Benefits of a rotary engine??

[Splinter]

What's so good about a rotary? i thought that the most common rotary engine (13B) was only a 1.3L, so how does it beat some SR20's?
also, i've heard of a 20B beating a 6-cylinder turbo?? fact or fiction??

[Oldengineer]

Rotarys, for their size, make lots of power and turn very high RPM. Look at the road test results on the new Mazda with the rotary. The rotarys downside is its fuel economy - substantially worse than a piston engine. Years ago, while working for a mojor domestic car manufacturer, I saw an experimental rotary they were playing with in a dyno cell at the plant. The thing looked to be about 2 - 2.5 liters in size, but, was making 308 HP on the dyno. The guys working with it told me than it would only get about 14 mpg in an actual car though. About that time the first oil crisis hit, and, it never was put into production.

Regards:
Oldengineer

[freakonaleash1187]

the biggest advantage of the rotary is that it is small but yet produces a lot of power. like the 1.3L rotary engine in the rx-7 produces 238 hp, that is more than most v6's wil 3.0L plus. the main reason for this is the pistons in a piston engine have to stop and go up, stop and go back down. so that up-stop-down-stop motion takes more power, but in a rotary engine, the rotar just spins in a circle and never has to stop, so thus it can get more power.

[bumpinneon]

rotary engines are really good engines but if they break down or have problems i hope you have some money cause there not cheap to fix

[ghostguy6]

I heard the apex seal wears really fast and it makes it very easy to loose compression does anyone know if thats true?