Taken from the 7 forum:

http://www.kenscheepers.com/Rotor%20...e%20005-sm.jpg

 

holy hell!

 

Geez!!!!

 

oh man... that looks scary...

 

That is one possible outcome. That was most likely at VERY high boost levels. Typically you'll just break seals.

 

according to the thread at the 7 forum this was at 50psi boost and the seals survived

 

Some of the seals those guys use are extrememly tough. They also wear the housings down faster than Mazda seals do too. The logic is that stronger seals are cheaper when it comes time for a rebuild since you won't have to replace them. They never seem to realize that something else breaks, takes other parts out with it, and it all still costs a lot in the end. If you break nothing, you still have worse housings wear to deal with.

 

I wonder what that sounded like.

 

He must be using Synthentic Oil !!!!!!!

 

ok, i'm gonna sound like the moron of the group here, but i'll speak for those like me less inclined to know....what caused this? And yes, i know it's obviously detonation...but what caused that?

I mean, that's absoultely nuts to blow a hole in part of a rotor...

 

The higher the compression ratio, the more likely detonation. The tendency can be countered by higher octane, cooler intake, less spark advance, but at some point there is only so much air and fuel you can squeeze into an given space without exploding.

This engine was being force-fed fuel and air at 50 PSI over atmospheric pressure. That's over FOUR TIMES normal atmospheric pressure, with fuel to match. And that huge fuel/air charge was then compressed to the same small space as an air/fuel charge on a normally-aspirated engine. That's a huge amount of energy in a small space. When it exploded (detonated) instead of burning smoothly, all of its energy was released at once, instead of being spread out over time. Basically, a bomb. You can see that the rotor face isn't really all that thick. It's strong enough to withstand combustion, but not bombs.

I guess this could also have been caused by a bolt or something getting sucked into the engine, but I don't see any scratches

 

running lean at 50 psi caused the detonation. and for clarification, this is NOT a Renesis rotor

 

Mazdatrix has a page about the effects of overboost on an engine:

http://www.mazdatrix.com/faq/boost.htm

 

really? 50psi? No F&%king Sh*t

 

Good Grief!