I can't wank to this.


Farewell. :cry:
 
I remember reading somewhere the Formula Mazda cars where fairly reliable. Mazda has over 23 class wins at the 24 Hours of Daytona and an overall win at the 24 Hours of Le Mans with rotary cars.
 
Anyone that doesn't like rotaries hasn't been in a 20B Quad rotor before. The noise..
 
LeVeL said:
I can't think of a single advantage that a rotary has to offer, aside from it's small size and relatively light weight.
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Perfect balance, ultra smooth operation, and only 3 moving parts inside the engine seem like pretty big advantages to me. Any car that needs a buzzer to go off because you can't tell that its getting too close to the rev limit seems pretty cool to me.

I'm no fanboy, but I think a Rotary engine is pretty darn cool. I think the main failing of the rotary is its lack of major development, and agree with the people who say that if it had been given equal development time as cylinder based engines then they would have many of the issues that people complain about worked out.
 
The way I see it, apart from all the other things already discussed, it's sad because it means there will be less diversity in terms of engines.
More diversity to add variation and make things more interesting is always good, imo.
 
Electric-Mayhem said:
Perfect balance, ultra smooth operation, and only 3 moving parts inside the engine seem like pretty big advantages to me. Any car that needs a buzzer to go off because you can't tell that its getting too close to the rev limit seems pretty cool to me.

I'm no fanboy, but I think a Rotary engine is pretty darn cool. I think the main failing of the rotary is its lack of major development, and agree with the people who say that if it had been given equal development time as cylinder based engines then they would have many of the issues that people complain about worked out.
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The thing I like about rotaries is that it is an obvious 'design evolution' for lack of a better term of the piston engine. A conrod has to accelerate/deccelerate and stop 14,000 times a second just to keep another shaft rotating at a constant rpm, the obvious thing to do at that point is to do away with the conrod and spin the whole thing.
 
I enjoy rotaries because they are different as well. In general, driving a car powered by a rotary doesn't feel that much different than driving a car with a piston engine. You don't notice any of the penalties of doing so in most situations, except for perhaps the lack of low end torque. Still, it has more low end grunt than a 1.3 piston engine would. But the fact that you are driving something that is almost retro-futuristic, almost prototype is exciting. Sometimes I think of that when I'm driving and it just makes me smile. Knowing 99.99% of the cars around me are piston powered, and mine is something more special. I don't know how people can just outright hate something as cool and interesting as the rotary engine. Oh well, their decision.

For the record, I don't think we've seen the last of the Hiroshima screama
 
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A sad moment. The wankel might have it's flaws but i love that high-pitched howl they produce. Always had a soft spot for the RX-3 too.
 
Cold Fussion said:
The thing I like about rotaries is that it is an obvious 'design evolution' for lack of a better term of the piston engine. A conrod has to accelerate/deccelerate and stop 14,000 times a second just to keep another shaft rotating at a constant rpm, the obvious thing to do at that point is to do away with the conrod and spin the whole thing.
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How often do you spin your engine at 7,000 RPMs? That is the only way that figure makes any sense. Unless your on a bike, or in a highly tuned race car, you will never see any where near 7,000 RPMs.
 
GRtak said:
How often do you spin your engine at 7,000 RPMs? That is the only way that figure makes any sense. Unless your on a bike, or in a highly tuned race car, you will never see any where near 7,000 RPMs.
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I see 7000rpm multiple times every day :dunno:
 
Can we have a little pity here for those of us whose engines red-line at 6500?
 
A thought just occured to me.

The rotary engine is a bit like, as an example, the Betamax video recorder format. In many ways it was superior but it died out. Now suppose one company had persisted with it. Would any of us expect them to have a huge market share of be very profitable with it even if they did run it alongside VHS machines? Probably not.

Bonus rep for the first person who can tell me why VHS won out over Betamax.......
 
MWF said:
A thought just occured to me.

The rotary engine is a bit like, as an example, the Betamax video recorder format. In many ways it was superior but it died out. Now suppose one company had persisted with it. Would any of us expect them to have a huge market share of be very profitable with it even if they did run it alongside VHS machines? Probably not.

Bonus rep for the first person who can tell me why VHS won out over Betamax.......
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Durr, everyone knows that it's because of porn. :p

But I'm not sure that analogy really works, because those were entirely different platforms for whole systems, so if you have little market share that automatically makes your platform less appealing for outside input, making it less interesting for customers etc. etc.
In contrast a rotary doesn't change the fact that it's still powering a car that can do all the fundamental things other cars can do as well, so little importance in the market doesn't necessarily mean it would have to be unprofitable.
 
shad_68 said:
Durr, everyone knows that it's because of porn. :p

But I'm not sure that analogy really works, because those were entirely different platforms for whole systems, so if you have little market share that automatically makes your platform less appealing for outside input, making it less interesting for customers etc. etc.
In contrast a rotary doesn't change the fact that it's still powering a car that can do all the fundamental things other cars can do as well, so little importance in the market doesn't necessarily mean it would have to be unprofitable.
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I think that analogy does work, because the rotary engine has operating characteristics (naturally burns oil, needs to rev high) that are noticeably different from those of four-stroke engines; these make it stand out from the dominant technology and are enough to make it unpalatable to the average appliance buyer in a way analogous, if not identical, to the format incompatibility of Betamax. Unlike with Betamax, there was enough of a small minority that accepted these differences in order to gain access to the advantages of Wankel that Mazda was able to stay with them for longer. A closer analogy may be to Sony and Memory Sticks, which have stuck around despite complete incompatibility with the rest of the market because Sony stuff has an offsetting appeal that, for enough customers, counteracts this downside.
 
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GRtak said:
How often do you spin your engine at 7,000 RPMs? That is the only way that figure makes any sense. Unless your on a bike, or in a highly tuned race car, you will never see any where near 7,000 RPMs.
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I could produce a graph for you from 0-15000 rpm to satisfy 99% of cases of road use of piston engine if you'd like. Plenty of cars rev to 7k, even hatchbacks, I don't see why you take issue with this.
 
Cold Fussion said:
I could produce a graph for you from 0-15000 rpm to satisfy 99% of cases of road use of piston engine if you'd like. Plenty of cars rev to 7k, even hatchbacks, I don't see why you take issue with this.
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While I don't claim to be very knowledgeable on the subject, I've never driven a car that redlines over 7k. Also, his point was that 7k rpm is pretty high up there for normal driving, even if it's not beyond the engine's abilities.
 
MWF said:
A thought just occured to me.

The rotary engine is a bit like, as an example, the Betamax video recorder format. In many ways it was superior but it died out. Now suppose one company had persisted with it. Would any of us expect them to have a huge market share of be very profitable with it even if they did run it alongside VHS machines? Probably not.

Bonus rep for the first person who can tell me why VHS won out over Betamax.......
Click to expand...

Porn and a 2 hour play time.

Cold Fussion said:
I could produce a graph for you from 0-15000 rpm to satisfy 99% of cases of road use of piston engine if you'd like. Plenty of cars rev to 7k, even hatchbacks, I don't see why you take issue with this.
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And my math was off as much as your's was the first time.

You said that a connecting rod has to start and stop 14,000 times a second. That is not the case at 7,000 RPMs, it would only be 14,000 times a minute. In order for your 14,000 times a second to happen the engine would have to run at 420,000 RPMs. So where did you pull your figure from? I will give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you meant per minute.

I will stick with my Yank Tanks that loaf along at a measily 2,000 RPM at more than highway speed.
 
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