RodMoyes

Fear of the unkown...

The Mazda Rotory is still the most powerfull motor of it's size in the world (When measuring HP per Litre). And yes, I know displacement is measured differently on a rotary before you correct me J

Never really heard anyone say it was a gas hog... Not fuel efficient? It may not be frugal, but it ain't no gas slurping 5.7 V8 now is it?

Rod.

NismoPick

Preach! Preach!

FubarI33t

There's an old car near me. I wish they would sell it. It was one of the first car's to use that engine. Damn I wish they would sell it. Can be hard to find part's for those motor's though. bout the only downside about owning one.

jfairladyz

We weren't talking about gaskets guys. See where as a piston engine has piston rings, a rotory has apex seals at the tip of each rotor. These are notoriously for failing under high pressures. It's the wankels weak point. They can be upgraded with wider ones but then you really sacrifice streetability. Stronger ones tend to wear out the rotor housing faster. As far as the gas guzzling goes, yeah for a 1.3 liter motor, I'd say they eat a lot of gas Overall they're not that bad. One things for sure, they were/are an engineering marvel to have the kind of HP/liter that they do. Even in NA form. Oh sure the RX-8 isn't as fast as they claimed it would be, but that's still a good deal of power out of such a cute little motor. And they also require the step up to above-pump gas octane levels much lower in the horsepower level than you would need to with a reciprocating engine. But still for 1.3 liters they can put out a good deal of power on pump gas. The over heat fairly easily with power upgrades considering how uncrowded their engine compartments are. But hey if you're only looking for 300-350HP then that little motor will give you far supperior weight distribution compared to anything else on the market. Any higher than that though and you're not filling up at Texaco anymore And no they're not complicated at all. In fact they're much simpler in design, function and servicability than any other engine I've ever worked on. The only real world down side to the rotory is that they only put it in the RX series.

lww

Little trivia question: Anyone know what the RX stands for and when it was first introduced in a production Mazda?

I wouldn't say I'm the Architect, but I would say I'm the Architect's janitor. You must have missed my earlier post about the Internet...

And the OC-192 is at work where I made that last post. I only have 6Mb DSL at home...

Properly built and maintained the Rotary is an extremely reliable motor. The problem is, although it's the same, it's maintenance is a little more finnicky than a piston engine. You can run low on oil or be late on changing it in a piston engine with a low risk of failure. In a rotary, if you don't keep the oil full and fresh, it'll score the apex seals ruining it's performance.

The first few rotaries were commercial failures because they didn't have the materials technology necessary to make the apex seals strong enough to last and smooth enough to seal properly.

jfairladyz

Actually the first Mazda with the rotory was the R-100. That's in the US anyways. The first Mazda Rotory EVER in a production car was the Cosmo. And the RX stands for Rotory Export Hey, I'm a big fan of that motor. It was my second love

turbot5

sad to see fanatics in action

Rotary combustion engines are less fuel-efficient than conventional reciprocating engines, but they produce higher power output for a given displacement volume. In other words, the same size (displacement) engine produces more power but at the cost of worse fuel economy (and higher emissions)----- By mazda. Peace