I'm one of those that had my rotors coated back around 2001. My reaoning was that it would transfer less heat to the oil so therefore reduce my cooling requirements. Unfortunately I originally did not have an electronic boost controller and experienced an overboost on one eventful takeoff which led to me discovering that the rotary is indeed very reliable and can tolerate severe detonation and continue to produce enough power to safely complete a flight.... but won't start again afterwards. (The full story is in the archives and may be worth a read).
Anyways, on teardown I found that most of the ceramic coating had flaked off, more on the rotor that had withstood the greater detonation damage to the apex seals. Now that wad probably quite a shock to the coating, far worse than they can normally expect to see. After I rebuilt without redoing the coating I good see no appreciable difference however I didn't have enough data collected from before to say for sure. Recently, however I rebuilt the engine and I could still see the remaing ceramic coating on the rotors that had survived the detonation incident. The engine probably had about 50 hours on it after that, so it would likely have lasted much better under normal use.
Todd RV9 13Bturbo
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