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
A single planetary set can provide forward, reverse and neutral with
two stopping clutches (brakes?) like the old Model T tranny.
Vance
I agree with Vance.
I think the center 2.85 six pinion planetary set and associated parts
are what you need Jon. I'll know more when I get my Slauson catalog
being shipped to me in a few days. I'll work up a Rhino design
for you. I think I can do it with two bands and a one way clutch.
I stopped in at their facility here in San Pedro but they moved
to Gardena. Went to the Gardena office but they have no parts or
catalogs there so they are shipping to me from the San Bernidino
warehouse. Mike Price, the boss at Slauson, knew Lou & Chris Ross.
He used to sell parts to them until Lou cut a deal directly
with Ford at a lower price than Mike could buy them for. I'll
bet the Ford legal department did not know where those
parts were going :)
Paul Lamar
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