Paul,

 I ran across this article today. (I had to Google "Chery Automobiles" to
 find out what they're talking about.)  Chery is the largest privately
 owned
 auto maker in China.
 In a few years, this could turn out to be a good source for small, cheap
 800cc, 1-rotor engines.  "C-Spec" rotary engines coming soon!

 http://www.chinacartimes.com/2010/10/18/chery-working-on-wankel-engines-for-

 new-energy-vehicles/comment-page-1/

 Mark

 That looks like an AIXRO engine. Several car companies have been
 experimenting along those lines.

snips...

 Paul Lamar

 Hi Paul,

 Yes, that's our Aixro karting engine. I would be curious to know where
 that
 picture and info comes from.
 It still has the karting engine mounts, so if this is as far as they have
 come with their R&D, it will take a little while until they have an
 engine
 ready. But who knows? If they can learn from others' designs when it
 comes
 to cars, they will eventually do the same when it comes to engines
 (and then
 figure out that our engines are not suitable for automotive
 applications:-)
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chery_QQ

 Poul at AIXRO


snips....................

Hi  Paul,  That is a amazing little engine, is it not? I wonder how the
cooling would be with two or three rotors stacked? @ 17kg for 50 hp even
two rotors would give 100 hp for 34kg!!! makes a recip engine look bad.
            The more I see on the Wankel engine the more impressed I
am!  I feel a bit bad that I have had this engine right under my nose
for 40 years and not known about it!

Regards  John Burey.

AIXRO is working on a two rotor version. 120 HP as I recall
at 11,000 RPM. Cooling at continuous high power is still
a problem. There are several solutions to that. Oil cooled
rotors are the obvious solution as that is what Mazda uses.
Another solution is a water cooled eccentric shaft invented
by Wankel Gmbh several years ago.

There are several ways to build a hollow e-shaft. The easiest
is to machine it in two pieces and tig weld it together
before final heat treat and grinding.

The least expensive, in high production, is hydro forming
where steel tubing is placed in a female mold and very high
pressure fluid is introduced to expand the tubing to the
shape of the mold.  This is now widely used to make
large chassis parts.

I was thinking of doing it with explosives. One way
is to introduce compressed air at 150 psi or so from
and ordinary shop compressor and use an EFI fuel injector
and spark plug on one end just like an ICE piston engine.
Patent pending :)
Various fuels containing oxygen such as NOS and nitro methane
(AA fuel dragster fuel) would enhance this process as would pure
oxygen to perhaps understate the method. In any event
it would be a lot of fun to try in a deep hole in one's
back yard :)

Paul Lamar