The reason they aren't more widespread is because no one wants to deal with them. You don't think any other person, company, or manufacturer could introduce a rotary engine? They surely could, however rotaries aren't as efficient as rotards think they are. Piston engines have much more R&D, are time tested, and can run circles around rotaries in just about every aspect.

No one knows how to take care of a turbo motor? Hmmmmm. Well, what about all of those diesel trucks out there with 100k plus miles on them? What about all of the turbo Volkswagen's? Porsches? Subaru's? Mitsu's? How many of those cars suffered from chronic, catastrophic engine failure at 50k miles like the FD did?

I'm waiting for a good answer on that one.

GM made a prototype Vette with a rotary in it. Why didn't they release it? Because it would have sucked ***** and no one would have bought it. Can you imagine a Corvette revving up sounding like a lawnmower?

 

Wow I dont know where you came from but I thought we had this resolved, first if all I can all ready see I know more than you, I specified 351 windsor was a piece of trash, not the 351 cleveland. The cleveland was a later model and had improved casting methods a great engine was born. The windsor saw limited use at best and for good reason, ford knew it was garbage. Volkswagens and Porsche's have strong dealership networks, Subies and mitsu's run relatively small turbos and again rotaries are not widespread enough Mazda has a strong dealership network but very few who were certified in rotaries. None of the cars you listed have seq. TwinTurbos, and the people that did know how to work turbos even fewer can work on these, much less know a rotary from a 4 banger. GM built a rotary engine that was far more powerful than a V8, it was a four rotor engine. And they didnt use it because nobody knew how to work on them, it was too expensive to retool the factories, and too retrain the workforce. So GM made the choice every other american automaker would have made, they went the cheapest way possible, and said that it was simply to maintain the corvettes V8 lineage. I personally think that it is amazing that the rotaries have half the R&D and can run with the piston engines, look at the concept with as much R&D as a piston engine, it will run circles around a piston engine. Sorry but the renesis engine is the next generation. Oh and before you bring up all the seq. TT cars, I think I already specified The lack of certified Rotary technitions, Not everyone knows how to work on their car. If you knew nothing about your twin turbo V8 and you didnt make you scheduled 50K check up and your turbos burnt up the motor you'd think V8's suck. now put an end to the damn flaming

 

ha well no one will argue that rotaries produce some strong feelings either way


i think if they were a little bit more widespread and were developed a bit further i would be interested in building one just because they are so different. if there was no big difference in the allowable margains of error between then and piston motors id be all over one. being a poor bastard with not enough time or space to be pulling apart my car all the time kind of eliminates them as an option for me.. my omni breaks itself enough as it is ha.

 

You just blew your point out of the water, good work.

Not having enough technicians doesn't have a damn thing to do with that car's reliability. Every single Mazda dealership trained ALL of their mechanics on that engine, they even went to rotary school for christ's sake. Dealer support has nothing to do with those motors blowing up so early and so frequent. THEY WERE POORLY DESIGNED FROM THE START. End of story.

I saw 351, didn't see Windsor specified. I will at least agree with you on that one.

Small turbos? The sequential setup on FD's and single setup on FC's were also relatively small turbos. What are you comparing to here? None of those other cars had major issues with their motors, hell why didn't all of the sequential VR-4's explode?

The Renesis is not that impressive of a motor. Mazda has had the 13B motor since the early 80's, and they can only improve on it that much? I'm sorry, but that's not impressive to me. Until Mazda throws a naturally aspirated 2 or 3 rotor out there that can put out a streetable, reliable, and tame 350+ horsepower then I don't care too much what they do.

 

You also didnt see that I posted that I am a certified rotary tech, I worked at GM and mazda dealerships under this certification, Mazda didnt train all of their techs in this manner as you would think and that was mazdas mistake. The renesis makes as much power N/A as a TT FD I think that counts for something, as the years go on I think rotaries will become more and more competative. Sorry that doesnt impress you sixty years ago the flat head V8 didnt impress anyone for about five years after its intro, beleive it or not. amazing the similarities huh? next time you make a point you know nothing about be careful, someone may know more than you.

 

And that directly affects a cars reliability if you dont have a mechanic to do your tune up, well your motor goes K-BOOM. Most of the rotaries I've seen blow up were stock motors running too much boost, if you want to boost anything much beyond factory you need to rebuild the entire engine. So a proper boosted setup can be just as efficient as any other boosted piston engine. like I said rotaries are so few and far between that isolated instances spread like wildfire and give a good engine a bad name, I've been working on rotaries since I bought my car like 20+ years ago, I've also been building mainly V8's since before even then, it isnt quite as solid as a piston engine but thats to be expected from a motor with half the R&D, Build it right and anything heck even an omni can go fast

 

12A N/A Rape V8's in reliability

 

God I hate Omnis.... Lol J/K, A buddy of mine had a Chevette with a supercharged 327 in it and later a pinto with a 302, scariest cars I've ever ridden in, both of them were tubbed. I would love to watch a Pinto spank my 7, I would laugh my *** off, but I would be losing in stlye Lol!

 

However techs were trained, correct? Are you telling me that all of the rotary trained techs left their dealerships before any of the FD's it sold had reached 50,000 miles?

So why does a Toyota motor have no problem going 100,000 plus with almost nothing beyond an oil change?

Oh and before you assume I don't know anything, assume that I used to work in engineering for a major supplier to a large portion of auto manufacturers.

 

And who is this guy that joins 15 days ago, then comes on here talking to all of us like we're idiots or something?

 

It doesnt matter when "the guy" joined you idiot you have misunderstood everything I've said to this point, a N/A rotary is as releible as a toyota motor, I'm not telling you all of the techs left you moron, I told you mazda didnt make a mandatory training for rotaries, so it was optional. the guy that just joined 15 days ago, is the original owner of a modified 1981 Mazda Rx-7 and worked at Langs Mazda, and Langs Chevrolet. I've worked on every generation of rx-7, It doesnt matter when I joined, when did you get your car I bet you dont even have a rx-7, and I dont like boosted motors of any kind why do you think I'm N/A? Since Mazda didnt make rotary tech training mandatory nobody wanted to do it, you dont get paid any extra to be a rotary tech, as a matter of fact you can work at mazda your entire life and never touch a rotary, I know several guys that did just that. And how many Mechanics do you think have any experience in turbos? not as many as you would like to think. For only being here 15 days Im being alot more polite than you, you cant argue all you do is flame....

 

Why does a posi-track work? how does it work? nobody ******* knows (lol) It just does,
And I do assume you dont know anything, because you have totally misunderstood me like three times now, and for being "experienced" you have yet to make a valid comparison, If you would like to compare N/A engines Rotaries are ten times as relaible because of lack of moving parts, If you boost anything, V8 or rotary it becomes unstable. sorry I think im about done with you Im tired of making my points three times in a row before you get it.
And if you are going to compare two engines compare two similiar engines, a Banks Turbo is a TT for a LS1 guess what? They are prone to exploding..... Its not the rotary when you talk about TT, a TT naturally is NOT a reliable motor, IT IS a performace application, I am simply saying when it comes down to it after only half the R&D the rotary is pretty damn impressive when it can stand toe to toe with an overengineered engine, which is what they are becoming overengineered. Even the Rx-8 is subject to this with its "fly by wire" throttle design..... its amazing how much you argue over something that is entirely opinion, you wont change my opinion I've got 20+ years backing my opinion, you had better have thought of something I havent.

 

I don't have to be nice. But saying that a Mazda dealership didn't have mechanics that know rotaries is dumb. Maybe they didn't in the lapse between the FD and RX-8, but they certainly did when those cars were on the sales lots and they also do now.

 

Nice Joe Dirt reference, but you missed the point. Yes, rotaries have 3 moving parts which is alot less than your standard piston motor. However, the fact that there are less parts that can fail does not make the motor more reliable. What's the expected life of an N/A rotary? About 100,000. How long will they go with a rebuild? Maybe 50 or so. Carbon buildup, a terribly designed fuel injection system, and whatever else you can think of is the death of those motors. Want to do a little reliability test? I wouldn't hop in an RX-7 and drive across country. I would however, hop in a Mustang, Corolla, Camry, Taurus, or whatever else you can think of and go for a trip.

I don't quite get what you mean by "overengineered". If you are talking about this time period of modular engines that we are in, I don't get what the big deal is. Modular motors respond so well to simple bolt-on upgrades that is sometimes almost unecessary to tear a motor down and beef up the internals. Not the case with a rotary.

And do I own an RX-7? Yeah, have since I was old enough to drive so I think I'm well qualified to speak on the matter. As a matter of fact, here is the RX-7 that I know nothing about:

 

Wow, first a few misconceptions:

Jesus Padilla has a 20B with a weber carb, no turbos all motor.

A Rotary can last as long as most any engines if maintained properly. A turbo car of any sorts will not always last. Look at exactly how many turbo'd cars have engine work/headwork/head gaskets or any of the like.

Not an excuse for turbo RX7s, but didn't all RX-7's have a break in period after purchased? If it was neglected, you'd expect stupid **** to happen. Still hardly not an excuse.

And the FC stock turbo is pretty big yo.

Anyways, keep arguing, these threads are here once a week .

 

Also, I think that the Rotary engine hasn't been engineered to the same extent that a piston has. Look at the RX-8 doing simular times in NA form compared to the 3rd generation 7. I think overtime it'll get better, but until there is tons of **** to know.

Look at engine porting, used to suck some time ago, now its getting more and more efficient. I think the same goes for the Rotary engine. Not an excuse but my personal beleif.

PS: 100k for an NA engine? Wow, most that I've seen in person were rocking 175-200k on the engine and doing just fine .

 

thats a badass looking fc.. i havent decided if i want the one i build to look shitty for the sleeper effect or if im going to keep it nice.. if its nice its going to look a whole lot like your car aside from black wheels


its tempting to paint my omni and put some bling wheels on it and a small rooftop spoiler from a golf or something.. but its so much more fun to kick peoples asses with peices of clearcoat falling off all the way down the track haha.. it just doesnt sem natural for an omni to be clean

 

the two fast terds

 

wtf is up with 100,000 miles on a N/A?! are you kidding me N/A's goo much farther!! Turbos last to 100k if taken care of.

 

with fire.

 

All of them do? Could you even say the majority of them do? Mine blew up at 105k, broken apex seal.

 

Wow either you are running too much boost for the factory seals, or you bought it from someone who ran the crap out of it, or you yourself ran the crap out of it. BTW and I will take a pic of my odometer if I have to but I have a J-port N/A at 140,000, and I was the second owner on a red 1979 Rx-7 and it had 215,000 when I bought it all stock DD. I sold the rolling chassis and kept the motor, which had almost 265,000 on it, ran like a champ every day. N/A motors no matter what they are can last forever. oh and the motor from the '79 still ran the day I pulled it. I just needed a new project motor, which will be turbocharged.

And I never said it was a smart move on mazdas part, but I am telling you a fact that rotary techs were and probably still are SCARCE I already told you this, stupid or not it is a FACT and I hate it when idiots like you argue a point which is a FACT.

If you have never seen a rotary after 105K then you are not as knowledgable as you think. and even the turbo fc's and fd's apex seals are not good much beyond the factory boost setting, and maybe I'm wrong but I havent ever heard otherwise on that.

 

My motor was N/A, just had a ridiculous amount of carbon buildup. Kind of a design flaw wouldn't ya say? The fact that those motors are prone to building up so much carbon, which in turn WILL break loose and sieze the motor?

Rotaries aren't exactly difficult to work on. It's probably more difficult to pull apart and rebuild a hair dryer than it is a rotary motor. What you're stating isn't a fact, because you have no proof or evidence to back it up. I will bet money right now that if I had an RX-8 or any other rotary vehicle, I could bring it to a large Mazda dealership and they would have at least one mechanic who would be able to work on it.



Never said I hadn't seen one.

 

No offence 2ndGEN, but if you had carbon lock, IMHO that would trend toward improper rotary service-improper oil viscosity or cooling issues resulting in oil breakdown. In fact, keeping a carbon build up down requires occasional hard driving. Did you purchase yours from a lady driver? Low revs and low speeds (i.e. insufficient cooling) are not easy on any engine. Wonder if your previous owner simply dogged it? My old 87 GXL had 147k until it went end over end (driving while you are awake is much easier), and that motor was taken out and put into another 7 that I saw still on the road before I moved a year later. In fact my brother's 87tII has 139K and still going strong. I'm sorry you had a bad experience with yours.

 

Well, low revs and low speeds are just fine on a piston engine. Carbon buildup is a result of fuel burn as well as oil burn (rotaries burn oil you know). There is really nothing you can do to prevent it beyond driving the car hard. I purchased it from some guy in his late 30's that was the original owner, it had 50,000 on it at that point. I then drove the living **** out of it for the next few years, still knocked some carbon loose and siezed it.