The Rotary Engine is Back

Speaking of F1, I am so glad to see the refueling stuff gone.

Always tought of it as unecessary complex, and adding danger where there was enough already.

And yes the power/weight ratios are insane... at a price!

 

The mileage was 1.5 mpg...hey, just like a wankel!

 

Yep! For such a small car my '82 got terrible MPGs.

 

I was a bit facetious with my first comment. I was responding to "it will go faster". Lots of things have already gone faster if you throw away emissions.

But let's look at the Wankel technically. This design is mechanically different but its combustion volume is similar to a Wankel. The problem with them was that the combustion volume had a large surface area for its TDC volume. As I understand it it makes combustion and emissions a problem. You can't get good combustion with a large cool surface area. Now you can meet emissions with things like catalysts but then you loose fuel efficiency. So it can't win.

If the Wankel was truly better it would be in all cars today. The story at the time (and I'm old enough to remember) was it was simpler...no valve train. What they forgot was that in modern engines the valve train is maintenance free and virtually never fails.

 

If what they say is true, that efficiency is increased over the piston, then it can revolutionize tomorrows cars.

The biggest issue with emissions was the blow by from the compression chamber to the exhaust chamber caused by the spark plug hole.

 

It's actually a leak from the combustion to the compression, but yes another nail for the coffin.

 

time to resurrect a dead thread because the rotary is coming back after about a decade collecting dust in a R&D office, the 16x has found a home in the now confirmed rx9. big news for any rotorheads out there! i know my tacoma ownership experience just got cut shorter, i miss my finicky lil pistonless car. factory twin turbo, largest displacement, more torque(not difficult to beat 159) and more mpg sounds like a winning combo to me. just take my money already

 

Dude for the $79,641 that car will cost you could drop a triple turbo 20B in your Tacoma, and have a spare to swap in so you don't have any downtime during apex seal swaps.