Anyone ever hear of a natural gas rotary?
 

With the prices of gas i am sort of curious on how this would work out. There are already plenty of examples of piston cars that are usually pretty gutless even with their similiar gasoline counterparts that run on natural gas like a 4 door civic. With converting to natural gas im not sure if there is much if any real power loss, only real problem is having a tank in the vehicle since it is too dangerous to have under like an average gas tank. Im just curious if anyone has really ever heard of a rotary running on natural gas and what was needed to be modified. Just sort of toying with ideas and with prices going up again and i wouldn't mind paying $5 to fill my tank.

dunno about natural gas, but we have plenty of cars running on LPG here in australia.. apparently better performance from LPG rotaries too - to do with the LPG mixing with air much better then unleaded fuel does. stuie of rx performance has setup this car(as far as i know) - MOTARY which runs straight LPG on a 13B Extend Port:
http://members.ozemail.com.au/~stura...ics/motgas.JPG

for more details you can pm 'stuie' on ausrotary forums :) www.ausrotary.com or do a search on LPG you will find a lot of rotaries running on it :)

just a note, in australia we call LPG gas- because it is a gas, and liquid petrol like unleaded we just call petrol :P

the thing that is better about natural gas for me atleast is we have about 25 stations in the area that carry it at only 73 cents a gallon and that is state regulated so it'll be that price anywhere. Also i can have a fuel station set up in my home and get a $4000 tax deductable from installing that, but the station costs about $4000 as well. I have not been on ausrotary yet to ask anyone but will a simliar setup for lpg work with cng? and the main issue i have been looking at is the tank needs to be on the interior of the vehicle is it the same with the lpg's? and does the tank take up a lot of space?

I really want to see this thread go somewhere. It has lots of potential. I'm sure there's some old 13b in Mazda's archive that worked a direct propane injection.

My questions are efficiency and availability. Will you be able to get LPG at every stop you'd have to make and how far would a $10 fill get you in terms of distance?

i know that $5 in natural gas with the civic we have it'll get you 250 miles, lpg i've seen at quite a few stations as well but most of them are sort of redneck stations outside of town.

To solve the longevity problem, there are lots fleet cars running on both CNG and gasoline. I researched some links off google for more info

http://www.lovson.com/cng-lpg-auto-kit-4-wheelers.html

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/Propa...QQcmdZViewItem

http://www.eere.energy.gov/afdc/afv/gas_vehicles.html

http://www.empa.ch/plugin/template/empa/*/40097/---/l=1
this one is a very good study on CNG and knock

very interesting, very interesting

Well theres a conversion kit in India that is around $1000 (CDN)
http://www.lovson.com/cng-lpg-auto-kit-4-wheelers.html

Anyone want to take shot maybe with a N/A model first?

don't see a kit to fit the 7, but I guess you could modify it slightly to work.

My hideous old project car ran great on propane:

http://www.geocities.com/rx-2/propane.html

Propane + Turbo + Rotary works great due to 110 octane and no flooding issues.

That old conversion used a simple propane carburetor (that mixes gaseous propane that already expanded in a heat exchanger).

It was a Holly replacement kit for big rig trucks that fit right only the Racing Beat 13B Holly manifold.

I got rid of that car when California got rid of the exemption for propane from smog checks, and none of the stations could figure out how to smog check the thing.

Atkins has a single rotor that runs on propane. . .

If i'm not mistaken mazda developed a renesis to run on gasoline & hydrogen. IIRC. Propane or natural gas would be interesting. Just need to find a carb that will accommodate it.

The problem with this is that LPG costs almost as much as gasoline. Natural gas is cheaper and similar to LPG in almost every way... slightly less btu energy, and harder to get, but still expensive. About 70-80% the cost of gas typically.

That said, I had a propane truck that I *LOVED*.. Ran SO much better on LPG than gasoline... less power, but didn't stink and everytime I changed the oil (at 8000 miles) it was almost as clean as the day I put it in...

In australia, LPG is about a quarter the price of unleaded petrol :-) Perhaps why it has been tried a bit more here in rotaries..