http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=19406

This news just proofs that there are ALWAYS room for improvements.

 

where would you put a piston ring in a rotary engine?

 

^ Your missing the point Doc. I think what nycgps is trying to say is there is always room for improvement. The piston driven engine has been around for a long time now but improvements are still being made to improve upon the design. Mazda needs to focus in on some of the short comings of the rotary engine and make some improvements of their own.

 

thank you man , yea u got the point.

I mean Mazda is working hard to improve the Rotary designs, I appreciate their effort. For example the 13B-MSP, not perfect, but Apples to Apples its better than all older NA Rotary engines.

I wonder if this kind of Piston ring technology/material can be apply to the oil control rings ?

 

WTF kind of link did you post

 

well i dont think its really that much of an improvement really. you have to change the cylinder as well as the ring to get the effect , from what it says. plus it needs special coatings.

They are claiming 15% less frictional losses not over all but compared to regular rings. what is the fricitonal loss in terms of hp from current rings? i cant see it being " an additional 5-10 percent (at least) additional extension to fuel economy out of an affordable and easy-to-deploy component upgrade." as the writer envisions at the end of the article

 

It might not be much, but every single bit adds up.

Lets just see what Mazda gonna do to the next engine.

 

supposedly its getting an electric turbo...

 

if anything we have oil delivery problems not oil leakage problems. The oil control ring/scrapper combo don't fail often.

what they need to do is find a material that wont break, shrink , or warp. and use that for the side seals and apex seals.

Then they need to come up with an epic plating for the housings that doesn't scratch flake or retains oil and carbon.

As far as designs go the 13B is pretty good Its all about the materials they use.

 

Ceramic Apex and corner is the answer, they last a looooong time and its very easy even on stock nitrate plated housing and if its Cermet housing it last almost forever... but of course it comes with a price.

13B is already at "max" potential. Lets just see what they will do to 16x.

 

I would put the ring right where the radio **** is.

 

I heard bad things about the cermet housings...

 

Ive heared nothing but horror stories and bad things about peoples 8's too but mine seems to be running without concern.

 

only problem I've had with mine is low compression.

 

The way I see it, Mazda either come up with some near indestructible apex seal and housing or redesign the rotary engine that makes it possible to replace apex seals or "parts of a housing" without having to rip the whole engine out of the car and simple enough for the common mechanic to perform.

I know it sounds silly but if its easy to fix, ppl will stop crying about reliability of rotary engine.

 

If a "regular" mechanic cannot rebuild a rotary engine hes a moron. Unless hes a jiffy lube mechanic, then yea I can see that not working out.

It requires allot of practice to get it down and to understand the engine but its about as simple to figure out as it can be. If they made it any easier they would have to stamp step by step instructions on the pieces themselves.

*EDIT

There's some minor tweaks to be made but when something is that simple and cheap to rebuild who cares and for the rotary enthusiast I'm pretty sure thats the mindset. For the kid who bought an 8 so he could keep up with his buddies 350z and mustang GT's that could be an issue

 

The Cermet coatings from a certain unnamed company are crap. Even Francesco Ianetti will advise against coating rotor housings due to the propensity for it to flake off. Yes Mazda used Cermet on the 787B that won the 24 Hours of LeMans in 1991. They also had 2 engines that used it the year before fail when it flaked off. It took them with their very large budget and in house resources a few years to make it work well and even then there is no longterm road car results that are known. Outside companies trying to do it on their own is just a recipe for disaster and there hasn't been a single company that has yet to do it to an acceptable standard.

 

Yea that's what I heard. I was pretty sure cermet was failed.

 

Dude you live in America where ppl are really open to the idea of "try it on their own" and have access to resources and hardware stores that have most proper tools to use and your average mechanic/technician had proper training.

Where I'm from, it took me several trips around a district to discover noone in most hardware stores i visited knows what a torque wrench is. So the level of knowledge is that bad which is why i hang around in US forums. Owning a rotary engine here is like owning a time bomb, if it blows up there is noone i can trust to fix it.

 

Wow, I cant even imagine a place like that I'd go crazy...

My point is that if you have the tools and knowledge to rebuild a piston engine you have the tools and knowledge to rebuild a rotary engine.

Maybe you can just bring in a used engine and do the swap yourself?

 

nycgps...an you don't think Mazda has not changed and experimented with Apex Seals/Corner Seals over 40 years???...

You know they have..

But yeah, one of the only components that has remained the same (improved) are the Oil Control Rings..

 

Ask Sven @ NRS Rotorsports that.

There was a picture in a Rotary book (RG should know which one im talking about), NRS shown a picture of a Cermet coated housing + their own Ceramic seals, the description saids it has 60,000 thousand miles of very hard use, upon tear down, there was almost no measurable wear on the housing and its ready to be re-use again. Nice stuff.

Cermet is good, but takes a lot of effort to get it right and most people with their backyard equipment not gonna cut it. Just look at the Apex seals, Ianetti Ceramic seals came out lonngggg time ago, and it took a while before a competition finally exist ? (NRS)

it takes time. I mean nitrated/chrome coated housings are actually pretty good, but Cermet is just better (if its done correctly that is)

 

of course they did lol,

the first Apex they use was like what, 10mm or 8mm? then it was down to 6mm, then down to 3mm, and finally 2mm now (forget about all the material/internal designs for now)

same thing for oil control rings, I know they're working hard to try to improve the whole design, just look at Renesis, another Oil seal (they call it cut off seal)

Lets see what they gonna do to the next engine

 

you mean the scraper ring?

 

If I remember correctly Ford is researching something that deals with ions or some **** like that that they can apply to pistons etc and its amazing. I really forgot what they are doing but hopefully what I just said will spark what they are really doing in someone's mind...

Something to do with a special coating... sigh..