Hi George,

I tried to search for the 5 rotor CW you mentioned and found
nothing. I did find a reference to 5 rotors at Freedom Motors which
appears to have some involvement with Moller. They mention up to 9
rotors but I could find no specifics. Can  you give a hint as to
where to find the CW 5 rotor info?

Thank you,

Dale Davies

They do exist.
If I told you where Dale I would have to kill you :)
Here is a Curtis Wright 5 rotor in a secret location.

Paul Lamar



Hi Paul,

Not interested in the physical location. Just about the engine itself. The
installation looks to have a few military style pieces. The rotor housings
appear a little larger than the Mazda components. Is the part that looks like
a fuel injection pump the oil injection for the apex seals? How about firing
order? With the right sequence, they would almost balance themselves like an
inline 6 is balanced.

I forgot to put my name at the bottom of the wise guy comment I set a couple
of minutes ago. Sorry

Dale Davies

CW Model 5290 for the US military.
It was a large engine with dual turbo chargers.
Stratified charge running on heavy fuel.
2900 HP at 3600 RPM
75 inches long, 40 inches wide and 52 inches high.
It weighed 4000 pounds.

Probably intended to be a tank engine.
Given the weight it could be a gen set.

What you see is a direct fuel injection pump.

The firing order for any rotary is evenly spaced around
360 degrees. In other words every 72 degrees for a five rotor.
It will still require small counterweights to get rid
of a small couple.


Paul Lamar

Dale Davies,   Try searching     www.tripod.com/rotary/index.htm       make sure you have hours to sort thru it.    Somewhere in there is a cross sectional drawing of the Curtis Wright showing how they handled the stationary gears.  I can't locate my file on it but as I remember the stationary gear and bearing is a two  180 degree pieces with a taper on the outside.  After putting it on the E-shaft the side housing drops on over the small end of the taper. Then the rotor is wiggled on like a Mazda and more of the same till you run out of shaft. Check out the Vaz aircraft rotary (Russian) which seems to be a Mazda based design. There is a list of links to other sites all of which are rotary.

       Ther are a few twin engined cars there as well and a twin  tandem engine pull tractor . In order to have enough HP to do something stupid I suppose you could run two three rotors in tandem. When I was designing houseings I did a variant on the 20B wide housing useing an RX8 front stationary gear and center cooling outlets. The plan was  to do a six rotor by stacking two three rotor modules. In order to add a counterweight in the wide houseing would have required malory metal, and the add on section of the E-shaft would have to be made since a 20B part wouldn't work. The up side was that the nose end of the shaft could be as large as the stationary gear bore to couple it to the front module inside the bellhousings.

      You might also have a look at a dissembled Axiro which is very different from the Mazda design as far as rotor cooling is concerned. There are also some varients of the OMC (Evenrude/Johnson) wankel useing charge cooling.  They run the intake charge thru the core of the engine and evaporate fuel (latent heat of evaporation) for cooling. Obviously it has to have chain saw type bearings and lubrication, however it takes some smart air to find it's way thru the engine and back out to go into the intake. ports. This would seriously limit HP due to the charge making a lot of 90 degree turns thru timed orifices and the turbulence inside of the rotor.  Another one to look at is the Rolls Royce truck wankel which is a diesel supercharged with another wankel. This trick has been done with the supercharger being of larger displacement and also with one the same size geared to run faster.

                                                            george grimes