I use cold wheel bearing grease to assemble rotors. Holds things in place during build.
Once the front housing and center iron is on. Use clamps on studs or heavy rubber bands to hold the irons tight to keep pressure on those small bits to hold them in place. Leave it on until the case bolts are in and torqued.
I use solid corner seals. I have found many broken rubber center corners in stock engines. It was a gag to get good sealing on new engines to pass the Peoples Republic of California CARB rules.
Many folks use silk threads to hold things in place when installing the front rotor. I rotate the engine to horizontal and install the front rotor with nothing but grease holding the parts and no thread at all. Once the rotor is in place, then rotate the engine to nose down again and complete construction. Add the rotor housing with the grease holding the seals in place. Install both dowels. Clamp the housing as above with camps and rubber bands on wood pegs inserted into the ports and over intake studs or temp bolts in housing. Insert apex seals and springs into slots and push all the way down. I like to have the small end pieces where I can see them and be sure they have not popped loose the super glue. Those little devils like to escape unnoticed and ruin your day. Or better yet is to use either solid carbon apex seals or even better yet use one piece ceramic seals. I had a little "S" shaped flat stock piece to hold the crank up high but still in the front bearing clamped to the engine stand. Usually some eager help is worse than no help at all at this juncture. Then slip out the dowels
and turn the center iron 90 degrees and slip it over the crank. Then lower the crank and rotate the center iron to align properly and install the dowels again. Clamp or rubber band the center iron to the front iron and repeat as above for the rear rotor. Torque the case bolts with anti-seize on the threads in three cycles to the low end of the torque spec and let sit overnight. Next day, in the proper sequence, torque again by First loosening each bolt and cranking it down to the low end of the prescribed torque range in sequence. Not all at once,
one at a time. If you mark a line on each head, say all pointing straight up. The next day after loose and tight again notice that in every case the bolt has moved beyond straight up. So, if you left it as torqued as the day before where was it torqued to after 50 hours? 100 hours? Just trying to help. Never lost one in 25 years of racing. Lynn E. Hanover
Lycomings swallow valves and start giant fires from holes in the piston and then the case. Or if you are lucky just the crank breaks and the prop leaves the area. Look in the scrap dumpster behind an airplane engine builder. Take a friend to drive you home. Men can cry. Don't be ashamed. Now think about what the planes looked like that those pieces were in.
In a message dated 10/2/2019 8:49:20 AM Eastern Standard Time, flyrotary@lancaironline.net writes:
Hi Matt.
Sorry to hear of your setback.
I to would have been flying many years ago If had gone the Lyc path.
But I am finally in Phase 1 after 13 years and its looking good.
Cheers
Steve
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> Hi Matt, sorry to hear about your troubles and the broken corner seal. Was it the "solid" type or the one with a rubber insert?
> Jeff
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> Corner seal broke in two. Rotor housing looks good, apex seals look good, but front rotor is toast. I could of been flying a few years ago, if I didn't go down this Rotary path....
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> - Matt Boiteau
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