Aside from their appearance, what’s the difference between a high-performance sports car and a regular passenger vehicle? If you look under their hoods, you’ll see that they have different engines. Regular passenger vehicles typically have traditional piston engines, while powerful sports cars usually have rotary engines.
Also known as a Wankel engine, a rotary engine is something you’ll typically only see in high-performance cars. While it was once considered the most efficient engine on the market, it was eventually replaced by piston engines.
A rotary engine is a type of internal combustion engine that powers a vehicle by going through the same combustion cycle as a piston engine. However, unlike piston engines, rotary engines have a dedicated space for each event in the combustion cycle.
Just like piston engines, rotary engines need air and fuel to power a vehicle. When you turn on a rotary-powered vehicle, its engine goes through a four-step combustion cycle that transforms air and fuel into energy.
To set off the combustion cycle, the rotor in the engine passes by the intake port and moves inside the housing, causing the chamber to expand as it rotates. This draws the air-fuel mixture into the chamber, which is then carried over to the next stage of the cycle once the rotor end passes the intake port.
As the rotor continues spinning, the chamber once again decreases in size, compressing the air-fuel mixture in preparation for the next stage.
In this stage, spark plugs ignite the compressed air-fuel mixture, which forces the rotor to expand, similar to the power stroke that occurs in a piston engine.
The exhaust gas continues to expand in the chamber until the rotor finally passes the exhaust port.
Finally, the burned gas exits the engine through the exhaust port, and the rotor continues to spin until it passes through the intake port where the combustion cycle begins once again.
Of course, a rotary engine wouldn’t be able to go through a single combustion cycle without its unique parts, such as the following:
At the heart of the rotary engine is a triangle-shaped rotor with concave sides that create a separate space inside the housing whenever the rotor spins.
As the rotor spins on the gears attached to a shaft in the center, each side is always in contact with the housing, creating three individual combustion pockets.
If you look at a rotary engine, you’ll notice it has an oval-shaped casing around the rotor and shaft. This is called the engine’s housing, which has spark plugs and fuel injectors inserted directly through its wall.
The housing’s oval shape maximizes the rotor’s movement so that every time it spins, its edges are constantly touching the housing’s inner wall.
In the middle, you’ll notice an output shaft that spins in the center along with the rotor. When the compression and combustion generate energy, this shaft is responsible for transferring it to the drivetrain. This is what powers your wheels and moves your vehicle.
Rotary engines obviously aren’t perfect, but they do come with their fair share of advantages. Consider some of these examples:
The rotary engine of the Mazda RX-7 only took up around one cubic foot, which is pretty small if you think about how much power it can produce. This means also means rotary engines were also much lighter. This gave the design a high power-to-weight ratio, which allows cars to accelerate faster. In fact, rotary engines are a popular choice for performance cars, especially because you can reach higher engine speeds with them compared to most piston engines.
Have you ever noticed how many parts constantly move in a piston engine? Well, a rotary engine has a lot less parts, making it significantly lighter than a conventional piston engine.
Did you know that vehicles with rotary engines provide a smoother driving experience than those with piston engines? This is because rotary engines don’t have valves or pistons, greatly reducing engine vibration. This also means you can rev your rotary engine without worrying about the valvetrain losing control.
Despite their advantages, rotary engines still aren’t as common as piston engines, and it’s all because of these drawbacks:
Rotary engines might sound more fuel-efficient, but it’s hardly the case in practice. Because they have long and narrow combustion chambers, rotary engines typically consume more fuel than piston engines.
Their apex seals also tend to wear faster, causing fuel to leak from inside the engine and leading to even more fuel consumption.
Rotary engines can be very difficult to own because it’s also common for their spark plugs to foul out, which would then require you to perform a special process to try and get it running again.
Another big red flag when it comes to rotary engines is their high emission levels. Rotary engines consume more fuel, so they naturally release more greenhouse gases. Making rotary engines viable for everyday vehicles was difficult since they needed to pass US emissions standards. Unburned gas also tends to leak from their worn seals, increasing their hydrocarbon emissions even further.
Unlike traditional combustion engines that can segregate its oil from combustion, a Wankel engine combines engine oil into the fuel so that oil can reach some engine parts. This process means Wankel engines can’t control the lubrication of their rotors accurately and precisely, so they need to use more oil just so that parts don’t wear out excessively. Hence, Wankel engines had high oil consumption, which resulted in related problems such as carbon formation and fouled spark plugs.
While rotary engines are great for performance vehicles, they aren’t all that suited for everyday driving. They have poor compression at lower revs, making them inefficient for driving around town.
When it comes to popular cars with rotary engines, the Mazda RX-7 often tops the list. As one of Mazda’s fastest cars, the RX-7 is a popular sports car that offers a lighter and smoother driving experience than most piston-powered cars.
However, the Mazda RX-7 isn’t the only notable rotary-powered car out there. Consider some of these examples:
Have you noticed what these cars all have in common aside from their rotary engines? They were all manufactured years ago, with the most recent one produced in 2010. Most of their manufacturers have stopped producing them too, so you might be out of luck if you want to buy one of these models.
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