New Engine Design

[art.robinson]

It's an interesting point about the lubrication. 

I remember an article a long time ago (maybe 20years) about an
experiment, conducted in Hong Kong, using taxis with ceramic plated
cylinder bores and no oil lubrication. I guess it didn't work too well
as I never heard anymore, but the use of ceramic in this design maybe
relevant (minimal lubrication needed).

My wife still has her '88 RX7 with over 200 kms on it and on its second
engine. Yes, it's a dirty little engine that is really smooth and goes
like stink. It uses a staggering amount of gas. You can almost see the
gas gauge needle move!

Art in TO

-----Original Message-----
From: gpzlist-bounces at micapeak.com [mailto:gpzlist-bounces at micapeak.com]
On Behalf Of Jeffrey Walker
Sent: 28 March 2009 21:19
To: gpzlist at micapeak.com
Subject: RE: New Engine Design

It's interesting, but I wonder how it is lubricated.  Those two 'lobes'
that
move back and forth as the ball turns each have to seal along a fairly
long
dimension on the inside, in addition to the outer surface of the ball.
It
was the seals on the wankle engine that created the largest design
problem,
and initially wore prematurely.  The cure for that was hardening and
treating the seals and chamber with a chrome alloy.  But lubrication of
the
seals was still a problem.  The RX-7 had an oil injection pump that
metered
oil into the incoming fuel/air mixture.  This was one of the reasons why
they had a hard time passing CA emissions.  They had to add a some
serious
catalytic converters (pre-cat, cat, and cat back) to it, on mine the
precat
had an air injection pump and got hot as hell.  Like I said, lubrication
was
key.  Most owners added Marvel Mystery Oil to the gas.  Typically the
chrome
would start to flake off the rotor housing around the exhaust port....
which
would then cause wear on the apex seals.  

Now that being said, the motor should run smooth as hell.  All the mass
is
being displaced equally and opposite from side to side along the axis of
rotation, not in and out from the axis.  The only real vibration would
be
from the ignition pulse. 

Pretty cool.

Jeff