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.
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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.
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
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