Adams-Farwell Car....WOW!!

[Marauderjack]

This thing is amazing!!:eek:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0XbqHUAI-0

[Curless]

That is bad azz! The technical genius it took to design and build things like this at the turn of the century is just amazing to me.

[lji372]

Now that my friends was engineering!!

Awesome video, thank you:bows:

[SC Cheesehead]

Outstanding, thanks for posting up.

[Black Dynamite]

I love brass era cars and that thing is all kinds of rad, thanks for posting! I remember joking with my dad when I was a kid about wanting a rotary engined car because I liked the whining sound on start-up that all the old war movies used to portray. I never knew one actually existed.

[Shaijack]

Very nice find.

[Joe Walsh]

Very cool engine!

Why does he keep calling it a rotary engine?...it's not a Wankel...it is a radial engine.

BTW: Don't reach into, or drop a wrench into that engine compartment!!...:eek:

[Marauderjack]

Here ya go Joe!!

Answer:

A rotary airplane engine works differently from a radial aircraft motor. The rotary motor engine has the propeller fixed to the engine and the whole assembly spins which helps reduce overheating......

These were in use long before Mazda marketed the "Rotary" Wankel in a car!!:beer:

[Black Dynamite]

Here ya go Joe!!

Answer:

A rotary airplane engine works differently from a radial aircraft motor. The rotary motor engine has the propeller fixed to the engine and the whole assembly spins which helps reduce overheating......

These were in use long before Mazda came up with the Wankel!!:beer:

To illustrate:

http://youtu.be/-UBAukXPD-0

[whitey]

Joe said it perfect....dont reach into that thing!

[LOWBUCKMM]

Joe said it perfect....dont reach into that thing!

I think I cold be fast enough to grab a tool in the engine bay. NOT!! That thing has death written all over it. Awesome car I would love to see it live.

[guspech750]

Wow! What an amazing piece of engineering.

Thanks for posting.


Sent from The White House on taxpayers dimes.

DTR + 4.10's + Eaton swap = Wreeeeeeeeeeeeeeedom

[MrBluGruv]

Here ya go Joe!!

Answer:

A rotary airplane engine works differently from a radial aircraft motor. The rotary motor engine has the propeller fixed to the engine and the whole assembly spins which helps reduce overheating......

These were in use long before Mazda came up with the Wankel!!:beer:

Spot on up until the last sentence.

Mazda didn't create the Wankel rotary engine, Felix Wankel did, and he designed it LOOONG before Mazda put their first one into the Cosmo. Also, Mazda was not even close to being the only one to use it in their cars; the best you could credit them with is being the ones that most avidly pursued making the Wankel engine a viable sports car engine.

[Marauderjack]

I didn't say Mazda created the Wankel........I knew it was Felix's baby.......Mazda simply put it in a car and called it a "Rotary"!!:rolleyes:

I had one of the damn things in an RX-1..........made some very strange noises to include BOOMING backfires!!:eek:

Fixed it for ya!!

[MrBluGruv]

I didn't say Mazda created the Wankel........I knew it was Felix's baby.......Mazda simply put it in a car and called it a "Rotary"!!:rolleyes:

I had one of the damn things in an RX-1..........made some very strange noises to include BOOMING backfires!!:eek:

Fixed it for ya!!


Hahaha, very nice.

I've seen a number of RX owners that had de-catted their exhaust brag about keeping a flame going out the tail pipe. Inherent excessive fuel consumption + coasting at higher rpm + no catalyst = a heck of a show behind the car. :P

[Joe Walsh]

I think that excessive fuel consumption was the ultimate death of the Wankel/Mazda rotary engine.
It is a terrible engine design in regards to thermodynamic efficiency.
My brother-in-law is a Mazda fan and he has owned several RX-7s as well sweet silver RX-8.
He would complain about only getting 16-18 mpg in his lightweight RX-8, while I would get better gas mileage in my 4,400lb modified Marauder.
He took it back to the Mazda dealer for multiple "Re-tunes" and Mazda "service updates" for improved gas mileage....all of which netted him "0" mpg improvement.
Finally he tired of it and traded it in on a 2.0L turbo Audi that gets almost double the mpg and is just as quick.

[SC Cheesehead]

Very cool engine!

Why does he keep calling it a rotary engine?...it's not a Wankel...it is a radial engine.

BTW: Don't reach into, or drop a wrench into that engine compartment!!...:eek:


You got me curious about that one, Joe, so I went Googling:

"A rotary engine is essentially a standard Otto cycle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_cycle) engine, but instead of having a fixed cylinder block (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cylinder_block) with rotating crankshaft (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crankshaft) as with a conventional radial engine (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radial_engine), the crankshaft remains stationary and the entire cylinder block rotates around it. In the most common form, the crankshaft was fixed solidly to the airframe, and the propeller (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propeller) was simply bolted onto the front of the crankcase (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crankcase).

Three key factors contributed to the rotary engines success at the time:[2] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotary_engine#cite_note-2)

Smooth running: Rotaries delivered power very smoothly because (relative to the engine mounting point) there are no reciprocating parts, and the relatively large rotating mass of the cylinders acted as a flywheel (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flywheel).
Weight advantage: many conventional engines had to have heavy flywheels added to smooth out power impulses and reduce vibration. Rotary engines gained a substantial power-to-weight ratio (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power-to-weight_ratio) advantage by having no need for an added flywheel.
Improved cooling: when the engine was running the rotating cylinder block created its own fast-moving cooling airflow (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerodynamics), even with the aircraft at rest.
Most rotary engines were arranged with the cylinders pointing outwards from a single crankshaft, in the same general form as a radial, but there were also rotary boxer engines (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boxer_engine)[3] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotary_engine#cite_note-Barry-3) and even one-cylinder (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-cylinder_engine) rotaries.
Like radial engines, rotaries were generally built with an odd number of cylinders (usually either 7 or 9), so that a consistent every-other-piston firing order could be maintained, to provide smooth running. Rotary engines with an even number of cylinders were mostly of the "two row" type.

Distinction between "Rotary" and "Radial" engines

Rotary and radial engines (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radial_engine) look strikingly similar when they are not running and can easily be confused, since both have cylinders arranged radially around a central crankshaft. Unlike the rotary engine, however, radial engines use a conventional rotating crankshaft in a fixed engine block."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotary_engine

[MrBluGruv]

I think that excessive fuel consumption was the ultimate death of the Wankel/Mazda rotary engine.
It is a terrible engine design in regards to thermodynamic efficiency.
My brother-in-law is a Mazda fan and he has owned several RX-7s as well sweet silver RX-8.
He would complain about only getting 16-18 mpg in his lightweight RX-8, while I would get better gas mileage in my 4,400lb modified Marauder.
He took it back to the Mazda dealer for multiple "Re-tunes" and Mazda "service updates" for improved gas mileage....all of which netted him "0" mpg improvement.
Finally he tired of it and traded it in on a 2.0L turbo Audi that gets almost double the mpg and is just as quick.

The fuel consumption is one thing, but enthusiasts usually find a way to deal with terrible gas mileage. What probably turned more people off was that oil consumption was a natural, intrinsic part of its operating process.

By all counts, the most recent engine "Renesis" engine from Mazda (The 13B Multi-Side-Port motor) increased compression dramatically and tidied up fuel mileage problems to some extent.

If an equivalent to the 13B-MSP was available in the days of the first generation RX-7s (SA22/FB3S), instead of those carbureted 12A engines, those early RX-7s would've dominated the sports car market. The real key to a Wankel rotary is revving high. If you can make good torque to 10K rpms, then you gear the **** out of it (Seriously, the very last RX-8s had a factory rear gear ratio of like 4.777:1), you can end up with a pretty nimble car, once it gets rolling especially, if it's in a middle-light-weight or lighter body.