginning one of the best upgrades that you can do for the engine is studying slash doweling the block that's where my original knowledge ended but it wasn't until i bought an engine from new zealand where my mind was fully blown and the guy said you know what that's cool these are two pieces you've got a stud and a dowel what they did is they actually made dowel studs where it was all one piece of metal 16 millimeters thick here with small step-down threads on each end and then they machined the engine for this sticker 16 millimeter thing and boom i think the greatest solution for high horsepower on the rotor engine was born and that is these beefy things making this engine into a jail cell for those rotors the torsion isn't there it's locked into place sadly i learned from the shop that did this if they're this loose that's not helping you either so you want to make sure that you have the engine when you dowel it to have the precision that i did actually on my three rotor if i can do it honestly a professional machine shop should be able to do that even better than me so they should shouldn't be press fit but should definitely be a little bit of work to get them through the whole motor that is hands down one of the greatest upgrades for making tons of power on an engine leaving everything else almost stock so we talked about e85 pre-mixing external oiling mod and doweling that's it if you're asking how does this asshat make so much power without having a race team behind him that's my secret there is no secret it's right in front of you this entire time and i will tell you there are a lot of modifications that people do the engines that are useless even to a person at my power level so for example i might call it what it is you'll see companies rip off like racing beats thing where they machine and add surface area to all these things if you're not making the power that i'm making do not waste your money on that modification absolutely useless further yet when you're talking about four rotors i can run water straight to that whole engine and it come out almost as cold that disproves everybody's theory about the heat absorption no you're that's that's a lie don't don't do that mod i'm sure it has a good place in their heart but scalloping rotors lightning rotors none of that is necessary getting up to the level of power i am do they do something yes absolutely they do but do you need that do you need to waste that money on that and if you had a broken part on the engine do you need to have to buy all that again you don't i will tell you right now you don't something we'll cover really in a very controversial video is apex seals i'm very careful not to tell you guys which apex seals i'm using because i'm using a lot of different companies apex seals i'm testing them and with that i put my money where my mouth is and i've rented an x-ray scanner an xrf scanner if you guys are looking for it and it tells you exactly what metals are inside of apex seals so i went and bought all different types and i scanned them because you know what i'm tired of in the rotary community and i can tell you exactly what they're all made of i don't know how much of that information i'll share i don't want to put a target on my back but i will tell you what i find and i might even on the six or i might run six different apex deals and show you guys all of them running different things together but apex seals aftermarket seals they almost all do a decent job and they solve this problem they have their own other problems but you can basically just buy an aftermarket seal and it gives you a little bit more insurance for those detonation moments if you don't detonate your motor you never have this problem corner seals same thing they're kind of the canary in the mine shaft they tell you when the engine's having problems anytime i've broken one it's because of doing anti-lag at 40 psi both on the three and four roads just like these springs here they're wear items so these are different things that could happen to them but replace them stock springs behind everything stock corner seals stock side seals not stock epic seals but you can still run those to a considerable amount of power there's no magic pieces here there's nothing i'm hiding in there you have a solid engine now with basic upgrades that can be replaced if you have weird problems with your tuning or your building you make a mistake you get a solid set of sensors get a solid timing wheel get a solid ecu make sure your fuel's clean and you can make an insane amount of power reliably with these engines we're actually gonna put my money where our mouth is we have e85 on it right now we're gonna take this block out and machine it for short little dowel studs put it back together and show you that that's exactly how we can make 700 horsepower this engine without worrying about it i just want to show you why i choose certain modifications to do and why there's science behind why they work

Channel: Rob Dahm

Views: 1,698,544

Keywords: Custom & Performance Vehicles, Mazda, Sports Cars, Vehicle Modification & Tuning, Vehicle Parts & Accessories, Engine & Transmission, High Performance & Aftermarket Auto Parts, Vehicle Wheels & Tires, Used Vehicles, Vehicle Specs Reviews & Comparisons, Transmission Repair & Maintenance, Batteries, Brakes, Interior, Vehicle Fuels & Lubricants, Collision & Auto Body Repair, Oil Changes, Auto Glass Repair & Replacement, California, Rob Dahm, RX7, Hybrid & Alternative Vehicles

Id: BwM6JJYPzkM

Length: 21min 41sec (1301 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 19 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/SplitMean419]

Was a good watch. Thanks for sharing