Paul and Dave,

as mentioned earlier I have been working as development engineer for
Wankel Supertec for two years. Target was the development of a spark
ignited Wankel rotary engine, running on Diesel or Kerosene. I have
actually built and re-built approx. 20 Singles and one Twin rotor engine
(see attachment) in those days. The actual compression ratio was in the
order of 14:1 including a cut-out in the rotor flanks. Without those
cut-outs the theoretical max. compression ratio would actually have been
16:1!

The engine ran on Diesel without the support of the spark plugs at
nearly all loads and speeds except tick-over! But admittedly it ran a
lot smoother with the ignition being switched on. We even managed to get
it firing up on diesel right from a cold start without the addition of
petrol as we used to do at MWE!

WankelSuperTec relocated all of their development work to Cottbus
University last year - and to Korea, see: http://www.lmlkorea.com/

The prices of Diesel and unleaded petrol in Germany are very much the
same these days as the government has increased the tax on Diesel quite
considerably this year. So the major advantage of the Diesel Rotary will
be in areas where there won't be any more petrol available...

Regards

Martin

Martin,
I'm working on a single rotor development for my aircraft using 12A housings
with early 13B rotor housing and a RX8 rotor  with apex seals cut to 3mm.

I don't have the problem of balancing the rocking couple, so the balance of
the single rotor should be close to static balance.

Advice to me with balancing is to consider full rotor oil weight as well as
all seals except the apex seal and add this to the rotor weight. Not to
include the apex seal and springs as their carried by the  rotor housing.

Can you comment on this in regard to balancing the single rotor, I would
like to get it right the first time, if at all possible, as the single has
the big torque reversals, so is not as smooth as the  2 rotor.
George (down under)