Which valve stem seals leak
 

I'm looking to replace the valve steam seals in my 2000 after noticing that it burns a bit of oil when revving it out, and I'm going turbo.
I looked on eBay, and found some Supertech valve stem seals (Supertech Viton Valve Stem Seals 1.6L 1.8L Mazda Miata / Ford Escort BP B6D MX5 | eBay), and considering the name, and the price I jumped right on them.
I was watching a video on youtube ( ), and he mentioned ebay supertech valve steam seals. He says that his car burned a lot of oil after installing them, but it could be a lot of other things as well.

This has me concerned that I just dropped money on some junk.
Has anyone heard anything about these seals and whether or not they're any good?

Most people will recommend OEM. Valve stem seals on the bp engine are a common failure point when non-oem seals are used. I bought supertech spring for my head during my engine build and they came with supertech valve seals. I used them and I am about to replace them with less than 3k miles on the motor because they are leaking.

I'm installing some in my VVT head that's currently being built. We'll see what happens!!

I had 2 sets of supertech valve seals leak on me. Never again. OEM works perfect, and are cheap.

Supertech seals leaked like a sieve here too

Well damn, now I'm getting worried mine will leak :cry: I wonder how fast I can get OEM valve stem seals shipped to my house.

I think mine are leaking too. Installed 400 miles ago.

Would you guys happen to know the part # for the intake and exhaust valve stem seals? I did a bit of searching and I think KL01-10-155 is the intake valve seals and KL02-10-155 is the exhaust valve seals. The price is $8.15 for the intake seals and $6.68 for exhaust seals. I'm wondering if that's the price per seal or a set? I'll most likely have to call and ask unless someone here knows.

The price is for 8 seals total, I remember that.

The price is per seal

Thanks! ordering a set of each now. Hopefully the machine shop hasn't installed the supertech seals I provided.

So all of a sudden everyone reports leaking Supertech valve seals? Just finished my head and it's on the block. Supertech it shall stay.

haha that's what it seems like, and it's making me nervous. I really don't want to take a chance and have to tear into a freshly built engine if they do happen to fail and leak.

Goddammit. Why don't you people speak up sooner?

My Stupertechs are leaking, was going to replace them with more Stupertechs this weekend. Fak.

Sigh. I have a head in my garage with Supertech valve seals in it, too.

Feels bad, man.

I covered my discovery of this failure in my build thread, along with all the others I've had. Mine actually failed twice... Intake and exhaust valves alike, so it wasn't just heat related from turbo/antilag. I think they are junk, my second set was leaking after 2 weeks of daily driving and a trip to the drag strip.

Also covered this in my build thread. Not even sure why I installed them because I had read other threads of people saying use only OEM. Read more noobs :party:

I thought supertech valve seals were known to leak. At least that has been what I have been reading for the last several years.

I'd like to hear from a couple of the forum vendors who supply them. The usual google search returns some talk of leaks but more of the "I run them no problem " stuff. A lot of instances with leaks also involve dual springs with the seal contacting the inner spring id.

There's also the installation of the intake on the exhaust and vis a vis that I doubt people are quick to admit to if they installed wrong.

So I'd like to see vendors comments.

I called my local Mazda dealership yesterday and also emailed priority Mazda parts store and they are both telling me that they ​are sold per seal not as the set. So it seems pricey considering I only paid like $20 for the Supertech seals. This would be about $120 for all 16 seals. May I ask where you bought your seals from and when?

I'd also like to hear what the vendors have to say about the Supertech valve seals. I mean if this was such a widespread problem, you would think that Supertech would look into fixing this with another revised version of the seal or something. I'm using these with both Supertech +1mm oversized​ intake and exhaust valves and the Supertech double springs. Not sure that would make a difference.

scared of the Supertechs's, i used some Fel Pro's i had. Ill come back later with reports, good or bad.

Yeah, but Cardinale Mazda is a bunch of dickbags. There use to be an awesome guy over there named Frank (IIRC) who would hook a brother up with MazdaComp pricing, but he left a while ago. :-(
+1
After you buy 100,000 seals in a production run, you tend to continue to sell them until they run out, regardless of how much they suck. Then maybe they get revised. Maybe ;)

And you'd listen to ebay vendors about their perfect fitment / never crack manifolds? Why would you take a sellers word over the experienced people here?

Because we aren't talking about random ebay sellers here ;)

The guy there is Alex. He actually price matched priority Mazda and was going to give me the $120 price for the seals. I still thought that was a lot though, funny cause I spent WAY more on other things. And you're right, I don't think they'd just toss there current stock and make a new run of these to correct the issues some people are reporting.

Yup, what EO2K said. I'm talking about the forum vendors here. I'm sure plenty of these have been sold, and probably installed and used by them. I just want to hear what they have to say about this.

Supertech isn't making these... They aren't just going to "make a new run."

Yeah, they probably fit some other application and they just bought them in bulk on the cheap.

Now.

If we can figure out what other applications fit, like a Kia or Nissan or Ford or something, we can probably find these without the Mazda tax. Just so long as they don't turn out like those Ford oil pump seals, we should be good.

Yes, and that's unfortunate.

Unless they leak because they are from a Kia or something.

Truth. But we won't know until we start looking and comparing.

You're going down the same exact path that got you to leaky Supertech seals. :hatecat:

Check Kia. 1st gen Sephia.

I mean, its absolutely a 'suck it and see' situation, I have no illusions about that. But if I can get a set of seals for a Ford Festiva for $30 and its just the Mazda part with a Ford sticker on the box (or vice versa) weelllll...

Other non-mazdas available in the US of A with BP05s:

91-96 Escort GT
91-96 Escort LX-E
91-96 Mercury Tracer LT-S
94-97 Kia Sephia

I thought everyone knew supertech valve seals were fail and aids.

My felpros worked just fine, ryan.

For how long and under what conditions? I'd be nice to get some more data points up in here.

So it looks like 949 Racing offers their "super miata valve seal", which come from the same supplier for fel pro according to the their website. Supermiata Valve Seal Miata

However while researching on this, I found a thread from 2015 on M.net where someone recommended supertech seals from 949. This is the link that was posted. 949 Racing - Supermiata (http://949racing.com/supertech-valve-seals-miata.aspx)
The Supertech valve seal link from 949 is dead now so it seems like they used to offer the supertech valve seals before, then switched over to their own seals which come from the same supplier as felpro.

Also TSE sells the Supertech valve seals on their site. Supertech Viton Valve Seals I wonder if Andrew has had any issues with them? Hopefully he can chime in with his opinion on this.

Had Supertech valve seals from 949racing on a fresh forged engine.

It was burning oil and I couldn't work out why. Pulled the inlet manifold and low and behold every valve had oil on it.

Fitted OEM. It's spot on and how it should be. From inspecting the supertech valve stems they are slightly bigger hole compared to OEM.

I've had 2 other friends have the same problem! It just pours down them. Wouldn't touch them ever again and I always tell people to go OEM.

Mazda lists 2 different valve stem seals for the 1.8L. Following is a crossover list (including dimensional info, vehicles and part ##) from S.B. International who happens to supply a lot of OEM and aftermarket valve train parts.

Intake: KL01-10-155
KL10-10-155 Intake valve stem oil seal cross reference
Exhaust: KL02-10-155 (Supercedes B660-10-155)
KL02-10-155 Exhaust valve stem oil seal cross reference
B660-10-155 Exhaust valve stem oil seal cross reference

Enjoy...

Meh. I put supertech's I ordered from 949 on the head I just refurb'd. We'll see how they do.

I remember being surprised that they were color coded, but the colors seemed unintuitively backwards: like the blue ones go on the exhaust valves and the brown ones on the intake. From a human factors design perspective, it seems like you'd want it the other way around. I'm​ curious whether the root of the problem is that either they got the part numbers switched, or people are putting the blue ones on the intake by mistake.

They physically fit in both locations, and for a while now people have been installing the supertech exhaust ones on both sides.

In fact, this is what I was told to do by the vendor who sent me the set of supertechs that's sitting here next to me on my desk.

https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...812a70eed2.jpg

Notice both sets are blue.

But this begs the question, are people installing the supertech intake seals on the exhaust and they can't handle the heat?

Mine are already leaking. And I haven't put much heat into them a all. Seriously doubt that's an issue.

Especially since my exhaust are the ones that appear to be leaking.

Yep, mine started leaking pretty much immediately as well, back when I first got the motor in. I'm still not sure I want to install these. :facepalm:

The part number for the intake has an "I" in it VS-T6I vs the "E" for exhaust VS-T6E

Even the Mazda parts have 2 different #

MAIVN-1208 Intake
MAEVN-1204 Exhaust

And they have the same part number...

Question for you guys with the ST seals. Are you running double springs? ST valves?

Double Springs, stock valves. I have not confirmed that mine are leaking.

I ran ST heavy double springs, ST valves, ST seals. Seals leak out of the box on two different sets. OEM are perfect. I don't care if they fix the problem and give them away, I'm not running them again. OEM are cheap and work perfect, so there's nothing to fix as far as I'm concerned.

EDIT: Apparently OEM are not cheap... My bad!

OEM are not cheap. $120 a set.

Doesn't matter. It that's what works, and cheap doesn't, you don't have any choice. ebay manifolds are cheap, too; doesn't mean we use them.

I know. I just ordered oem seals. But there is some misinformation in this thread that I wanted to clear up.

Are they seriously 120 a set? I have run fel-pro seals as well and they worked fine too. There is no way felpro are that much. That's crazy if mazda really charges that much for valve seals.

i put supertechs in mine before hearing about this. Just got the motor running and sure as hell, it smokes when i give it revs after idling. Fuck you supertech.

Yes. I've seen other people have better luck with felpro. I would try those. But I just bought a full vvt gasket set for spares.

they are less than $100 through Mazdacomp. At least $120 through dealers.

I'm amazed that these are still sold.

Felpros are cheap. I read in your thread you have had great success with them, so i am going to pull my shit supertechs out and toss the felpros in. Thankfully i have the nice tool that allows that to happen without pulling the head.

Thanks for posting this and fixing my post above, that's crazy. To be honest I've never had anything Fel-Pro makes function any less than an OEM gasket on any car I've owned. I usually buy mazda to be safe, but Felpro is so much cheaper I'll probably just run Fel-Pro everything in the future.

Damni I'm glad I saw this now. I have both supertech and stock valvesteam seals sitting here for the head rebuild this week! Guess I'll be going with stock

Has anyone brought this up to supertech

Stock everything. Tried finding the pics I took when I pulled the head back off with no luck, IIRC every port had some oil present. Should have left the 170k km seals in, no smoke before the rebuild.

I have an email to them. Hope for some reply.

Thanks for stickying this, wish I had known this 4 months ago. I put supertech seals in my parents miata a little while back, looks like I'll be replacing those soon.

Reply from Martin at Supertech (bold + ul is mine);

Can't speak to how people install seals. I installed mine using a medium plastic straw that slipped over the valve stem and let the seal slip over the edge of the stem easily.

Did you send them a link to this thread?
Thanks for the link @konmo, I ordered a set this morning. We'll see if they can get here before the weekend so I can install them.
Also, who is doing your head? I just saw you posted up trying to find a machine shop a couple months ago. I'm very local, so very interested who you ended up going with. Also, I posses valve train disassembly tools and happy to loan them out, if you don't want to buy a set.
That's where I ordered my set of replacement STs for the leaky STs that are in my head now. I ain't even mad tho, vendors are generally at the mercy of their distributors. Just like the Boundary front main seal thing we've been discussing. @Savington, care to weight in?
Fucking Keegan installed mine. Where is your God now, Martin at Supertech?

https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...4dae164171.png

All that Dominator going into the exhaust certainly keeps the roofs of my exhaust ports clean.