Seals – O Ring

I’ve been putting the Civic back together for the new race season and it is time to figure out why the seals on the Greddy oil relocation kit fails.

This was bought way back in 2006, maybe 2007 from Speedtech (closed) at their cost price. This is an oil sandwich plate. It was suppose to be a simple method as a source for oil for the turbo and a sensor.

Anyway, it didn’t work out. The moment the car ran operating temperatures above 100C / 212F it would let go – oil will spill out from the side (yes, the o-ring was lubricated before install). On the second try with the second O-ring (lubricated as well) and the addition of hondabond, a small bead on the outside edge, (this is a bolt on part like an oil pan), it lasted until 105C/220F. Coincidentally, Trust filed for bankrupcy in 2008 and so we chucked it as a poorly produced product.

So, we went back and just used the factory oil pressure sender hole for the turbo feed line for now – KISS (keep it simple stupid).

Old school packaging from Greddy / Trust.

Round 2 and this time armed with better knowledge – hopefully SMRT. The previous failure was most likely from:

• Bad seals (dry/rot nitrile).
• O Ring – too much or too little compression (unlikely)
• Possible heat damage (elasticity break down)

The other thing to note is that at that time anything from overseas took longer to get here and who knows how long it was sitting at a warehouse or maybe it was exposed to the sun…

So, this time with a BLOX oil relocation block. I wanted to avoid the headaches of oil seals and went off to search for an O Ring supplier. I ended up talking to Hi-Tech Seals and I was schooled :).  Great bunch of people and very helpful even though I’m a pretty small fish in terms of there customer base.

WordPress Tables Plugin

BLOX: PN BXGA-00115
(Universal’ish – more so for Honda type)

• I.D.   60.00 mm
• C/S   04.00 mm
• Durometer rating?

Greddy: PN 12002801N
(Universal – 2 styles)

• I.D. 65.0 mm
• I.D. 56.0 mm
• C/S – I wasn’t smrt enough to measure back then
  • My guess 3.50 mm (standard)
• Durometer rating?

The better part for my application would be the Flurocarbon where heat and oil resistance is higher. The durometer reference is 70A, should be adequate; actually from my reading it’s not too important for low PSI application (under 100 PSI) as the elasticity starts at 800 psi

Then came to type of seals and wow – There is a lot to consider and I’m not verse yet on how to filter that information to my application. I stuck with the O Ring type as that is what the kit used and Honda uses the same design. I never had an issue with the OEM filter.

So, I leave with you the hand book that I reference to:

• https://www.physics.harvard.edu/uploads/files/machineshop/epm_oring_handbook.pdf
• http://www.allsealsinc.com/parcoelastomerselectionguide.pdf
• http://www.sealdynamics.com/o-ring-reference.pdf