SlipStream said:
Rotaries have their ups and downs, but I'm afraid their most widely agreed "up" is their originality and it is vastly outweighed by its "downs". Otherwise we'd have rotary powered Ferrari's and on the other side of the city, rotary powered Sirions.
although i am a really big rotary fan, i guess your right in the end.
If its so good then why not use it?
I guess the fact that piston engines have been around 50 years or so earlier (plz dont' quote me on that one..) than rotaries makes rotary engines poorer than conventional piston engines, due to the amount of research put on piston engines. Also, the fact that factories back then (40's 50's or so...i don't know =S) used piston engines as the conventional engine for their blueprints for most cars, and that RE technology wasn't quite accessible back then further hindered rotary research..
and with the debate "piston engine producing better power than rotary/vice versa", i would say that rotaries produce power in a different way in comparison with piston engines.
Piston engines are overall much more efficient even though they have at least 150 moving parts or so. This is because Piston engines fully utilise the gases while performing internal combustion. By fully utilising, i mean the gases compress from a reasonly large space to an extremely compact space, this provides more torque. Because of this, pistons have a higher compression ratio, thus producing more overall power with the same fuel, from the torque.
Rotaries produce less power, not because they are just shit, but because they have a lower compression ratio, thus having less torque. Less torque, less power.
Rotaries compensate this by revving higher, to produce a better overall power output. But because of the bad compression ratio, it also means that more fuel is consumed, thus decreasing the efficiency.
Yet, rotaries are better in racing because they are more reliable, even if they're working lifespan is short. This is because rotaries only have 3 main moving parts: the engine rotor, the axle and the gears. This causes the smoothness in the rotary engine.
Pistons have con rods, connecting axles, cam shafts etc etc you name it. This makes a rough ride.
yes they have tried to improve both rotaries and piston engines
and yes there are high revving piston engines and high torque rotary engines, but both come with the same price of fuel.
From all this i draw a conclusion that rotaries don't produce better power than piston does/ vice versa, since one produces more power, but in a rougher way; and the other smoother, but in smaller portions.
even so......FD3S KICKS ALL YO ASS ~!!
