Aren't Mazdas still using rotary engines to this day? Speaking ot Olds Toronado there was a great photo of Croft Trailers framed on the wall down on Navigation years ago. There was a Toronado.....NO BACK WHEELS, hooked up to trailer and it toured the country this way the trailer held up rest of car I guess, too much physics for me. I used to rent trailers there for swap meets and was always facinated by that photo. Eddie Stakes 713.464.8825 eddiestakes@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx www.planethoustonamx.com ----- Original Message ----- From: LarryS Couple o' things. The wankel rotary isn't a 2 cycle OR a 4 cycle, they are Wankel cycle. (In fairness, I tend to think of it as 2 stroke, but that's not accurate ;-) Mazda used the rotary in a full lineup of cars including the RX-7 and their various boxy japanese sedans. After the various apex seal problems, all the sedans dropped the rotary for the mazda 4 cylinder with the RX-7 being the lone rotary in production at all for a while. 2 stack rotaries are commonplace. Even singlestack rotaries are used, but not in cars -- you're talking all of 75 hp or so. 3 stack are common, racing and road cars, but not domestically. They are usually ordered in from Australia or somewhere. Can't make EPA, you know ;-) 4 stack are, to my knowledge, not used anywhere except experimentally on stationary applications like their "spark assisted diesel" project for electrical generation. Yup... a wankel running diesel fuel... except "spark assisted" -- talk about marketing spin. The 4 stack has a lot of the same kind of crank probs a straight 8 can have. Too much load over too long a shaft, basically. Among the many reasons the rotary didn't take off were those crummy apex seals -- ironically, now that there's so few of them, they've come out with good seals and the problem is gone. Also, they never did get good mileage. Ever. That's why I think of them as a 2 stroke engine -- they chugalug the fuel. The new Mazda Renesis (?) is a production rotary.... 3 or 4 years now? And no, you don't see many of them. Just in case anyone was gonna lose any sleep over a stupid little japanese engine. Oh... and if you run one without a muffler, it makes absolutely the nastiest, loudest, and most-annoying sound I have EVER heard from an engine. Talk about something that would invoke road-rage... that'd be it. L. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: BaadAssGremlins@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:BaadAssGremlins@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Terry Atkins Sent: Thursday, March 10, 2011 8:31 PM To: BaadAssGremlins@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: Re: [BaadAssGremlins] Re: Pacer motor mounts oddities Your exactly right that is why they ended up with the 258 and later v8's. I am sure they were going to be 2 bangers with two of those triangle things in them. They say you can get them with 3 or 4 but they are used mostly for racing because they are so expensive. The Mazda xr7 was the only car I knew of that used them in mass production. While they are an old design I remember when they first were promoted in the 70's they were suppose to be what all cars would have in them in a few short years. They died. I can also remember when the Corvair came out and the VW was in its heyday that a lot of people were saying all cars would be rear engine cars shortly. It died too. I can also remember in 68 when Olds brought out a front wheel drive car that they said it would take over. Well it did but not like the Tornado They had straight engines with a belt going to the transaxel. Not like the sideway engines we have today. Terry ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://list.amc-list.com/pipermail/amc-list-amc-list.com/attachments/20110311/7d033d0e/attachment.htm> _______________________________________________ AMC-list mailing list AMC-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx http://list.amc-list.com/listinfo.cgi/amc-list-amc-list.com