BTW Jon how are your supercharged rotary boat engines doing?
They should be really great for water skiing. I was thinking
you ought to make your own gear boxes out of cheap Ford A4OD
planetary parts.
Paul Lamar
Hi Paul:
Thanks for asking about the progress with the supercharged engine - the 240Si.
Initial response to the introduction has been really positive, sold a bunch of them on a pre-order
"pilot build" basis. I agree that they should be great for ski boats; most ski boats use huge V-8s
in small, lightweight hulls. The result is that they need extra power just to haul around the
iron, and the engine box in the middle of the cockpit is huge. The 240 would reduce the weight
dramatically and make a far smaller engine box. The difficulty we face is that the ski boat
manufacturers are now using 310hp plus engines almost exclusively, and the "conventional wisdom"
is that they need all the torque they can get to pull up multiple skiers. I don't really buy it,
as the boats tend to use small diameter props that can't absorb all the engine's torque and put it
into the water anyway. Also, at this time, the 240Si is pretty expensive because the blower and
injection equipment ain't cheap! What we really need is an individual with a ski boat that needs
repowering who wants to go rotary -- then we'd have a demo to show the OEM builders!
Our naturally aspirated 175c is going into production in a Seamaster 21' center console this year,
it is a great performing fishing boat, clean transom to fish from (no outboard), great fuel
economy, quiet, fast.... Pics attached! Should be on display at the big Miami boat show in
February.
Regarding our own gearboxes, I have thought about this very often -- we still need fwd, neutral,
reverse in most applications. Building a two-speed box to use in conjunction with a sterndrive or
conventional marine transmission might be really interesting though...
Keep up the good work -- I still read most of the posts here, but I don't feel I have a lot to add
to the discussions most of the time.
Jon Lauter
Rotary Power Marine Corporation
www.rotarypowermarine.com
I can see it in there Jon but you need to hire me to go to Florida
and take some better pictures. I work for rental car and hotel expenses
only :) No travel expenses. I travel for free on UAL.
Let me know where I can find one of these things in Florida and
I will show up around April during Sun & Fun and take some better
pictures for you. Perhaps Bulent can help as he is in the biz
located in South Florida.
What you need is a Mazda production three or four rotor. Would that
not make a wonderful boat engine? Perhaps Ford/Mazda will see fit
to produce a new three or four rotor in light of the 500 HP
dual turbo V12's now becoming popular in Europe. 250 HP car engines
are common now a days.
Have you considered building up three rotor engines from 13B parts, three rotor
shafts and three rotor intermediate housing bought from Mazda Competition?
Similar to what Bruce Turrentine is doing for us. Seems the PR
value alone would far outweigh the cost. The bigger the engine
the more advantageous the excellent power to weight ratio becomes.
Paul Lamar
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