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FYI, those guys are kind of full of ****. They were all over the rotary facebook groups at one point and never really provided any proof to the claims they make about various things, including those seals. Especially their hybrid Renny that never ran right from what I hear from locals. He (owner) just stopped responding here in his thread when people started questioning him.
We shall see. My local guy with the 3 rotor uses them in all his builds and loves them. Tells me he has the same experience as they describe regarding wear.
Yeah you know, opinions. This was the last complaint I heard about the seals but there are a few out there.
in 2012 I built an engine for a customer. IT had freshly lapped/renitrided irons and freshly resurfaced rotor housings. ALS/E&J/East coast apex seals per request of the customer. All the other rotor seals were new OEM. all new bearings, new eshaft. Basically as new/perfect of an engine as you can build without using all new parts. The first pics below are of this engine when built.
For a couple of years in this same time period I built engines for another shop, and at their request we also used the ALS/E&J/East coast apex seals. We started having major issues with engines failing after just a few hundred or a few thousand miles. I tore down several of these engines and found significant wear to rotor housings and irons, surfaces which had previously been in excellent condition. After seeing this repeatedly I attributed the extreme wear to the apex seals.
Back to my customer's engine. The customer took a long time to install the engine, and had some issues getting it to run right that were likely electronics/tuning related (in his words). IT ran a few hours of idling and light driving and that's about it. Recently he finally sent it to another shop to get it running and tuned. They did some troubleshooting and dyno tuning, so the engine still has only a few hours and maybe a couple hundred miles on it. That shop said the engine smoked and burned oil and that it was a bad engine. So it was returned to me for warranty evaluation.
I tore it down and found everything as it should be in terms of porting and seals. However all 6 of those freshly machined surfaces (3 irons, 2 housings) are significantly worn and grooved. The last few pics below are of the teardown and worn parts. Remember this happened in only a COUPLE HUNDRED MILES. You can see where the apex seal material has literally sheared away on the trailing end of the sealing surface and created a rough, knife-like lip there.
I strongly suggest avoiding the ALS/E&J/East coast apex seals. This is probably the 10th teardown I have done after using them and having the engine fail with compression or oil burning issues.
Last edited by 9krpmrx8; Jun 23, 2016 at 08:35 PM.
What I can say for sure is I have personally seen the 20b and it's been running great for several months now running a large turbo at 7psi. The thing is scary, in a very good way.
Hey can you include the link to that thread? I'm curious to read more. Thanks!
That one was on the Risky Rotors page on FB, that one was from Rotary Resurrection IIRC. Let me find the thread E&J started here with their hybrid renny nonsense.
This is supposedly a motor with 4K miles that detonated. Rotors dented but seals only slightly bent at the ends. Housing and side look good, from what can be seen in the video:
Also, can we really take a website like that seriously?
You shouldn't be doing personal stuff at work kidding... But yeah, total disclosure it might violate some workplace cyber policies...
Anyway, not saying I agree with any of the stuff I am finding, good or bad, just searching for anything I can find. Seems to be slim regarding the E&J stuff. I am curious once 9k finds the links. Even googling for text in those posts I am not finding the originals...
Last edited by slash128; Jun 24, 2016 at 01:13 PM.
Yeah, the ALS seals have a pretty bad rep. I know they don't make seals for them since 2013 but the rep was bad already on RX7club. They make a lot of claims (them being on drag cars that make a few passes and then get rebuilt) but I have seen little to back them up as a good option in a street car, let alone a boosted renny and I just don't think these small seal makers have the R&D and engineering to make a comparable seal to Mazda and pretty much everyone who has ran aftermarket seals has had them fail.
Worst case scenario: the seals are a bomb and eat up these housings and sides. I still have all the parts minus one housing to put a second motor together. It will be a good test for the E&J seals.
I just don't think these small seal makers have the R&D and engineering to make a comparable seal to Mazda and pretty much everyone who has ran aftermarket seals has had them fail.
Slash has come to the same conclusion I did many years ago . Stock apex seals are too brittle to run in a high boost Renesis . Your experiences are somewhat different I know ,but from what I've heard , none of your sarx mates run anywhere near the whp levels that slash and myself do .So I really don't think you have an appreciation for the issues we face .
We actually don't care if the the aftermarket seals give only half the housing wear .
kidding... 
But yeah, total disclosure it might violate some workplace cyber policies...
