This is probably the kind of 'cringy' first message rotary communities hate to read. Some noob asking a ridiculous question. Sorry. I'll try to keep it succinct.

1. Would it be possible to modify a street rotary engine so that it passes ANY kind of modern emissions test, even if the changes may come at a cost of mileage or torque/power?
2. If so, would it be possible to do it electronically, without changing the internals?
3. Would it be reversible?
4. Would it negatively affect the engine even if reversed afterwards (maybe some kind of material build up?)?
5. What generation would be the best to do that? I know the Renesis is naturally cleaner but maybe the older architecture is more suited for this.

VW's dieselgate gave me idea. Get a wankel, modify it, go to the testing facility, register it as a 20hp Red face washing machine, get out and only while in private property Wink revert it back to it's normal function.
I'm not a skilled mechanic, so any work would have to be done by a car shop. Ideally it would be something like have 'different mapping' I'd be able to switch between on the spot.
But I don't even know if this is something that can be done. Maybe, like in two-stroke engines, they are just too polluting and you just have to accept you can't use them.

Thanks.

 

i would like to think if Fiat can get a 6.2L supercharged OHV V8 to pass emissions, than it would be possible for a rotary also.

the FD has a worse engine than the Rx8, but it has provisions for a full time air pump, EGR and two converters, if you couple that with a modern EFI system it can do really well.
the Rx8 has a cleaner engine and EFI, but you would probably need to add more air pump and maybe converters too

the hard part is that it would take a lot of time, and you would need to make a lot of emissions dyno runs which would get expensive.

 

Thanks a lot for your answer. Gave me plenty of pointers to look into

 

Well, you can see what they did to the RX8 to get it to pass.
Also, running E85 or E100 would probably be required for a REW to pass anything. It hardly even pass Euro 1 in stock form.

 

For practical purposes I'd say no.

Even to get mildly modified stuff to pass year of manufacture tests in Australia it is generally very crippled tune and catalysts all over the shop or ethanol fuel and same there is minimum CO2 concentration limits too so you can'tjust monster flow with an air pump. Euro 7 is a giant leap. Possibly propane or natural gas might get you close but you may still have to look at something like SRC catalyst/adblue.

 

Sorry to dump a big pail of water on your kindling, but part of the demise of the RX8, and hence the end of the production wankel engine, was it’s inability to pass Euro 5 emissions that was coming in 2013.

Maybe you’re attempting to visit another galaxy trying to meet Euro 7 when we can barely get to the moon and back alive. Even with ethanol fuel there will still be oil injection into the combustion process to deal with.

Further, swapping in the full OE RX8 engine with emissions, CAN system, etc. and having it function completely like OE is not going to be an easy task as compared to a typical aftermarket swap.

Kind of thinking even King Solomon’s wealth can’t overcome the challenge of wankel + Euro7. Mazda is not even close to it that I’m aware of.

maybe also consider the current push to end all ICE vehicle use by the end of the decade. Likely to happen there first imo.

I don’t think we even need to worry about pollution or the environment at this point, because we’re more likely to hit the critical mass of human social self-destruction before that day ever arrives …

which seems like by the end of this decade imo; come Lord Jesus, come.
.

.

 

in its current configuration, but since then we've seen some pretty crazy cars come out like the Lamboghini Urinal....