Promising looking new rotary design.

I stumbled upon this today. It seems to address some of the known issues with the Wankel design and looks pretty impressive to me..

Cool!

Or the E word: Economy.

Really interesting video. The power to weight ratio of that little prototype is impressive.

Really neat stuff.

Rotary engine drones have been flying high altitude and long range for many years.

Back in my government engineering days, I was involved in some testing of a military drone powered by the Norton rotary engine. Kind of exciting, since I was still road racing a Norton at the time.

Ken

I’m surprised (and a tad disappointed) that there was never an ex US Govt rotary powered LCR race bike Ken !

Couldn’t sleep so followed some threads on this excellent website, found this thread and, even though a few years have passed, I had to respond.
The rotary in this thread is just a conventional Wankel engine that has been turned inside out which is nothing new and is a very long way from becoming anything useful. Maybe I am wrong and it will take / has taken over the world but why didn’t that happen 50 years ago? At BSA/Norton the rotary development seemed to last forever and their use in drones was the perfect place for them. Although very successful for a couple of years in British Superbike racing the problem was that the FIM applied different rules to them than they applied to 4 and 2-stroke reciprocating engines owing to a poor understanding of how they worked.
The engine used in the drones Ken tested was probably the single rotor water cooled 45hp unit installed as pusher and puller? Good engine and would be excellent in a single cylinder class racer. At 294cc it would destroy any 500 4-stroke racer. The rotary engined bikes would have made perfect endurance racers as we did many endurance tests on the drone and light aircraft engines involving up to 250 hours continuous running, much of which was at full throttle.

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Would a turbine smooth race bike really excite anyone ? I cannot imagine why anyone would want to race and electric motorcycle, or even a four cylinder motorcycle. The fun in racing a Commando-based race bike lies in working around the engine. It gives a sense of achievement - I love the feel of it. A lot of things are based upon presumption - like the one that says 'to race, you need good reflexes'. It is bullshit - if you rely on reflexes - adrenalin changes your behaviour, and you are likely to crash. We all need to stay well ahead of the game. Often you can see guys begin to crash a very long way before it happens.
To me WizNorton is horrific - the speed differentials are far too high. When I race, I like things to happen slowly, even when the speeds are high. If you have a moment as you brake for a corner, you usually get time dilation. However some things can still happen fast enough to get you by the throat.

acotrel said:

Would a turbine smooth race bike really excite anyone ? I cannot imagine why anyone would want to race and electric motorcycle, or even a four cylinder motorcycle.

Click to expand...

I suspect that one of the attractions of the 4 cylinder bikes lies in the high probability of them actually finishing the event