This is crazy; crazy like a fox. 12-rotor Wankel.

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I'd love to see more technical details on that thing. Unfortunately Road & Track have always been much more about marketing and eye candy vs. real technical material.

1400 HP from a naturally aspirated engine weighing 800 lbs really makes you wonder!
 
1400 hp from 15.7 liters means 89 hp/L. The question is whether 15.7 liters is the actual displacement, or double the actual displacement as some people think you should do when comparing a Wankel engine to a 4-stroke piston engine. If 15.7 liters is the actual displacement, then 89 hp/L is pretty horrid for a Wankel engine and there's probably a LOT more power to be had from tweaking the design. If 15.7 is twice the actual number, then 89 hp/L is pretty good -- a hair higher than a Renesis 2-rotor by the same calculation.

I wonder if power is limited because they can't rev it too high. I've heard that eccentric shafts like to bend at high RPMs when you have as many as 4 rotors on the same shaft; I can only imagine 6 would be worse.

I'd also like to know how 830 lbs compares to any other setup that would make similar power reliably.

Either way, pretty good achievement for some guys in a garage. Always nice to see someone doing something different and making it work.
 
The displacement of a single rotor in a 13b Mazda is .654 liters, so 12 of those would be 7.85 liters, or 15.7 liters in 4-stroke piston engine equivalent. The last Wankel that Mazda produced was advertised at ~238HP @ 8500 rpm, so if they can duplicate that specific output, they could get 1428 HP.

Supercharged big-block Chevies that put out ~1400 HP for offshore power boats weigh about 1000-1100 pounds, so the 12-rotor Mazda would be competitive on weight.

The 4-rotor Mazda engine that won LeMans in 1991 put out ~700HP, so power would scale to 2100 HP for 12 rotors in full racing tune.
 
Originally Posted By: AlaskaMike
I'd love to see more technical details on that thing. Unfortunately Road & Track have always been much more about marketing and eye candy vs. real technical material.

1400 HP from a naturally aspirated engine weighing 800 lbs really makes you wonder!


Here's a picture of some of the internals:
http://www.performancegarage.com.au/sites/default/files/blog-content/r122.jpg
 
12 rotor? That's 36 apex seals to go bad.

If a 2-rotor Genesis consumes 1 quart every 1,000 mile as "normal" oil consumption, does this thing eat 6 quarts every 1,000 miles?

2,000 HP - only makes 200 lb ft of torque.

I could keep going..,
 
Originally Posted By: MrHorspwer
12 rotor? That's 36 apex seals to go bad.

Pushrod V8? That's 16 valve guides, 16 tappets, 16 valve seals, 16 valve seats, etc. etc. to go bad.

Could play this game with any engine.
smile.gif
 
Originally Posted By: MrHorspwer
12 rotor? That's 36 apex seals to go bad.

If a 2-rotor Genesis consumes 1 quart every 1,000 mile as "normal" oil consumption, does this thing eat 6 quarts every 1,000 miles?

2,000 HP - only makes 200 lb ft of torque.

I could keep going..,


What exactly is wrong with an engine consuming oil by design? 2 stroke engines have done this for many years.
 
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