Test your auto-engine knowledge
#16
The thing is they don't like the type of use a street car gets put through. They never could figure out how to keep the apex seals together on street cars(think of it as the piston rings on a normal engine). The engines use a lot of oil(by design), so that is another reason they fail, people don't check the oil. The apex seals can also fail from excessive carbon buildup, this is caused by sedate driving and not revving the **** out of it. There are a number of other ways to break them as well, including a clogged cat converter.
#17
Lexus Champion
Last edited by Sulu; 04-15-16 at 07:22 PM.
#18
Lexus Fanatic
Thread Starter
Rotary engines are great in race cars, they don't really work in road cars. You can rev the **** out of them all day long and they don't break on a race track. Mazda won the 24 Hours of LeMans in a 4 rotor prototype car. That car made 900hp naturally aspirated out of 2.6 liters of displacement. They then banned rotary engines the next year.
The thing is they don't like the type of use a street car gets put through. They never could figure out how to keep the apex seals together on street cars(think of it as the piston rings on a normal engine). The engines use a lot of oil(by design), so that is another reason they fail, people don't check the oil. The apex seals can also fail from excessive carbon buildup, this is caused by sedate driving and not revving the **** out of it. There are a number of other ways to break them as well, including a clogged cat converter.
Last edited by mmarshall; 04-16-16 at 05:30 AM.
#19
Lexus Fanatic
Thread Starter
There is, in fact, such a thing as a rotary piston engine, but because of its large frontal area, it was not used in automobiles (that I know of). It featured a odd number of cylinders arranged in a circle around the central crankshaft but the strange thing was that the crankshaft remained stationary and the whole crankcase and the cylinders spun around it.
#20
Rotary engines also get poor gas mileage, mainly due to the fact that the rotors, as they spin, have more spark-plug-firings per rotation than you find in typical four-stroke piston engines. Lousy gas mileage will work against you in racing, as you obviously can't time on the track if you're constantly in the pits refueling.
They burn oil because the small lubricating film of oil on the apex tip-seals constantly burns off and gets replaced as the seals whirl around during each rotation and are exposed for a split-second as the spark plugs light off in the combustion chambers. That's why constant oil pressure (and oil-supply) in a rotary is even more critical than for a piston engine. The small amount of (normal) oil smoke, of course, is usually burned up in the catalytic converter after it warms up...but that's why rotary-engined cars need strong efficient converters.
They burn oil because the small lubricating film of oil on the apex tip-seals constantly burns off and gets replaced as the seals whirl around during each rotation and are exposed for a split-second as the spark plugs light off in the combustion chambers. That's why constant oil pressure (and oil-supply) in a rotary is even more critical than for a piston engine. The small amount of (normal) oil smoke, of course, is usually burned up in the catalytic converter after it warms up...but that's why rotary-engined cars need strong efficient converters.
#21
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#23
Lexus Fanatic
Thread Starter
I agree it wasn't particularly difficult (the majority of posters here got all or almost all of them), but the really difficult tests don't seem to published on-line.
#24
Lexus Champion
iTrader: (1)
Well, of course, liquid-cooled, front-engined, FWD beetles (essentially VW Golf/Jettas with a different body/interior) have been produced since 1997. But the original air-cooled, rear-engined RWD Beetles were produced in the 1930s......it was actually first designed in **** Germany, under Hitler's orders, as a cheap ubiquitous car for the German public. It was produced up to the late 1970s for the U.S. market, and in Mexico until 2003.
#25
Lexus Fanatic
Thread Starter
Dr. Porsche died in 1951, so he wasn't really around that long after the war. He was spared what probably would have been great sorrow for him to see the famous young actor James Dean get killed in a Porsche Speedster. In 1955, a Ford sedan pulled out right of an intersection in front of him, and Dean couldn't stop in time, even with the Porsche's good (for the time) brakes That, of course, was before the era of seat belts for most street cars.
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