dear Paul Lamar,

I am mystified ..... with all the stated advantages, why has the
rotary/Wankel, turbo compound engine not superseded the piston
engine?  It would have been ideal for say the Chevy Volt.  Better
than so called Atkinson cycle engines .......

I know both Curtiss Wright and GM put lots of research dollars into
the concept and gave it up.  I don't know why.

Do you?


So please sign me up for the newsletter ..... perhaps I will gain some insight.

Thanks,
Steve Dorr
Orlando, FL

GM did not have the culture for it. They arrogantly thought they could
do it better while Toyo Kogyo merely perfected something NSU already
had working.

Toyo Kogyo (Mazda) was a young company with out a lot of history so
they were looking for something to put them on the map. Apparently
the Japanese people value perseverance highly and have that never
give up attitude. I also think the TK management was well founded in
physics so they better understood the advantages. They also seem to take
a longer view when it comes to business risk.

CW was never serious about going into production. They wanted to
get a contract from somebody to do it for them. I think they were
manipulating the stock to make money on the side.

Me too. It will take some R&D so car companies won't do it
until somebody does it first.

Pratt and Whitney is working on rotary TC here in socal at the
Rocketdyne subsidiary. Even to the extent of filing
one or more patents. Probably for UAV use.

I gave a presentation on the piston TC subject to a collection
of chief Formula 1 engineers. I offered a 20% improvement
in BSFC while all of the other papers presented talked
about a 2 to 3% improvement. It was well received and
the FIA Representative  said they would change the rules to
encourage it soon. Formula 1 teams had been spending up
to 800 million US a year. Much of it on engine development.

The current vice president of the FIA is an old race car wing
customer of mine dating back to the late 1960's.

http://www.rotaryeng.net/Oxford-640-4802.wmv


Paul Lamar