Nissan was the second automaker to license the Wankel engine, after Mazda. Nissan president Kawamata signed the agreement at the NSU head office in Neckarsulm, West Germany in October 1970. GM signed a similar agreement a month later.

if im not mistaken the patent mazda has is for the wankle desighn if im corect so any car company could make a rotory engine but not the wankle desighn like they could make a twin 4 rotor engine how much power would that have or they could make a quad 4 rotor sorta like the w-8 motors in the big D9's and things

or they could just make this type of motor i cant 'member what its called but its a piston motor but the conrods on to of the pistons are conected at the ends and there is 2 of there making 4 pistons and were the bearing on the botem of the conrod is there is this thing that moves if you know wat i mean

The Scotch Yoke?

How many of you would like to see a new Nissan rotary powered rwd B120-Z Sunny?

Does anyone remember the photos of the four-rotor 1974 Corvette and other rotary-powered cars promised "to arrive soon"? Too bad that never happened.

When the NSU patents expire, I'm sure that Mazda will still have many newer patents of their own. Will any auto manufacturer want to use a rotary that's not as good as the Mazda rotary?

The Mazda Roadpacer...

Basically a Holden Kingswood with a 13B in it and every electrical gizmo you could think of.

*LINK HERE*

It is a bit of a dog seeing as it weighed so much... There weren't many made. It was the result of a technology swap between holden and mazda from what I remember. Holden gave mazda soem Kingswood shells and mazda gave Holden something else. Can't remember what it was...

Oh yeah the actual point I was trying to make was that they couldn't make anything worse than this!

I was surprised to see this Holden-Mazda. I reckon that didn't become a classic. But the 13B went on to fame.

By the way, Chevrolet also used the name Kingswood, but it was for full-size GM estate wagons. The Holden here looks like a mid-size vehicle with a 1974 Chevrolet full-size (Caprice) grill and a Mazda 13B!

I think I remember what Mazda gave Holden for there Body's , It was rust Prob's !!!!

amshaw

ARE YOU SERIOUS!!! a kingswood rota...lol...would've never thought...wouldnt go very well i wouldnt think...they were pretty big and heavy...prob go better with the 202 straight 6 in it...but hey im for all things wierd and stupid

I would like to see a Datsun made rotary engine. It would legitimize the rotary fans with the Datsun brand.The posibilities are endless, rotors with more than 3 sides,multiple rotors,in line, or rows side by side, 2 excentric shafts moving a single crankshaft,etc. I think pistons and rotors do not exclude each other, one can like both types of engines, there should be no conflict.It is just 2 differnt kinds of engines. Datsun made (or Nissan now a days) rotary engines would be cool.
Jaime

This is the only info I can find online about these rotary prototypes. Reportedly some S110 rotaries were also produced.

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Not to mention Suzuki's effort into Rotaries in the late 70's.

Introducing the Suzuki RE-5.



Suzuki RE-5 Website

Didn't sell well or last long. Apparently they were heavy, very thirsty, liked to backfire and had poor handling. Ever been to a Science museum and tried to pick up the suitcase with a spinning disc in it?

theres one of those in the motor museum outside of adelaide (birdwood i think)

Does anyone have anymore photos like this, of the Datsun rotor?

1972 Tokyo motor show

Early Prototype Rotary 1200[url=

[/url][Like" target="_blank">http://fastfoursvip.com/articles_article.aspx?view=241]Quote:

[/url][Like all other auto makers] Nissan was heavily into [rotary engine] development ... Nissan had unveiled its progress at the 1972 Tokyo motor show with the little 1200 coupe receiving a 1000cc twin rotor.

OK, but obviously a 1.0-liter rotor wouldn't go as fast as 1.2 liter A12 engine, would it?Quote:

Using peripheral ports, two plugs per rotor and a four-barrel carby its 120hp raised the top speed of the Datsun 1200 to 175km/h or 40 more than the original 1200cc four-cylinder. Nissan was setting up production facilities with the (announced) intention of producing 3000 rotary vehicles per month with either five-speed manual or three-speed auto.

[url= http://fastfoursvip.com/articles_article.aspx?view=241]FastFour's History of the Rotary, Part 2[/url]

Quote: It's no secret that i'm not about to sing the praises of rotor motors anytime soon, but the cold fact of the matter is that as long as the seals hold up, the 1000cc rotary piston engine should be far more than a match for a stock 1200 engine, from a performance perspective.

Therein lay one of the problems. At this time [early 70's] seal life was one of the early development problems, along with fuel consumption, which has never been fully addressed & our beloved little Datsuns were sold on the basis of their legendary reliability & exceptional fuel economy.

Datsun chose to remain with something that they knew well, & that they knew they could depend on. The rotary showed much promise, but needed a big spend to overcome the early difficulties & even then, the most realistic outcome is that in exchange for all this development money, all they needed was an engine that was as good as the engine that they already had. Lets face it, the recip engine had an eighty year head start on the rotor & that kind of development lead isn't reeled back in in a couple of years & for a few crummy million dollars

Datsun chose to stick with what they knew & what they could trust. The future of the company might just depend on this decision.
Please note that as someone has already noted, the development of the rotor motor cost Mazda so much that it placed them in serious financial difficulty for a while & to ensure that they didnt lose sales & go broke overnight, most, or all, of their mainstream passenger models were also available with a reciprocating piston engined co-model. They dared not risk everything, on something completely new, radical, &, at least in the early days, unproven. no matter how good it might have been.

I still believe that Datsun did the right thing when we continue to remember that the small cars at least, were famed for their reliability, economy & ease of maintainance, & this was just about the standard of the industry. These were atributes that the early 70's rotor motors could not yet deliver, & they still are having difficulty making the grade in the outright economy stakes thirty five years later.

As an owner of rotors, N/A and turbo 4's, and V8's, I agree with everything you say Dodgeman except for this....

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The problem with rotary fuel economy came directly from the near impossibility to tune a carby to suit its entire rev range. Sequential fuel injection , as well as improved engine designs such as the 6 port and the new renesis, has fixed that. Yes, they use a lot of fuel but when you consider how much a V8 making the same power uses, they are actually quite economical.

Example my old 1600....about 350hp atw in street tune vs my mates Holden injected 5 litre....about 160kw atw. I could drive to Sydney and back on a small Datsun tank, whereas it took him nearly 2 big Commodore tanks. And the 13B was cheaper to build and maintain as well. I can't find anything else that will give you that sort of bang for your buck.

Yes, the 13B used a lot more fuel than, say, my twin weber A15, but the power outputs aren't exactly comparable either.

But you are right, that Datsun made the right choice, business-wise. To have a Datsun come out of the factory as one of the smoothest and fastest cars on the planet would be a dream come true, but it is an unrealistic dream.

Well, I am most pleased that we see it the same way on at least some things.

I had always believed, rightly or wrongly, that the rotor had great difficulty in igniting the leaner mixtures that economy driving required, & that this was the reason for the twin plugs & the richer mixtures.
This, in my view, was the reason for the fuel consumption problems as a non firing leaner charge just gave rough running, high unburned hydrocarbon emissions & reduced power.
Richening up the mixture meant that the charge fired resulting in smoother running & full power was then available,... but at a cost.
I was most interested to read that your 13B used a LOT more fuel than your twin Webered A15, which in itself is hardly a combination designed to inspire thrift, but at the same time, as you say, the rotor developed a fair bit more go, so I agree that this would not be a fair comparison.

EFI? absolutely right. It has been a godsend for the rorary, but the same can be said of the recip & both engine designs have made great strides foward in smoothness & economy of operation at the same time & for the same reasons. Right mixture at the right time,... right?

You are probably correct in comparing some rotaries with V8's in terms of economy & power output, & in all fairness, we should always be trying to compare engines with as close to equal power & torque figures as possible & to hell with the displacement comparisons.
I still believe that in small engines of near equal power, the recips still hold the upper hand in outright fuel economy. while I readily agree that the gap between the two has significantly narrowed.

The service life of the big yankee V8 is legendary in some circles due to its high torque & therefore, lower operating speeds [& pressures], but I must admit ignorance of the modern rotaries service life expectation when compared to a similarly powered eight. I 'think' that the rotors life would be significantly less, but I'm sure that you will correct me if i'm wrong.

Thanks for the debate[?], I'm enjoying it.

P.S. It would be interesting to speculate in the proposition that the involvement of several of the major car makers in rotor development at the same time may have been enough to kill it off.
Each car maker would be spending similar sums of money to develop the same solutions as the others, but the market would absorb only so many of these cars, so the return for investment & development dollar would be significantly less per car maker.
By reducing the competition down to a virtual monopoly, Mazda was able to reap the maximum possible return on their investment from buyers of rotary powered cars. This doesn't mean that they were making a proffit, just that the losses in the early years were less than they might have been in other circumstances.
What do you think?

Fuel economy was a problem. The problem was solved in 1976 models. But by then the public had formed their opinions.

The rotary saved Mazda. Without it, they may well have been forced into a merger with another company (this was a fear before the rotary was launched). The aforementioned financial problems came from ... as usual, poor management. Yes, the rotary gave Mazda their edge over competition. They were not just "yet another" car company - they had something unique, exotic and exciting. Zoom zoom.

Emissions problems were solved in 1972: Mazda's rotary was the first engine to meet the 1975 USA emissions standards. As Dodgeman points out correctly, the combustion chamber shape gave some problems, but those emission problems were solved. The standard Wankel license required each party to share emissions technology. It wasn't long before somebody came up with the solution.

The Wankel-type rotary engine is still in production, having been developed into a very reliable engine. I believe the most important reasons most makers stopped developing it were:
1. General financial crisis of 1973. During such times, most companies cut back in their R & D.
2. The piston engine worked fine (though still not as smooth as a rotary). The wankel only really offers two advantages: low weight and smoothness. For nearly all applications, bean counters can choose a piston engine instead.

Yes, a 110 hp rotary used more fuel than a 68 hp piston engine ... doh! This was Mazda's big managerial mistake. They put the rotary in everything - sedans, 1/4 ton trucks, vans, economy cars. In 1974 over 1/2 their production used a rotary. Kinda like having a V8 associated with every car model -- including the economy model lines. At the time, some at Mazda felt that was a mistake ... they should have had performance models and economy models. Instead, Mazda got the reputation of not being an economy company, at the very time such a reputation was needed (during the fuel crisis).

Dodgeman, about the market pressures it sounds logical. I'm pretty sure that is one of prime argument GM's board used at the time, and that fuel economy and emissions was just the public scapegoat. Although GM did seem to be genuinely baffled by emission control problems in general for all engine types. At least GM were constantly and publicly whining about the anti-pollution laws (while the Japanese manufacturers forged ahead, creating solutions to the problem).

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While there are engines that are much more robust then a rotor (A-series being the obvious one, and probably this yank V8 that I know little about), it is definately not the bottom of the barrell. I'll once again use my 13B as an example. I put a second-hand engine of unknown km's in it and a TO4, with about 350hp atw, in a very aggressive state of tune. You would consider most standard engines to be very unstable at more than double their intended power output. This engine lasted more than 3 years of daily driving and constant racetrack and street thrashing, regularly seeing 10,000 rpm. The only reason it eventually went was because I needed an excuse to build a race engine. 13,000+ rpm in a burnout comp did the trick. Even then all it did was drop a seal, and I still managed to take out my class in the 1/8th mile drags in the afternoon and drive the car home.

As far as a standard one goes....with proper servicing you can expect around 200,000 - 300,000 out of the 80's/90's ones, which isn't the best, but certainly is nothing to complain about. As far as the Renesis goes, we'll just have to wait and see.

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The reason for the second set of plugs is purely emissions. A rotor runs exactly the same with the trailing plug leads removed. Although i think that it will foul up more easily.

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Yes, it made huge improvements in all types of engines, but none needed it as much as the rotor. As I said a rotor's mixtures vary so much throughout the rev range that its impossible to get a decent tune out of carby. You can tune for smoothness, power economy, midrange.....but you can only choose one. With staged EFI (which very few piston engines use, because its just not necessary), different sized injectors can be used at different RPM's and boost pressure, instead of just the one jet size for everything.


And I think your P.S comment is spot on. Mazda can easily keep up with world demand for rotary powered vehicles, and they still even need to keep making 4's and 6's to stay afloat. If this small demand were to be split among all manufacturers, the gain from making rotors would be so small that the rotary engine may very well have died. God forbid. Although that would have been a godsend for all the V8's that I have left behind