> Man, if the mills in those RX-8's are anything like the racing
> rotaries from the late '80's and early '90's, you will DEFINITELY
> need earplugs.
> Them is obscenely loud.
Weren't most of the high-end ones triple-rotor? For example, the
LeMans Prototypes were triples. Hmm. I am thinking the Prototypes
in North America used twin-rotors, though. Still, a blown twin-rotor
in race form will do about 550 HP. I believe the LeMans ones were
normally aspirated triples producing somewhere around 800 HP and
punching past 10,500 rpm.
Come to think of it, I believe most of the racing rotaries were
non-turbocharged. That's why they were so loud. The turbos quieted
them down quite substantially. In the barely street legal
categories, the non-turbos were twice as loud.
I've seen/heard one triple rotory in a race car and I do recall the
brutal noise it made. Part, or most, of the raucous noise is due to
the fact that the fuel/air mixture is still expanding/exploding as it
is traveling out the exhaust pipes. Especially when the revs are up
in the stratosphere.
There was an attempt to make an airplane engine using five rotors. A
company made rotary engines for airframes and racing (triples, for
example). Well, the goal was to have a 1200shp airplane engine.
They did it all right, but the torque on the shaft from all the
rotors was so high that they kept snapping them. It turns out that
you can get two and even three rotors to keep in sync with each other
ok, but beyond that things go just a little crazy. They had to keep
advancing the rotation on the rotors farthest away from the
transmission to put a positive twist on the shaft. Wierd stuff. But
the neat thing was that the five rotor 1200HP engine would fit inside
the cowling of a Cessna 182. (that would be a seriously scary plane
to fly--probably would twist itself inverted right on the runway).
AG
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