book review: "Street Rotary" by Mark Warner

[joff]

Originally Posted by mazdamaniac

Don't forget about the most important of them all:

"Rotary Engine" by Kenichi Yamamoto

Yes, good book. Written in the style of a true engineer -- with facts, figures, and diagrams. Not many books written like that anymore. Style unfortunately has been lost on most internet forums.

I did find one a couple years ago though I highly recommend to anybody liking the style of the Yamamoto book:

"The Internal Combusion Engine in Theory and Practice"
"Volume 2: Combusion, Fuels, Materials, Design"
by Charles Fayette Taylor

http://www.amazon.com/Internal-Combu...5378673&sr=8-2

Not rotary specific, but reading this book was personally better for my understanding of engines than anything else I've read online. First edition was 1968, but surprisingly not much has changed in the general concepts. Actually, there's only a couple paragraphs in that book about the rotary engine, of which I'll quote here, because its somewhat interesting.

"...Most engines of this category have been built, tested, and finally abandoned, often after the expenditure of vast sums of money."

"The most difficult problem in such engines is that of sealing the combustion chamber against leakage without excessive friction and wear. This problem is far more difficult than that with conventional piston rings, for the following reasons:"

1. "Line-contact" rather than surface contact is usually involved.
2. The surfaces to be sealed are discontinuous, with sharp corners.
3. The velocity of the seal is high during the high pressure portion of the cycle, in contrast to piston rings whose velocity is near zero at maximum cylinder pressure."

"...The wankel engine has been considered, but not yet adopted, by other car manufacturers, and also for some other applications. A few fairly large gas engines of this type have been put into service on an experimental basis. Although development of this type is still under way, the Wankel's future is still uncertain. It does not appear to be likely to become a serious competitor to conventional engines."

[mazdamaniac]

Originally Posted by joff

Yes, good book. Written in the style of a true engineer -- with facts, figures, and diagrams. Not many books written like that anymore.

There are plenty of books written this way today. All you have to do is peruse the SAE catalog!
Unfortunately, the general public - and car enthusiasts alike - aren't really all that interested in facts, figures and diagrams. Most just want magic.

Originally Posted by joff

Style unfortunately has been lost on most internet forums.

I doubt it ever really existed there and its a losing battle to try to create it now.
I'll keep trying.