Dorito Power

Rotary engines, the official motor when burning oil is actually a good thing. The rotary engine or Wankel engine is much like chocolate ice cream in the car world, you hate it or you don’t. It is actually interesting concept because unlike other engine configurations, there is no cylinders. Instead they have a rotor which some claim to look like a Dorito spinning.

The inventor of this odd engine was a Felix Wankel. Wankel was born in August 1902 in Lahr, Germany. He came up with the idea at the age of 17. It was only after 2 World Wars when he began working with NSU Mototenwerke in the research department without ever getting a degree or a driver license. He complete his design in 1954 and in 1957 and 1958 the prototypes were tested. In 1961 Mazda had contracted with NSU to produce the engine and install them in their cars. The engine was proven to be quite powerful in the 1960s and soon the engine was used by other car companies. The engine would began to lose its popularity in the 1980s, but Mazda still use the engine in many of their cars, and their famous RX series of cars.

Just like how I mentioned before, The engine has a Dorito looking rotor in the engine block. Towards the top left of the block there is air pushed in by the intake. As the rotor turns it compresses the air as well as the gas then it is ignited by a spark plug creating expansion by the reaction. The emission produce by the motor is then push out by the rotor to the exhaust, causing the cycle to start again. Thus turning the eccentric shaft producing your power. This is not as complicated as regular piston engine. That is because there is less moving parts, meaning it cost less to produce, the block is much smaller, and there is less parts to break. The less and smaller parts also gives it a better weight to power ratio making a car with the engine faster and powerful without taking up too much room and without it becoming too heavy. Thanks to the smooth balance the engine has, gives it high revving capabilities and smooth power delivery. This seems like a perfect engine right? Well the main drawback why it did not take off is emission and maintenance. The rotary engine does not burn all the fuel and the inclusion of the motor oil having to be sprayed all around inside the engine block, making the engine need to burn that as well, causes it to backfire sometimes and give out poor emission and fuel economy. Also since the motor oil needs to be burnt, this means adding oil every once a while. Meaning that it is easy for people to forget and run their engine dry. Plus little compression is common on these motors, meaning that the engine needs to be rebuilt with new apex seals which of course cost money.

Overall I believe the rotary is an awesome engine. It is an engine towards people who want the most power out of their motors. It is a simple design that I feel the good out weights the bad. Maybe more engineering is required to make this engine more fuel efficient. Since Mazda stop producing rotary engines in 2012,which was in the RX-8, maybe it will never happen.

VIDEO:

Source:https://www.carthrottle.com/post/engineering-explained-why-the-rotary-engine-had-to-die/

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Felix-Wankel

https://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/a7103/how-it-works-the-mazda-rotary-engine-with-video/