One other problem these engines had is lubrication in the combustion process chamber. The Mazda and I assume the other makes as well, fought with how to lubricate the Rotor tip seals. Mazda used two tiny oil weep holes that would let oil into the intake combustion chamber. However, this meant the combustion would burn up this oil. The best solution would had been to use regular oil to do the main lubrication and 2 cycle oil for the combustion chamber, since that oil when burnt very little ash/carbon. The Mazda team and others thought having another item users would have to look after was too much to ask from buyers. So they just used the regular motor oil and made the sump capacity larger to make sure the oil burnt in say 5000 miles would not run the engine low on oil. Mazda Rotary engine racing teams revise the combustion lubricator system with an additional reservoir for 2 Cycle Oil which greatly improves the life of the rotor tip seals and spark plugs. The main reason they wear is due to carbon deposit build up from burning regular engine oil!
I was a junior in highschool during the Arab oil embargo in 74,fuel shortages,fillup limits ,long lines 55 hour speed limits,not fun times. My friends father traded his 72 LTD Brougham,for a Mazda RX3 because it was a compact ,but the real disappointment was the Mazda didn't pull any better mileage than the Ford,plus it had an oil leak the Mazda Dealership couldn't fix.Two years later,he traded the Mazda for a 76 Le Sabre.
I've driven a Mazda powered by a Wankel Rotary engine. It was supper interesting and sounded like a bunch of electrical/mechanical relays clicking like crazy when floored.
The Pacer is an example of counting chickens before they hatch. I never understood why they’d design a car around an engine that hadn’t been built yet.
The 2 stroke 750 and 850c. SAAB 3 cylinder and the early 2 cylinder 2 stroke in the 92, which was the first 2 stroke used. It was about 600cc, amd all were made for SAAB by DKW in Germany. The twin was the same engine used in the 1930’s DKW cars, by the way! I wanna see these on your channel! I love 2 strokes! Also the 2 stroke Detroit Diesels would be cool! I ADORE these incredible Clark Cycle valve uni-flow engines, and they also made a now rare valveless engine like a gasoline 2 stroke Detroit diesel, all of this common class of 2 strokes are known as the Day cycle 2 strokes. CHEERS! 😋👍🏻
Those were some very interesting cars they definitely reached cult-car status. I did admittedly like the ones with the Ford Taunus V4 better because I don’t favor the stinky 2-stroke exhaust smoke.
I will try to do an engine episode on those. I wanna start doing some foreign car engines I was looking into maybe doing some Bugatti stuff it's hard to find information on one stuff here for some reason I'm finding out that where you're at in the world do you have different access to different options of what's available on the Internet I know it sounds weird, but when I go to Michigan, there's different search results than here, same thing when I go to Florida there's different results there than there is here it's crazy
I kind of wish they could have pulled it off on the AMC Pacer. The engine they wound up using had to be shoehorned in, and it really didn’t work because it was a pain in the ass to work on. Granted, the Pacer was a strange car, but it might have had a better chance to work long-term had they used the rotary engine. Again, a very interesting segment. The rotary engine has always been intriguing to me.
A friend of mine had a Mazda rotary back in the mid-1970s, and he let me drive it. That thing was a blast- rev city!!! I also remember the distributor being quite strange; all four spark plug cables were on one side of the cap and not evenly spaced.
Mazda made three size rotary engines. Their tag line, the engine that goes hum. That was the 12A 1200 cc. With the RX7 you could get the 13B the cosmos had the 20C, a three chamber engine. In 1995 the RX7 got a turbo charger, both that engine and the 20C were very, very fast. The rotary, much like a two cycle engine needs oil in the combustion chamber, it injected oil from the crankcase. You had to check the oil every day.
I've been working on this one for longer than I'd like to admit, I hope it showed there's a couple companies that I miss John Deere was going to put a Wankel engine on their lawnmowers and garden tractors. I found a really cool article. Unfortunately I couldn't get it to be clear so you could read it which was a huge bummer I couldn't find that article anywhere else it was super interesting =) Happy you dig this episode
Good story on the Rotary, remember reading magazine ads and teasers about rotary engines coming to the Pacer, Vegas, and the 75 Nova and the other X bodied GM cars back in 1973 when I was in the 10th grade, only Mazda was successful , there is a few rotary Mazda pickups and sedans hiding in my area, one may show up a car show occasionally.
I'm happy you dig this episode B parks =) I've seen a couple rotary engine cars from time to time I've seen a truck in person, but they are very few and far between
The Rolls Engine I remember when Mazda started selling rotary engines here. We always knew when there was one coming by the sound of it. Jay, this was really a great video. I knew a lot of manufacturers tried rotary engines but I had no idea how many of them there actually were. While it's a cool idea, just the fact that so many manufacturers try it and dropped it has to tell you that the design had inherent issues. Of course technology changes. It is quite possible that the rotary may have a rebirth. I'm sure they have learned enough about the engine by now to make it reliable for long-term usage.
Excellent review, Jay! You covered the Wankel far deeper than I ever knew about. A friend used to autocross her (stock) RX7, and she let me drive it once. The redline was 8,000 rpm, but when I was out on the track and looked at the tach, it was close to 10,000! Nothing bad happened, but it was just sooooooo smooth, there was no way to judge engine speed from the sound, I've never heard of the Rolls Royce design, if you have more info, I'd definitely like to see an engine episode on that!
I'm so happy you dig this episode I wanted to go down the rabbit hole of all the manufacturers cause it seems like nobody does.. I've never driven anything with a rotary engine. I would love to one day I'm just afraid that I would break it but who knows maybe one day definitely going to come back and do the Rolls-Royce on one day one we could find more information on it.
My sister had a Mazda coupe with the rotary and the neighbor had a 74ish Mazda rotary pickup and neither one of those things would start worth a darn on cold mornings, once started they’d rev and smoke for 5 minutes it is rather a comical memory now
In January 1979 I bought a 1974 Mazda RX4 it had the 13B engine. 110 horsepower 120 lb ft of torque. Fuel consumption wasn't too bad at 18 to 22 mi per gallon but for its size class the fuel consumption was atrocious. The Wankel rotary was a good idea. But you are correct it had some problems. The Apex seals were the biggest problem. They served as a type of head gasket on a piston engine. They had to be lubricated which meant a small amount of oil had to be injected into the carburetor (1000:1). So they naturally used oil, and unfortunately that small amount of oil caused a bit of an emissions problem. Lead that was used in the fuel back then was deadly to those seals. It was best to use unleaded fuel. Which had been available since 1971. The other issue of those had was combustion. The fuel would literally run away from the flame during the powerstroke. A piston engine has a dwell time at top dead center where are the piston stops while the crank rotates. This dwell time allows the flame to burn across the piston before it starts going down. The average rod to stroke ratio on a piston engine is 1.75 to 1. Not so on the rotary. It does not have that dwell time at top dead center. The rod the stroke ratio (if you will) is 1:1 there is no dwell time at top dead center. As such the fuel will literally run away from the flame. Which is what causes the high fuel consumption and emissions. Unfortunately there are no fixes for those problems. Even if the emission regulations were a little looser it wouldn't matter. I used to love racing that little Mazda and especially against small V8s at the time. It was quite a sight to see that small car pulling away from bigger cars at 115 mph and you're heading to 120. The WTF look was pretty impressive😊.
Thank you so much for taking all of the time to share all of that information greatly appreciate it as well as your experience with owning one. It would be really cool to race that against V8.
I always say that you’re the man who informs us of things we didn’t know that we wanted to know. But we’re glad you told us. I never knew it started out as a supercharger. Seems as if they never did solve the sealing issue. But those engines were powerful for their size though.
@@What.its.like. air compressor, supercharger, then engine. Seems like a versatile design. I wonder why it’s not commonly used as a compressor. Seems as if it would be less noisy than the typical piston compressor. And the seals would be less of an issue since they won’t be challenged by combustion by-Products.
I would like to have seen GM succeed for GM and AMC both. However, that Rolls version would be great to study. Excellent as always and I learned a few things. Laughed out loud at “Hercules”. 😂 Thank you as always ~ Chuck
Hahaha yeah that rolls engine definitely going to come back to it one day =) Happy you learned something no one else has gone down the manufacture rabbit hole I did miss a few evidently John Deere wanted to do the rotary and I found an advertisement piece with John Deere talking about their rotary design, but I couldn't get it to come out proper like it was all jumbled up and not clear
Missed John Deere and the SCORE series wankel engines. They may have been closer to production than any other US manufacturer. There were models under development up to over 2000HP and at one point was considered as a poweplant for the M1 Abrams along with other combat vehicles.
Thank you so much for sharing that I found a really awesome article on the John Deere rotary engine, but I couldn't get it to come up clear enough to share it in the video and that sucked. I couldn't find it anywhere else. Thank you so much for sharing all of that information
The Corvette rotary, or one of them, was featured on a raised platform away from the passing public in the GM pavilion at Expo '74. I think it had already made the car show rounds a few times by then. The gas pinch of 1973 put a fast end to the rotary, I remember people saying they'll never make that Corvette now.
I love the NSU Ro80. It still looks good today. In addition to the rotary engine, it had a clutchless manual transmission with a torque converter. Unfortunately the car broke NSU, leading to the Audi/VW takeover. I'm also a big fan of Citroëns from before the Peugeot takeover. They put a two-rotor Wankel engine in the GS, calling the car the GS Birotor. It didn't sell well and was quickly scrapped. For engine episodes, I would like to see unconventional engines. Maybe steam engines, turbines, or the fascinating Stirling engine.
Mazda Cosmo I would love to cover one one day as well as the RO 80 and the NSU goal is to cover as many cars on this channel if possible we don't do a whole lot of foreign cars but those cars would be really cool to do
Hi Jay! Thanks for the fascinating history of the Wankel engines! Was never too interested in them, but they are pretty cool! GM was also intending to put a 4 rotor rotary into a future Corvette, but when those engines died at GM so did the idea. WYR. . .I kind of wish Kawasaki had put that two rotor one into production! That might have been a pretty good bike! At least Yamaha actually built some! Seems like the rotary would run a lot smoother than a typical bike engine. That Rolls-Royce one is SUPER fascinating! You KNOW theirs would be excellently engineered!
Thank you so much for sharing all that added information and insight. It would've been awesome if the engine would've succeeded I guess it technically did succeed but it kind of succeeded on the level that the engine succeeded there's snow around, but they're not they didn't take over.
On motorcycles Hercules was the first to offer a rotary to the public, and Norton was the only company who actually succeeded in making it work well enough to sell in quantities enough to keep the company going. It actually wasn't theirs; BSA had gotten a license before they went broke and the conglomerate who bought them out also owned Norton, so Norton could use the BSA license.They started with an air-cooled model and progressed to a liquid cooled. They performed well enough but being low-production machines priced them above comparable bikes. It was Mazda of course who got rotary cars to the public in enough quantity to make them profit, and were it not for material technology not being there while pollution laws were, they would still be selling them like hotcakes. But the one they sell now is a far cry from the glory days of the RX7 which made good horsepower and was fun to drive. Trivia fact: The oil injection pump in the old RX7 was the exact same one used in many Japanese two-stroke motorcycles. Theoretically the Wankel has no 'redline' on RPM's other than rotor seal breakdown and the rotor losing shape from centrifugal force.The production cars had a redline limit mostly to ensure the rotor seals stayed intact and because the oil pump couldn't keep up beyond that pace; racers figured out that it could be twisted harder but only for short times. Fitting tip seals properly took special tools, which meant few could rebuild a Wankel properly, but factory rebuilt 'short blocks' were relatively cheap and had a warranty so that's how most people went. It's really a great engine being very light for it's power and very smooth running. WYR: John Finger was the local Mazda dealership owner and he races Wankels in SCCA events and hillclimbs. He was deeply involved with Mazda's engineers and was working on a 3-rotor race engine which never got fully worked out before Mazda pulled out of Wankel factory racing support. I'd like to see the engine he put so many hours into succeed the way it could have. And I'd love an air-cooled Norton rotary but they're collector's items now and well beyond my wallet.
A lot of the companies used rotary engines used on motorcycles, etc. were made by Sachs. Sachs even built chain saws with a rotary where fuel consumption probably didn't increase much over a two stroke, and probably cut down on vibration.
Thank you so much for recognizing how much work this took this one took a while to put together more time than I'd like to admit.. And I'm always second-guessing, whether or not it's ready
Great episode! Data about Datsun, Honda and other GM projects is new to me. The R-R ou the C111 would be both really good choices for another episode. Thanks!
Thank you so much for watching this episode I'm happy you dig. I wanted to go down the rabbit hole of all the manufacturers because not a lot of people talk about that.
@@What.its.like. There's also the story of the 'new rotary', Liquid Piston, which started as a steam engine by Cooley and had a previous unsuccessful version by Veselovsky. You should have heard of it already, since it's often compared to the Wankel. There's also many interesting engines here: www.douglas-self.com/MUSEUM/POWER/rotaryengines/rotaryeng6.htm
General Motors Holden Australia made Rotary cars in the late 1970s , it was called the Road Pacer , it had a Twin Rotor 125 HP engine and 4 speed auto box , based on the Holden GM Australia Kingswood large 4 door sedan , very sort after today ! GM Holden Australia was going to build a 4 rotor 4 litre rotary for 1980 year model but at the last minute failed , emissions stopped it !
Buddy of mine had an RX4 wagon, '74 I think it was... had a lot of get up and go and ran exceptionally smooth. It was ok for a little car. WYR: I would've love to see the Pacer actually get a rotary engine...
The first time I opened the hood of a new mid-70’s Mazda (it was an RX3), it appeared to me that someone had somewhat randomly started bolting parts up to a beer keg - much like Colonel Hogan and his crew built their Gonculator (Klink vs. the Gonculator; Hogan's Heroes: Season 4, Episode 2). By then (1973-74), everyone was jumping on the bandwagon, and anyone that didn’t was going to be left behind, and anyone that spoke ill of the new tech was considered a Luddite. And now here we are 50 years latter, and history has repeated itself with this self-driving car hooey - right down to nerd-boys calling the naysayers “Luddites”. And now as then, after all the money flushed down the crapper, one company emerges as the standard-bearer. Elon Musk is the new Jujiro Mazda … For Elon’s sake, I hope he can get these self-driving things working better than Mazda did with that Wankel.
The rolls royce motor could have been epic keep in mind that they are legendary makers of aircraft engines and at that time had real pride in their cars
I for one would love to hear about the Rolls Royce diesel variant. Diesels were always low hp, high torque & rotary motors suffered from low torque at low rpm... +300 hp would be amazing.
The Wankel engine was essentially a two-stroke engine, every rotation produced power. There were no valves, only intake and exhaust ports. Like a two-stroke, rotor seal lubrication had to be supplied by the fuel system. Mazda, using the Nikki 4-barrel carb had an orifice which would drip engine oil into the carb's fuel bowl.. Yes, that was engine oil and not a special oil either pre-mixed with the fuel or injected into the engines. Surprisingly, where emissions were concerned, when most cars had catalytic converters, the Mazda rotary's did not for several years. They used the old, trusted thermal reactor which was introduced on cars(atleast American cars) in 1966. So, they weren't that dirty. The oil in the fuel would have fouled a catalytic converter. They figured out a way that catalytic converters were eventually added. GM was developing a 3-rotor Wankel engine for the Nova-based Cadillac Seville. Fuel mileage stopped them as this was the time of the fake fuel shortage and prices were climbing. Reliability wasn't an issue because GM put the R&D on their customers. They'd built the cars and address the teething problems as they came up. The Suzuki RE5 was a fantastic motorcycle! If you looked at quarter mile times, it was slow compared to other conventional bikes @ 14.02(that's with a 75 pound Japanese guy riding it). However, the engine would spin up quickly. Say you are cruising in 2nd gear, just by cranking open the throttle, the rear wheel would lose traction and start spinning. A pratfall of a Wankel rotary engine is that it would spin-up very quickly and didn't seem to know where to stop. Those rotors are extremely heavy(the rotor of an early Mazda engine weighed so much that even using two hands, an average-joe would struggle to pick one up). They would spin so fast that the inertia would strip the internal gears. Mazda had a buzzer which would go off around redline. Electronic and mechanical engine governors had been around for awhile already. The 1971 Mustang Boss 351 had an electronic governor. As Mazda has continued to make the rotary engine, why did it fall out of favor? Well, the obvious fuel mileage and reliability issues(which were solved down the road). Emissions? Also solved. Americans generally don't want to shift a transmission and it took Mazda awhile to work that one out and add an automatic transmission option. Subaru had the same problem. Well, the rotary engine just fell out of favor with the buying public. I had a customer that had one of the later generation RX7's. It only had one turbocharger(a 2nd was the next option up) and I would describe the car as a Miata with a double-bubble hardtop. The first time I drove the car, I came back, got out of the car as fast as I could, and while trembling, I handed the owner back his keys. The only way I could describe that car was evil. I'd driven Ferraris, Porsches and fast American iron, I have no desire to drive an RX7 Turbo again!
The Wankel Engine was a marvelous dead end. The high fuel consumption was the biggest cause for its demise in the U.S. I've always thought that the most interesting vehicles to have Wankel engines were the Mercedes C-111 factory experimental cars. If you are not familiar with those, look them up.
@@What.its.like. Yes. It was a very interesting design that got a lot of people excited at the time. I was one of the people who got excited about them.
It's so sad it failed at the last minute ! But today it's having a come back like the two stroke engine with direct injection, this fixed most of the problems if not all with both engines ! I'd say Rotary's and Two Stroke engines are back from about 2028 , Formula 1 is going Two Stroke direct injection from 2026 !
around 1974 or 75, a local shopping mall brought in a bunch of rotary Mazdas for a weekend new car sales event. Gas was already a big talking point. I asked a dealer there working the show if they got good mileage being small cars. He looked kind of sad and said no, not very good.
one of the factors that made the flathead engine have been abandonned in the favor ot the OHV design was that the heat loss in the thermodynamic process was much higher on the flathead design. The wankel engine have very large heat transfert surfaces in comparizon of a flathead engine so it is killed in the egg. we can always dream but it will stay a dream.
I wish someone could have made this engine successful long term. Given that GM seemed to have solved the reliability issues during their development and testing , If GM could have cleaned it up for emissions and made it a commercial success, it could have been a game changer . Mazda seemed to have been able to meet emissions. But they never seemed to have solved the reliably issue.
those Mazda Cosmos were pretty swank for Japanese standards of the time. They were the first cars with power sideview mirrors and in the age of the fixed opera window, the Cosmo had a roll down opera window there in the middle.
As cool as rotary engines are they will never beat piston engine efficiency or emissions. There is no way to keep the combustion temperature and flame motion at the edges and corners of the combustion chamber as high as in the center. The geometry of the piston engine is hard to beat. There is a Citroen GS Birotor and a Hercules motorcycle at the Lane Motor Museum in Nashville. The Deutsches Museum in Munich Germany has a few old sectioned display models of early rotary engines from NSU and Fichtel and Sachs, and their Verkhehrszentrum (Transportation Center) has a NSU Ro 80 and a NSU rotary Spider. All of those museums are awesome to visit if you ever get the chance.
I'll definitely have to check that out. Thank you so much for sharing all that information and insight. The museum that I really want to go to is Corky Coker collection I would really like to sit down with him and just take his brain. He's a guy in the hobby that I would really love to interview.
George thoroghgood I drink alone . Evinrude built production snowmobiles with the air cooled and did some liquid cooling in an outboard I think that was a 3 rotor
Yup! I had a 1970 Mazda R100, which I wrote off at 96 mph! Never had a chance to wear the seals, and it was very thirsty. The R100 was basically a Mazda 1200/1300 coupé, with the only concessions to handling / safety being front disc brakes. It was fun for the month I drove it. My mate and I were lucky to escape the crash without a scratch or a bruise (and just minor concussion for my mate). The car was unrecognisable apart from its large round rear lights. It had rolled front to rear about six times then side-to-side a few more before coming to rest against a tree. Every piece of glass was broken, including the interior mirror. A friend bought the wreck and put the engine and gearbox into a Morris Minor (!) to make a racing Q-car. No MM has ever gone so fast!
I worked for a Mazda dealer in the 90’s. My experience was mostly with the RX-7 at that time. They wouldn’t start in the winter and we were towing them in like crazy. If I remember correctly if there was a compression issue due to an apex seal failure we didn’t have the ability to overhaul them and would have to replace the engine. May have had something to do with the tools needed to do the job. Maybe someone else could expand on that fact.
the apex seals are not made out of rubber, they are little steel triangles which easily twist around and ruin the housing, which cannot be machined and has to be replaced with a new one, these "seals" are a real problem for these engines plus oil needs to be injected into the combustion area which is why the E.P.A. hates rotary engines
@@ginoperretta373 Thanks for the info. Also remember some owners had an aftermarket mechanical warranty. They would want us to rebuild the engine due to cost. We would have to fight with them because they didn’t understand it couldn’t be done.
One thing for certain they revved to high heaven ! Other than that they weren't very efficient - a bear to work on and not very emission friendly ! Also I'd have to question.the reliability !
Look I'll make this simple , a Mazda 13 B is not 1.3 litres , it has 3 rotors at 650 cc each side of a 3 sided rotor , so one rotor displaces 1950 cc X 2 is 3900 cc ! Don't matter how often it fires ! If you want to say it fires at 1/3 that's like saying a 500 cc two stroke is 1000cc ! Simple it's not a small motor at all that's why it uses so much fuel it's way bigger than 1.3 litres !
RR twin rotor diesel would be interesting to visit, please Jay. I dislike rotary engines, but gotta admit, they go like heck these days....😊 Cheers from New Zealand
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Billy Joel
The good Die Young
One other problem these engines had is lubrication in the combustion process chamber. The Mazda and I assume the other makes as well, fought with how to lubricate the Rotor tip seals. Mazda used two tiny oil weep holes that would let oil into the intake combustion chamber. However, this meant the combustion would burn up this oil. The best solution would had been to use regular oil to do the main lubrication and 2 cycle oil for the combustion chamber, since that oil when burnt very little ash/carbon. The Mazda team and others thought having another item users would have to look after was too much to ask from buyers. So they just used the regular motor oil and made the sump capacity larger to make sure the oil burnt in say 5000 miles would not run the engine low on oil. Mazda Rotary engine racing teams revise the combustion lubricator system with an additional reservoir for 2 Cycle Oil which greatly improves the life of the rotor tip seals and spark plugs. The main reason they wear is due to carbon deposit build up from burning regular engine oil!
I liked the 4-rotor Corvette concept.
I'll have to look into that concept
I was a junior in highschool during the Arab oil embargo in 74,fuel shortages,fillup limits ,long lines 55 hour speed limits,not fun times.
My friends father traded his 72 LTD Brougham,for a Mazda RX3 because it was a compact ,but the real disappointment was the Mazda didn't pull any better mileage than the Ford,plus it had an oil leak the Mazda Dealership couldn't fix.Two years later,he traded the Mazda for a 76 Le Sabre.
By the way Jay Thanks for the memories.
You beat thank you so much for sharing this memories I love seeing what people traded back in the day
I've driven a Mazda powered by a Wankel Rotary engine. It was supper interesting and sounded like a bunch of electrical/mechanical relays clicking like crazy when floored.
The Pacer is an example of counting chickens before they hatch. I never understood why they’d design a car around an engine that hadn’t been built yet.
Totally agree
The 2 stroke 750 and 850c. SAAB 3 cylinder and the early 2 cylinder 2 stroke in the 92, which was the first 2 stroke used. It was about 600cc, amd all were made for SAAB by DKW in Germany. The twin was the same engine used in the 1930’s DKW cars, by the way! I wanna see these on your channel! I love 2 strokes! Also the 2 stroke Detroit Diesels would be cool! I ADORE these incredible Clark Cycle valve uni-flow engines, and they also made a now rare valveless engine like a gasoline 2 stroke Detroit diesel, all of this common class of 2 strokes are known as the Day cycle 2 strokes. CHEERS! 😋👍🏻
Those were some very interesting cars they definitely reached cult-car status. I did admittedly like the ones with the Ford Taunus V4 better because I don’t favor the stinky 2-stroke exhaust smoke.
I will try to do an engine episode on those. I wanna start doing some foreign car engines I was looking into maybe doing some Bugatti stuff it's hard to find information on one stuff here for some reason I'm finding out that where you're at in the world do you have different access to different options of what's available on the Internet I know it sounds weird, but when I go to Michigan, there's different search results than here, same thing when I go to Florida there's different results there than there is here it's crazy
I kind of wish they could have pulled it off on the AMC Pacer. The engine they wound up using had to be shoehorned in, and it really didn’t work because it was a pain in the ass to work on. Granted, the Pacer was a strange car, but it might have had a better chance to work long-term had they used the rotary engine.
Again, a very interesting segment. The rotary engine has always been intriguing to me.
A friend of mine had a Mazda rotary back in the mid-1970s, and he let me drive it. That thing was a blast- rev city!!! I also remember the distributor being quite strange; all four spark plug cables were on one side of the cap and not evenly spaced.
Mazda made three size rotary engines. Their tag line, the engine that goes hum. That was the 12A 1200 cc. With the RX7 you could get the 13B the cosmos had the 20C, a three chamber engine. In 1995 the RX7 got a turbo charger, both that engine and the 20C were very, very fast. The rotary, much like a two cycle engine needs oil in the combustion chamber, it injected oil from the crankcase. You had to check the oil every day.
I enjoyed this episode very much, Jay. I"m glad you did it so more folks can learn about this rather odd engine.
I've been working on this one for longer than I'd like to admit, I hope it showed there's a couple companies that I miss John Deere was going to put a Wankel engine on their lawnmowers and garden tractors. I found a really cool article. Unfortunately I couldn't get it to be clear so you could read it which was a huge bummer I couldn't find that article anywhere else it was super interesting =)
Happy you dig this episode
Good story on the Rotary, remember reading magazine ads and teasers about rotary engines coming to the Pacer, Vegas, and the 75 Nova and the other X bodied GM cars back in 1973 when I was in the 10th grade, only Mazda was successful , there is a few rotary Mazda pickups and sedans hiding in my area, one may show up a car show occasionally.
The pick-ups and sedans are collectibles now, as are all older Wankel cars.
I'm happy you dig this episode B parks =) I've seen a couple rotary engine cars from time to time I've seen a truck in person, but they are very few and far between
I was a child but i remember these were a big deal.
The Rolls Engine
I remember when Mazda started selling rotary engines here. We always knew when there was one coming by the sound of it.
Jay, this was really a great video. I knew a lot of manufacturers tried rotary engines but I had no idea how many of them there actually were. While it's a cool idea, just the fact that so many manufacturers try it and dropped it has to tell you that the design had inherent issues. Of course technology changes. It is quite possible that the rotary may have a rebirth. I'm sure they have learned enough about the engine by now to make it reliable for long-term usage.
Excellent review, Jay! You covered the Wankel far deeper than I ever knew about. A friend used to autocross her (stock) RX7, and she let me drive it once. The redline was 8,000 rpm, but when I was out on the track and looked at the tach, it was close to 10,000! Nothing bad happened, but it was just sooooooo smooth, there was no way to judge engine speed from the sound, I've never heard of the Rolls Royce design, if you have more info, I'd definitely like to see an engine episode on that!
I'm so happy you dig this episode I wanted to go down the rabbit hole of all the manufacturers cause it seems like nobody does.. I've never driven anything with a rotary engine. I would love to one day I'm just afraid that I would break it but who knows maybe one day definitely going to come back and do the Rolls-Royce on one day one we could find more information on it.
My sister had a Mazda coupe with the rotary and the neighbor had a 74ish Mazda rotary pickup and neither one of those things would start worth a darn on cold mornings, once started they’d rev and smoke for 5 minutes it is rather a comical memory now
Haha thank you so much for sharing that memory
In January 1979 I bought a 1974 Mazda RX4 it had the 13B engine. 110 horsepower 120 lb ft of torque. Fuel consumption wasn't too bad at 18 to 22 mi per gallon but for its size class the fuel consumption was atrocious.
The Wankel rotary was a good idea. But you are correct it had some problems.
The Apex seals were the biggest problem. They served as a type of head gasket on a piston engine. They had to be lubricated which meant a small amount of oil had to be injected into the carburetor (1000:1). So they naturally used oil, and unfortunately that small amount of oil caused a bit of an emissions problem. Lead that was used in the fuel back then was deadly to those seals. It was best to use unleaded fuel. Which had been available since 1971.
The other issue of those had was combustion. The fuel would literally run away from the flame during the powerstroke. A piston engine has a dwell time at top dead center where are the piston stops while the crank rotates. This dwell time allows the flame to burn across the piston before it starts going down. The average rod to stroke ratio on a piston engine is 1.75 to 1. Not so on the rotary. It does not have that dwell time at top dead center. The rod the stroke ratio (if you will) is 1:1 there is no dwell time at top dead center. As such the fuel will literally run away from the flame. Which is what causes the high fuel consumption and emissions. Unfortunately there are no fixes for those problems. Even if the emission regulations were a little looser it wouldn't matter.
I used to love racing that little Mazda and especially against small V8s at the time. It was quite a sight to see that small car pulling away from bigger cars at 115 mph and you're heading to 120. The WTF look was pretty impressive😊.
Thank you so much for taking all of the time to share all of that information greatly appreciate it as well as your experience with owning one. It would be really cool to race that against V8.
Yes, the Rolls Wankel looks very interesting...You should do an episode on it .
I always say that you’re the man who informs us of things we didn’t know that we wanted to know. But we’re glad you told us. I never knew it started out as a supercharger. Seems as if they never did solve the sealing issue. But those engines were powerful for their size though.
It started off as an air compressor =) than super charger
@@What.its.like. air compressor, supercharger, then engine. Seems like a versatile design. I wonder why it’s not commonly used as a compressor. Seems as if it would be less noisy than the typical piston compressor. And the seals would be less of an issue since they won’t be challenged by combustion by-Products.
I would like to have seen GM succeed for GM and AMC both. However, that Rolls version would be great to study.
Excellent as always and I learned a few things.
Laughed out loud at “Hercules”. 😂
Thank you as always ~ Chuck
Hahaha yeah that rolls engine definitely going to come back to it one day =)
Happy you learned something no one else has gone down the manufacture rabbit hole I did miss a few evidently John Deere wanted to do the rotary and I found an advertisement piece with John Deere talking about their rotary design, but I couldn't get it to come out proper like it was all jumbled up and not clear
Missed John Deere and the SCORE series wankel engines. They may have been closer to production than any other US manufacturer. There were models under development up to over 2000HP and at one point was considered as a poweplant for the M1 Abrams along with other combat vehicles.
Thank you so much for sharing that I found a really awesome article on the John Deere rotary engine, but I couldn't get it to come up clear enough to share it in the video and that sucked. I couldn't find it anywhere else.
Thank you so much for sharing all of that information
WYR: All of them.
Engines like this would be surprisingly useful in aviation.
The Corvette rotary, or one of them, was featured on a raised platform away from the passing public in the GM pavilion at Expo '74. I think it had already made the car show rounds a few times by then. The gas pinch of 1973 put a fast end to the rotary, I remember people saying they'll never make that Corvette now.
That's crazy. In all my research I never came across the corvette rotary engine. I'll have to investigate that one.
I've got a model of a Wankel rotary that runs on batteries.
That's awesome single rotor or twin
I had one myself as a kid. Wish I still had it.
@@What.its.like. Twin
I love the NSU Ro80. It still looks good today. In addition to the rotary engine, it had a clutchless manual transmission with a torque converter. Unfortunately the car broke NSU, leading to the Audi/VW takeover.
I'm also a big fan of Citroëns from before the Peugeot takeover. They put a two-rotor Wankel engine in the GS, calling the car the GS Birotor. It didn't sell well and was quickly scrapped.
For engine episodes, I would like to see unconventional engines. Maybe steam engines, turbines, or the fascinating Stirling engine.
Very interesting thank you Jay
Thank you so much for watching happy you dig this episode
I remember the RO 80 - great car.
The Wankel was also used in the COSMO
Mazda Cosmo I would love to cover one one day as well as the RO 80 and the NSU goal is to cover as many cars on this channel if possible we don't do a whole lot of foreign cars but those cars would be really cool to do
Hi Jay! Thanks for the fascinating history of the Wankel engines! Was never too interested in them, but they are pretty cool! GM was also intending to put a 4 rotor rotary into a future Corvette, but when those engines died at GM so did the idea. WYR. . .I kind of wish Kawasaki had put that two rotor one into production! That might have been a pretty good bike! At least Yamaha actually built some! Seems like the rotary would run a lot smoother than a typical bike engine. That Rolls-Royce one is SUPER fascinating! You KNOW theirs would be excellently engineered!
Thank you so much for sharing all that added information and insight. It would've been awesome if the engine would've succeeded I guess it technically did succeed but it kind of succeeded on the level that the engine succeeded there's snow around, but they're not they didn't take over.
On motorcycles Hercules was the first to offer a rotary to the public, and Norton was the only company who actually succeeded in making it work well enough to sell in quantities enough to keep the company going. It actually wasn't theirs; BSA had gotten a license before they went broke and the conglomerate who bought them out also owned Norton, so Norton could use the BSA license.They started with an air-cooled model and progressed to a liquid cooled. They performed well enough but being low-production machines priced them above comparable bikes.
It was Mazda of course who got rotary cars to the public in enough quantity to make them profit, and were it not for material technology not being there while pollution laws were, they would still be selling them like hotcakes. But the one they sell now is a far cry from the glory days of the RX7 which made good horsepower and was fun to drive. Trivia fact: The oil injection pump in the old RX7 was the exact same one used in many Japanese two-stroke motorcycles.
Theoretically the Wankel has no 'redline' on RPM's other than rotor seal breakdown and the rotor losing shape from centrifugal force.The production cars had a redline limit mostly to ensure the rotor seals stayed intact and because the oil pump couldn't keep up beyond that pace; racers figured out that it could be twisted harder but only for short times. Fitting tip seals properly took special tools, which meant few could rebuild a Wankel properly, but factory rebuilt 'short blocks' were relatively cheap and had a warranty so that's how most people went. It's really a great engine being very light for it's power and very smooth running.
WYR: John Finger was the local Mazda dealership owner and he races Wankels in SCCA events and hillclimbs. He was deeply involved with Mazda's engineers and was working on a 3-rotor race engine which never got fully worked out before Mazda pulled out of Wankel factory racing support. I'd like to see the engine he put so many hours into succeed the way it could have. And I'd love an air-cooled Norton rotary but they're collector's items now and well beyond my wallet.
A lot of the companies used rotary engines used on motorcycles, etc. were made by Sachs. Sachs even built chain saws with a rotary where fuel consumption probably didn't increase much over a two stroke, and probably cut down on vibration.
Thanks for all your hard work young fellow.
Thank you so much for recognizing how much work this took this one took a while to put together more time than I'd like to admit..
And I'm always second-guessing, whether or not it's ready
Great episode! Data about Datsun, Honda and other GM projects is new to me. The R-R ou the C111 would be both really good choices for another episode. Thanks!
Thank you so much for watching this episode I'm happy you dig. I wanted to go down the rabbit hole of all the manufacturers because not a lot of people talk about that.
@@What.its.like. There's also the story of the 'new rotary', Liquid Piston, which started as a steam engine by Cooley and had a previous unsuccessful version by Veselovsky. You should have heard of it already, since it's often compared to the Wankel. There's also many interesting engines here: www.douglas-self.com/MUSEUM/POWER/rotaryengines/rotaryeng6.htm
I remember that under certain conditions the RX7 would severely flood out and become difficult to start. I never fully understood why.
General Motors Holden Australia made Rotary cars in the late 1970s , it was called the Road Pacer , it had a Twin Rotor 125 HP engine and 4 speed auto box , based on the Holden GM Australia Kingswood large 4 door sedan , very sort after today ! GM Holden Australia was going to build a 4 rotor 4 litre rotary for 1980 year model but at the last minute failed , emissions stopped it !
Great information
Buddy of mine had an RX4 wagon, '74 I think it was... had a lot of get up and go and ran exceptionally smooth. It was ok for a little car. WYR: I would've love to see the Pacer actually get a rotary engine...
The first time I opened the hood of a new mid-70’s Mazda (it was an RX3), it appeared to me that someone had somewhat randomly started bolting parts up to a beer keg - much like Colonel Hogan and his crew built their Gonculator (Klink vs. the Gonculator; Hogan's Heroes: Season 4, Episode 2).
By then (1973-74), everyone was jumping on the bandwagon, and anyone that didn’t was going to be left behind, and anyone that spoke ill of the new tech was considered a Luddite.
And now here we are 50 years latter, and history has repeated itself with this self-driving car hooey - right down to nerd-boys calling the naysayers “Luddites”.
And now as then, after all the money flushed down the crapper, one company emerges as the standard-bearer. Elon Musk is the new Jujiro Mazda …
For Elon’s sake, I hope he can get these self-driving things working better than Mazda did with that Wankel.
The rolls royce motor could have been epic keep in mind that they are legendary makers of aircraft engines and at that time had real pride in their cars
Totally agree
They were used in snowmobiles too it was used in the arctic cat 303
Awesome information
I for one would love to hear about the Rolls Royce diesel variant. Diesels were always low hp, high torque & rotary motors suffered from low torque at low rpm... +300 hp would be amazing.
The Wankel engine was essentially a two-stroke engine, every rotation produced power. There were no valves, only intake and exhaust ports. Like a two-stroke, rotor seal lubrication had to be supplied by the fuel system. Mazda, using the Nikki 4-barrel carb had an orifice which would drip engine oil into the carb's fuel bowl.. Yes, that was engine oil and not a special oil either pre-mixed with the fuel or injected into the engines. Surprisingly, where emissions were concerned, when most cars had catalytic converters, the Mazda rotary's did not for several years. They used the old, trusted thermal reactor which was introduced on cars(atleast American cars) in 1966. So, they weren't that dirty. The oil in the fuel would have fouled a catalytic converter. They figured out a way that catalytic converters were eventually added.
GM was developing a 3-rotor Wankel engine for the Nova-based Cadillac Seville. Fuel mileage stopped them as this was the time of the fake fuel shortage and prices were climbing. Reliability wasn't an issue because GM put the R&D on their customers. They'd built the cars and address the teething problems as they came up.
The Suzuki RE5 was a fantastic motorcycle! If you looked at quarter mile times, it was slow compared to other conventional bikes @ 14.02(that's with a 75 pound Japanese guy riding it). However, the engine would spin up quickly. Say you are cruising in 2nd gear, just by cranking open the throttle, the rear wheel would lose traction and start spinning.
A pratfall of a Wankel rotary engine is that it would spin-up very quickly and didn't seem to know where to stop. Those rotors are extremely heavy(the rotor of an early Mazda engine weighed so much that even using two hands, an average-joe would struggle to pick one up). They would spin so fast that the inertia would strip the internal gears. Mazda had a buzzer which would go off around redline. Electronic and mechanical engine governors had been around for awhile already. The 1971 Mustang Boss 351 had an electronic governor.
As Mazda has continued to make the rotary engine, why did it fall out of favor? Well, the obvious fuel mileage and reliability issues(which were solved down the road). Emissions? Also solved. Americans generally don't want to shift a transmission and it took Mazda awhile to work that one out and add an automatic transmission option. Subaru had the same problem. Well, the rotary engine just fell out of favor with the buying public.
I had a customer that had one of the later generation RX7's. It only had one turbocharger(a 2nd was the next option up) and I would describe the car as a Miata with a double-bubble hardtop. The first time I drove the car, I came back, got out of the car as fast as I could, and while trembling, I handed the owner back his keys. The only way I could describe that car was evil. I'd driven Ferraris, Porsches and fast American iron, I have no desire to drive an RX7 Turbo again!
Great information thank you so much for taking the time to share that
Wow! That drooped-nose AMC Pacer you showed at 4:40 looks like a Jetson’s-mobile.
Norton also produced a rotary powered motorcycle
The Wankel Engine was a marvelous dead end. The high fuel consumption was the biggest cause for its demise in the U.S. I've always thought that the most interesting vehicles to have Wankel engines were the Mercedes C-111 factory experimental cars. If you are not familiar with those, look them up.
It's an interesting concept though, but wasn't better than what was already here
@@What.its.like. Yes. It was a very interesting design that got a lot of people excited at the time. I was one of the people who got excited about them.
It's so sad it failed at the last minute ! But today it's having a come back like the two stroke engine with direct injection, this fixed most of the problems if not all with both engines ! I'd say Rotary's and Two Stroke engines are back from about 2028 , Formula 1 is going Two Stroke direct injection from 2026 !
around 1974 or 75, a local shopping mall brought in a bunch of rotary Mazdas for a weekend new car sales event. Gas was already a big talking point. I asked a dealer there working the show if they got good mileage being small cars. He looked kind of sad and said no, not very good.
Thank you so much for sharing that memory
one of the factors that made the flathead engine have been abandonned in the favor ot the OHV design was that the heat loss in the thermodynamic process was much higher on the flathead design.
The wankel engine have very large heat transfert surfaces in comparizon of a flathead engine so it is killed in the egg.
we can always dream but it will stay a dream.
I wish someone could have made this engine successful long term. Given that GM seemed to have solved the reliability issues during their development and testing , If GM could have cleaned it up for emissions and made it a commercial success, it could have been a game changer . Mazda seemed to have been able to meet emissions. But they never seemed to have solved the reliably issue.
Very good video thank you
Thank you so much for watching
those Mazda Cosmos were pretty swank for Japanese standards of the time. They were the first cars with power sideview mirrors and in the age of the fixed opera window, the Cosmo had a roll down opera window there in the middle.
I really like the Mazda Cosmo. I think they're really cool looking car.
As cool as rotary engines are they will never beat piston engine efficiency or emissions. There is no way to keep the combustion temperature and flame motion at the edges and corners of the combustion chamber as high as in the center. The geometry of the piston engine is hard to beat.
There is a Citroen GS Birotor and a Hercules motorcycle at the Lane Motor Museum in Nashville. The Deutsches Museum in Munich Germany has a few old sectioned display models of early rotary engines from NSU and Fichtel and Sachs, and their Verkhehrszentrum (Transportation Center) has a NSU Ro 80 and a NSU rotary Spider. All of those museums are awesome to visit if you ever get the chance.
I'll definitely have to check that out. Thank you so much for sharing all that information and insight.
The museum that I really want to go to is Corky Coker collection I would really like to sit down with him and just take his brain. He's a guy in the hobby that I would really love to interview.
George thoroghgood I drink alone . Evinrude built production snowmobiles with the air cooled and did some liquid cooling in an outboard I think that was a 3 rotor
Didn't realize there were so many rotary manufacturers. Would like to see a video on the Volkswagen 5 cylinder.
Awesome I'll add that engine to the list =)
@@What.its.like. Cool!! Looking forward to it!!
a Mazda R 100 was deemed too fast to be driven safely, by an old school chum who put his around a tree and never quite walked right after it, himself.
Yup! I had a 1970 Mazda R100, which I wrote off at 96 mph! Never had a chance to wear the seals, and it was very thirsty.
The R100 was basically a Mazda 1200/1300 coupé, with the only concessions to handling / safety being front disc brakes.
It was fun for the month I drove it. My mate and I were lucky to escape the crash without a scratch or a bruise (and just minor concussion for my mate). The car was unrecognisable apart from its large round rear lights. It had rolled front to rear about six times then side-to-side a few more before coming to rest against a tree. Every piece of glass was broken, including the interior mirror.
A friend bought the wreck and put the engine and gearbox into a Morris Minor (!) to make a racing Q-car. No MM has ever gone so fast!
I worked for a Mazda dealer in the 90’s. My experience was mostly with the RX-7 at that time. They wouldn’t start in the winter and we were towing them in like crazy. If I remember correctly if there was a compression issue due to an apex seal failure we didn’t have the ability to overhaul them and would have to replace the engine. May have had something to do with the tools needed to do the job. Maybe someone else could expand on that fact.
the apex seals are not made out of rubber, they are little steel triangles which easily twist around and ruin the housing, which cannot be machined and has to be replaced with a new one, these "seals" are a real problem for these engines plus oil needs to be injected into the combustion area which is why the E.P.A. hates rotary engines
@@ginoperretta373 Thanks for the info. Also remember some owners had an aftermarket mechanical warranty. They would want us to rebuild the engine due to cost. We would have to fight with them because they didn’t understand it couldn’t be done.
Mazda pick up. With the biggest wankel rotary
Rolls Royce Diesel rotary engine was a cool thing
Totally agree
I would like to learn more about the rolls Royce rotary
Totally going to come back and cover that one just need more Information on it
How come no one ever told me an AMC Pacer pickup is a real thing?
I just found out about it too the other day I didn't know they made them..
One thing for certain they revved to high heaven ! Other than that they weren't very efficient - a bear to work on and not very emission friendly ! Also I'd have to question.the reliability !
Look I'll make this simple , a Mazda 13 B is not 1.3 litres , it has 3 rotors at 650 cc each side of a 3 sided rotor , so one rotor displaces 1950 cc X 2 is 3900 cc ! Don't matter how often it fires ! If you want to say it fires at 1/3 that's like saying a 500 cc two stroke is 1000cc ! Simple it's not a small motor at all that's why it uses so much fuel it's way bigger than 1.3 litres !
^ Can’t see the forest for the trees …
Yikes, as if they could make AMCs uglier
They had so many different different concepts for the pacer. I'm not sure if that was the one that they were proposing.
RR twin rotor diesel would be interesting to visit, please Jay. I dislike rotary engines, but gotta admit, they go like heck these days....😊 Cheers from New Zealand