Any one remember the Wankel engine from 50 years ago? Supposed to be the up and coming new engine design!
Wasnt that like a nearly indestructable engine? Or was that some other engine im thi king of?
A friend in High School built a motorcycle with a Wankel.1974. My 1975 Triumph Trident was faster and had better mileage, but I thought it was an interesting idea.
Burned oil like a mosquito truck!.................
The Mazda RX-7 comes to mind, those were equipped with Wankels. Per Wikipedia they were in production from 1978-2002, with 800,000+ produced across three generations of the vehicle. Personally, I’m not fan of imports or tuners, but the third gen RX-7s were good looking cars. I’ve also seen some gorgeous early 70s Toyotas.
And it would be now, but for seal issues.
There’s a new spin (get it?) on the radial design that came out recently that does not have the seal exposed to such force. I’ll hunt for the link.
Still a small, high RPM, engine with all that entails.
Any one remember the Wankel engine from 50 years ago? Supposed to be the up and coming new engine design!>>> It was actually built in the datsun 240 i think.
Wankel ... Had one in my RX-7, gen 2.
Yeah ... dad loved rotary engine Mazdas. Always talked about how much power they had compared to equivalent sized traditional engines. I also remember spending long hours at the mechanics shop because when a seal failed, the entire engine had to be rebuilt.
You had to be anal about the maintenance and have some luck or else the lip seals on the edge of the rotors went bad and they started burning large quantities of oil.
Tep, had a Mazda Rx-2 and a turbo Rx-7.
Smooth running.
The Wankel engine died, because they would not allow it to race. That made experimentation and improvements more expensive without a chance of winning. All they had to do was make seals that last as long as piston rings.
I can’t remember how many cylinders they allowed for the Wankel to compete, but it seemed like it was 3 or 4. If they allowed them to have 8 cylinders, they would have destroyed the field.
“Any one remember the Wankel engine from 50 years ago? Supposed to be the up and coming new engine design!
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The Wankel is still used when you need very high power to weight ratios above 2hp/lb piston engines struggle to hit 2/lb rotary has hit 5+ right up there with gas turbines but with half the fuel burn rates of turbines.
Rotary engines are widely used in aircraft for this very reason and there are a half dozen companies that make custom rotary for drones and general aviation too. They are also used in watercraft and snow machines again for their unbeatable power to weight.
So why not cars ? Simple the EPA it is a function of the way rotary engines are lubricated and their flat long skinny combustion chamber that they produce large amounts of particulates from the oil burning, and also HC emissions from the squish zones all around the edges of the combustion chamber they simply cannot be as clean as a piston engines without major tech improvements. Modern direct injection rotary don’t mix fuel and oil and also don’t squish fuel into quench zones at the edges of the combustion chamber. A modern rotary with a three way catalyst can hit tier 2 bin 5 but will still struggle to hit T2B1.
I used to build and race RX7s all through the 90s switched to Rally racing Saabs in the early 2000s every one was a crate motor build.
Mazda is still doing rotary engines for range extenders in some of their REVs just not in the USA again the EPA. Small light weight, it fits in the spare tire well and gives the REV 500+ miles of range with a small fuel tank.