Lynn,
I wonder if anyone has tried Titaninum Nitride as a coating on the side
plates? Super hard and durable, (hence its use on drills and end mills
etc...) it should last the life of the engine. A little more expensive
than gas or ion nitriding but more people are doing it now. Plus your
housings will have that super-cool gold color!
Bill Jepson

Not that I have read about. Any coating should have some ability to hold an oil film, in my opinion. When the side seals wear out and start leaking combustion gasses into the crank case, the seals are mushroomed on the wear edge, (loosing unit pressure) and of course they wear off their drive ends, (becoming too short) and leak around the corner seal.

 

I start the side seals off at zero end clearance. So long as the side seals will pop back up when depressed as a set I think that is all that is required. The corner seals drive the side seals around the engine, and quickly develop a wear mark from the where the side seal sits on the corner seal. This give additional clearance as soon as the engine starts to break in.

 

I run the factory  finished side seal end against the driving corner seal and run the trimmed end on the non-driving seal.

 

I got a nice note from a new owner of a friends race car. It moved to a new owner in Florida, and the two brothers took it racing two weeks ago at Sebring. It won both of its races, and the troops went wild. The owner here had told him that I built the engine. Not true, exactly as I only reassembled the engine after the owner left it full of plain water over winter and it pushed out the core support plugs and dropped the water into the sump. Then he started it up and got no oil pressure, and damn little water pressure. It got a new oil pump and core plugs. It was nice anyway. There are a dozen ways to kill a rotary and he has tried them all. I am running on again.

 

Lynn E. Hanover