Someone on these forums said that Rotaries are incapable of hydrolocking. I know our engines are 27.5 different kinds of weird. But I'm not sure if I believe that. Can someone confirm or deny whether or not a rotary engine can hydrolock for me?

 

I will not say it is impossible. I will say it is improbable. You would need a large volume of liquid to create lock. In piston engines even a small volume can create lock, but this is not so with a rotary. For instance, you can inject a significant amount of oil or atf into the chambers and continue to crank with no issues.

The reason for this is that the seals in the rotary are spring loaded, and if too much pressure is generated they will generally depress and allow some extra pressure to pass by into the next chamber. This is the same reason why rotaries do not make a whole lot of compression as compared to piston engines (90-120psi versus 150-220psi).

IF you have a custom intake and run through a good size water puddle and suck in a small volume of water, you'll just flood the engine and have to jump through hoops to get it restarted. IF you suck in a large volume of water, such as driving your car into a 3 foot flooded ditch with the accelerator to the floor, you may very well break something due to hydrolock.

 

^^^ basically. . . you would have to try

 

Definitely one of the more interesting threads, good question.

 

Thanks, guys.

This definitely is useful, especially considering there isn't much in the way of intakes made for our cars.

 

And for what it's worth, posts #13-14 of the following inspired this thread:
https://www.rx7club.com/2nd-generation-specific-1986-1992-17/custom-air-box-649226/

 

its cool you asked cause i was just about to ask the same thing...specially since i live down here in the chocolate city...knowing that is very important.

 

I've been in a turbo car with a fenderwell located air filter. When it went through large puddles on the highway he jsut kinda reved it up and it poured steam out of the exhaust. No big deal.