My Car Is Powered By Exploding Triangles

Rotary Love

How many of you readers know what a Wankel rotary engine is? Don't be shy now, raise those hands up so I can count you. Only a couple? That's fine, that's why I am writing this article: Prepare for a quick education!

Here is my 1991 Mazda RX-7 Turbo II:

I get honked at a lot... 

Take a guess as to how many cylinders this baby has. Many folks assume this little car is rocking a four cylinder engine, simply due to its size. While a 2.5 liter four banger may fit nicely in here should I want to swap engines, the truth is my car had zero cylinders and a much smaller displacement than nearly every four cylinder engine on the road today.

How can this be? Is it an electric car? Surely it is too old to have a battery that would power it for any reasonable distance. Zero cylinders? It must be magic! 

No, it isn't magic, its a 1.3 liter (1300 cc's) turbocharged rotary engine. It has two triangle shaped rotors housed in a pair of trochoidal rotor housings. These two triangles whip around a specialized elliptical shaft which then transfers the power directly to the main drive shaft. Got it? If not, here is a perfect, simple animation to help you understand how a rotary engine functions:

 http://www.animatedengines.com/wankel.html

With the stock setup and a boost level of around 6psi, my car puts down 200 horsepower to the rear wheels. Rotary engines have the benefit of being able to rev to astronomical levels. And the higher the revs go the more power the engine produces. My particular car has a redline at 7,000 RPMs. It even has an alarm buzzer that goes off once your tachometer swings past 7k, letting you know that, while this is fun and all, shifting may be a good idea right about now. 

These motors have been around for quite awhile, but Mazda has always been the company to put them into widespread production. Starting with the Mazda Cosmo Sport in the 1960s, and most recently with the RX-8, rotaries have revved their way into the hearts of anyone whose had the pleasure of driving one. 

A beautiful green Mazda Cosmo Sport

Another benefit of rotary engines is that you can mod and tune them to your heart's desire. They are able to handle a remarkable amount of power for their size. Some 3rd generation RX-7s are able to put down 800+ horsepower by turning up the boost on their turbos (or getting larger ones), and then tuning the fuel system to handle a different gas to air mixture ratio. 

Do rotaries have a downside? Alas, yes they do. A stock rotary engine will usually make it to 120,000 miles and then blow up. The corners of the triangle shaped rotor have seals (called 'apex' seals) that can only handle so many revolutions inside the rotor housing before failing. My RX-7 made it to 118,000 miles and then, like so many other rotaries driven that far, my apex seals blew and I had to have the engine rebuilt. This is a pricey proposition for most folks, even though the engine has about one tenth of the parts that a traditional piston engine contains. Many mechanics won't touch rotaries because the rebuilding process is so much different than what they are used to. Many people simply send the car to the junkyard to rot or replace the rotary engines with a V8 or other piston engine. While wanting a piston engine with generally better reliability in the long run is understandable, there is still nothing quite like a Wankel.

3rd Generation RX-7: One of the most beautiful cars in the world.

So I challenge my rotary loving brothers and sisters to keep the dream alive! Don't sully your car's reputation by replacing a blown Wankel engine with a piston engine. That way you can chuckle to yourself at Jiffy Lube when the oil change man asks you how many cylinders your engine has, and reply: "Oh my car has no cylinders. My car is powered by exploding triangles."

Their faces will be priceless.

The Original Four Door Porsche

Ever wondered what the Porsche Panamera would have looked like if it had been conceived, designed, and built during the 1960s? 

Me neither, but that doesn’t mean that a one of a kind ancestor to the Panamera wasn’t built. Leave it to Motorheads to cut a Porsche 911 in half and slap it back together with an extra pair of seats and room to spare.

Panamera's Granddaddy

In 1968, the aforementioned Motorheads Dick Troutman and Tom Barnes decided that two seats were simply not enough for a 911. Their solution? Cut the car in half, design new body panels and sheet metal to accommodate the longer wheelbase, and then weld and rivet it all back together.

The result is a strange 911 that you may not even take a second look at unless you got close. Then you would see that this car is sporting suicide doors hinged at the rear and it is 21 inches longer than its 2 seated 911 brethren. It was perfectly drivable and, in my opinion, doesn’t look half bad:

Suicide doors FTW. And legroom!

I think the impressive part of this whole endeavor is the amount of room they were able to add to the original frame. 21 inches gave any rear seated passengers ample leg room. That’s a far cry from today’s 911s. They are technically four-seaters, but good luck getting anything larger than a small child or a bag of groceries back there. It makes one wonder why they even bother sticking seats into that cramped space.

Anyway, I thought this was a cool article. And I am very impressed with the final result. It’s amazing to think that this was done by only two guys in a garage. Motor heads come up with some crazy stuff don’t they?

Read the full article here. Thanks to Road and Track for tracking down one heck of a car!

Z Car Zunday

Who Doesn't Love a Healthy Dose of Vitamin Z?

In the same spirit of Ferrari Friday, Turbo or Targa Tuesday, and Maserati Monday, I have decided that Z Car Zunday is a must have. I tried Z Car Zaturday, but that sounds too ridiculous even for me. So here is a gallery of the beautiful Z car from all eras, Datsun through Nissan. Enjoy!

Lotus: Go-Karts On Steroids.

I have always been an admirer of Lotus cars. Their dedication to making light and agile automobiles is refreshing, especially when most American made autos are looking more and more bloated. I understand the attractive aspect of a big, bad, drag strip monster like the new Ford Mustang GT and the Dodge Challenger Hellcat, but take one of those into a windy mountain road and all that weight makes things a bit tricky. And with V8s with oodles of torque on tap may send you into the gravel if you aren’t careful. 

Anyway, enough about American cars, back to the Lotus.

Have a look at this:

Uhhhhh. Windshield? NOPE!

That, dear readers, is the Lotus 311: A windshield-less, single seater, weighing less than 2000 pounds and sporting an engine with nearly 400 pound-feet of torque on tap. Let that sink in for a minute. With an average sized person you are talking about just over 2100 pounds of car and driver with a zero to 60 mph time of under 3 seconds. That is a rocket. That is motorcycle territory.

And for an overweight go-kart, the Lotus 311 still has pretty decent styling! I look at this thing and I immediately think “Hot Wheels”. And boy howdy thats an understatement. This is a track car pure and simple, as if the lack of a roof said anything different. All that is between you and the road is an aluminum chassis on one side, and a roll bar on the other. Plus, for the road version of the 311 anyway, the top speed is 180 mph. I think most people would be satisfied with far less, but leave it to Lotus to crank it to 11. I bet it’s good on gas too, something which most supercars aren’t. And that’s just what this is: A supercar. Small, sure, but just as fast as your Ferrari’s and Lamborghini’s, at least until the 400+ pounds of downforce the aerodynamics generate limit the top end. But really, who needs to go 200+ miles an hour? Nobody. Nobody needs to. Sorry Bugatti, I hear you guys are trying to make a nearly 300mph car, but unless I am at the Bonneville salt flats, I am never going that fast. 

The downside? Being a limited production model. That means a price tag of about $130,000 and only 311 to choose from. I bet they are already snatched up, but maybe I can find a second hand one in a couple years for cheap. One can dream!

Read the full article here, and thanks to Road and Track for the news bulletin!