Hey you guys know I am teasing about that last part right? Just checking because it sure got mighty quiet all the sudden

 

if only the big guys did it, a lot of stuff wouldnt get done... and anyway...i bet you were thinking of being a big guy yourself after a while...

 

Nope, I just want cool toys to play with And enough extra income to pay for some shop help. Argh... back to the lathe

 

haha...workin your fingers to the bone for the ebayers, huh?

 

I want to see some more of the pics of those housings

 

I'll take a few more today and send them to one of you guys to post them, i'll take some of both the cermet A and Cermet B as well as the cermet A end housings and the thermal barrier rotors....

Didn't any of you see our booth at Sevenstock???? We even gave away a set of ceramic apex seals and a set of rotor housings!!! ($4000 value)

 

I think the plates would be a good thing if they were at a more “public friendly” price; they priced them out of the range of most people that are not looking for 1/10ths.

But if they were more reasonably priced, and a solution for a damaged plate was available, I don’t think it would take long for the major portion of the “rotary crowd” and even everyday people would understand the advantages of being to shave ~50-60 Lb from an already small and light engine.

Looks like RB quotes the plates as being 10.5 and 13 Lb for intermediate and rear plate

http://www.racingbeat.com/FRmazda3.htm

“As an example of the significant weight savings: a stock, intermediate housing on a 1993 13B turbo engine weighs 25.9 pounds, while the Racing Beat aluminum replacement weighs just 10.5 pounds, nearly a 60 percent weight savings. The stock rear housing on this same engine weighs 25.8 pounds, while the Racing Beat aluminum replacement weighs just 13 pounds, again a savings of nearly 50 percent.”

If a REW shortblock weighs in at roughly 190 Lb, then it could possibly weigh in right around 150 for an aluminum plate shortblock…damn that would be nice.

How many piston engines can claim that kind of power to weight ratio??

If you can come up with a good solution for the front plate (currently no solution from what I hear because of the bolts (use inserts!)) and even incorporate a replaceable modular system for things like the dowel pin areas that brake with something with a little more tensile strength than cast iron.

I think with the proper conditions they would be very popular feasible and tempting for any one looking at the facts.

 

I agree. Aluminum side plates with a protective wear coating would be a major mover if the price was affordible. You could make some mods like building up a little more material around the bolt and dowel areas as well as make the areas around the ports more suitable for major porting without hitting water jackets
You could also get creative and make a version with side exhaust ports.

To me billet side housings would be the ultimate but the extra machining would drive the cost up. On cast you could do some abrasivie flow machining on all the passages to help get rid of all the casting ridges that leaves.

 

While we're at it, go ahead and make a new 15bt that weighs 130 lbs.

- Steiner

 

has anyone here looked at Moller's engines???? They use a similar coating to that of JHB Engineering and make an all aluminium rotary engine in a similar size to mazda that has no oil pan... very light!!!

 

yay! flying cars! i wasnt aware that they made their own engines...for some reason i thought that they just used mazda 13Bs. makes sense tho. i would totally trade my 7 for a M100 anyday.

pat

 

ps considering the application, i have kind of a gut feeling that there is no way anyone is gonna get much info on them, but i'll poke around anyway.

http://www.moller.com/
http://www.freedom-motors.com/

 

The Rotapower's rotor housing (trochoid) is aluminum. Is the trochoid's interior surface coated?

Answer : Yes, the production version of the engine is plasma spray coated with a chromium carbide. We have also looked at new types of coatings, including an aluminum oxide “ceramic” type finish.


What type of seal material do you use?

Answer: Apex seals use a tool steel.

 

These are just some graphics and comparisons I picked up a long time ago, since the issue of friction of the seals came up. If you could get the numbers down significantly in the higher RPMs, there is a lot of tied up power to be extracted in that area.

I have always wondered what it would do to take a material like a ceramic and use it for the combustion chamber of such a thermally inefficient shape. I know the percentage numbers were posted, but what do the real world dyno/HP and fuel consumption numbers look like? These numbers that are given are dependant on a myriad of certain variables like rpm and load, ect. to accentuate results Correct?

How much in reality is to gained by using a less thermally conductive material in a combustion chamber that is so wide and flat? Because heat lost is as we know the biggest proportional loss in the energy transfer. Just wondering as those numbers seem fairly bold.

 

i would like to see hp numbers too.

anyway, i emailed freedom motors (moller) and they replied today, but unfortunately the guy that could answer my questions is apparently off somewhere and will not be back till early december.

pat

ps do you have one of those diagrams for a piston engine, too?

also, while friction loss is important, the main shortcoming of the rotary is in thermodynamic efficiency, which in this case is not due to friction but to heat produced as the hot exhaust gasses move the rotor, since the inner surface area of that path is much larger than that of a cylinder. at least that is how i understand it, feel free to correct me if i am wrong.

 

Sounds very interesting to have cermet coated side housings, just like RB had (i think they are no longer in production) If the price could be about 2/3 of RB i think you vill sell some... Have you any hard data of a fully coated 13B say N/A how much more hp it has? Thanks in advance: / Lars in Sweden.

 

http://www.jhbperformance.com/products/rotorhousing.php

 

All of our R&D efforts and testing have been done using engine dyno's not chassis dyno's. The figures that i posted were based on a NA 13B and represent an average of the results obtained through our testing.

In actual vehicles with the full ceramic/cermet package we have see gains upto 15% in hp, some have claimed higher but we have not validated these claims yet. The gains are realized specifically through a reduction in the co-efficient of friction and increased thermal efficiency.

As the load on all the seals increases with RPM (and load), the gains from having less friction also increase proportionally.

When using a cermet/ceramic engine package you will notice that your engine will sound quite different (much in the way the 787B sounds), it will rev faster, use less fuel, generate less heat (lower oil and coolant temps) and consequently make more power.

One simple test we ran about 2 -1/2 years ago was in a street ported 1st gen 13B 6 port motor with intake and headers, no emissions or air pump. we ran this engine with the stock parts and psoted a best time of 16.2. With the full ceramic/cermet package (coated on the exact same parts) we dropped the best time to 15.3.... we did not put this car on a chassis dyno.

 

Are your prices for 2 housings, or is this for single housings?
Also there is little said of the difference in the cermet A and B other than application, can you elaborate fully on the differences, and the benefits of the A over the B please?

Do you have any property charts showing the thermodynamic conduction coefficients, coefficients of friction, hardness, and abrasion resistance?

 

I always get core charges confused. The prices on the web page for the reman housings of a 13bTT are $396.50 and has a $200.00 core charge. Does that mean if I supply my own housings that this service would cost only 196.50 each? What about pricing for 20b housings?

 

In one of EvilAviator and my long discussions with Rick Engman we talked at length about the aluminum end and intermediate housing issue. He mentioned that they used to get them from Mazda Japan. The problem they had as mentioned above was the front housing breaking because of the tight bolt circle..... but thats not really the issue.. I mean it is a bit part of it.. but the REAL problem... they (Mazda) were using a casting duplicate of the Iron housings. This introduced a flaw in the design. If you look at a front housing at the steel that holds that bolt circle you will see the large passages (I dont have one in front of me and its 7Am and the kids are asleep or Id go to the garage and bring one in).. these large openings weaken the housing in a uneven manner. It is supported nicely around the bottom.. but it has the single vertical web for support.
Under higher rpm and load (700+NA HP) max 8500RPM 3 and 4 rotor.. the deflection induced by eccentric flex would cause it to fatigue and crack/fail.

Soo.. All that said.. My thoughts.. a couple things to make sure of..
1. Make SURE you look long and hard at the design around thet front bolt pattern. Maybe instead of having the 2 large rectangular openings for the oil system you could re-engineer it with multiple holes drilled there instead.. leaving a large amount of material. Or something else I cant think of after working 14+ hours LOL..
2. Provide for better front bearing oiling. The oil running from the rear through the dowels and then 90 degrees from the TII/FD oil spot.. and down to another 90 then into the bearing area.. just isnt efficient. GT and Prod engine builders, as well as many of the higher end racing classes run a fitting from the rear up with a 90 that feeds directly into the port that leads to the front bearing. Thus you eliminate any oiling issues that may arise.

Those are the only two issues I am aware of.. other than leaving off all the emissions passages in the intermediate housings depending on the year.. and leaving areas behind/above/below the intake ports thicker... you dont need as much cooling there anyhow.

The only OTHER issue... what vintage housings to make?
74/75 4-port? (IE 74-85 13B/12A)
84/85 6-port?
86-92 6-port?
86-92 TII?
93+ FD?
Renesis??

You need to look hard at the market.. and who is spending the cash.
For the Production racers... you may very well be able to run the 6-port housings in aluminum... would need to look it up.
For GT racers.. they use the 4-port stuff.
For Drag Racers.... 4-port or FD for the most part I would think.. 4-port being older school high RPM.. and FD for the Turbo crowd. Unless they are trying to make a FC turbo keep up with the better starting port sizes as well as intakes etc.

What about the RE from Japan? I dont know what the bolt pattern is on that engine for the intake side.. it is possible it too is different.

The point being.. as I would LOVE to have aluminum ones for my EP car.. looking at economics.. you need to make housings that you can make it worth the trouble. And in doing that.. what market will lunch motors the most and need new higher dollar housings... plus what market will be around in 10 years after parts start drying up.

Best bet? If you have the flow to make it fly.. Do the 4-port, 6-port and FD. Then you are golden.. everyone has the engine housings to make silliness. If it is worth the time.. make renesis ones in a year or three when the 8s start becoming more hackable.

OK going to take the kids to school.. LOL

 

I am all too familiar with core charges Basically what would be the case here is that you would pay them $596.50 for each housing. When they got your housings they would pay you back $200 for each good housing. So in a best case scenario you would pay $396.50 for each housing. But if your housings were warped or had major oxidation (that is aluminums version of rust) you would be out the full $596.50 each if both housings were bad.

 

I got to play with the gun again. I made some radical changes to the process because as everybody reading noticed I was burning up electrodes. The argon was working great but it just takes too much of it for it to be practical. Or at least not nearly as practical as I would like it to be.
While taking a shower I thought up a way to shield the electrode with a low volume of argon and propel the spray with compressed air. This worked pretty flawlessly on the first run I had to pinch myself once I figured out that it was going to keep spraying and I could actually tweak the settings.

Now since we have found out that the resurfacing has been accomplished this has changed things up a bit. I still am going to proceed the same way but the specifics on the gun won't be covered. The single wire arc spray may turn out to be the best thing about this entire endeavor. The side housings are still going to be the first tested products and we will cover them in detail like I've done. I will even take pics of the surface grinding.
Once the side plates show some success I will get to the housings.
But the big picture now is definately the spray method. The uses for it goes well beyond the rotaries and may determine how $oon I can start on other rotary projects.
Wish me luck on the test results guys.

 

awesome!! Good to see you've overcome another obstacle. I'm pretty sure everyone reading this thread had faith that you would though. Keep up the good work, it'll pay out eventually. Good luck with the findings, I'm anxiously awaiting the results of this first iron.

- Steiner

 

SCalliwag i have been reading through your post and you appear to be a very smart guy. I look forward to reading more posts from you.