When I worked at John Deere Rotary Engine Division in the late 1980's, we had a few Wankel-powered toys stored in the warehouse. A couple of OMC snowmobiles, and a Fichtel & Sachs powered go-kart called a Firefly. Some of the other young engineers and I would run it around the industrial park on the weekends. The kart was fun. It didn't have slicks, just treaded tires, but it was great for doing donuts. And it was fast. It must have been. I hurt myself with it.
Sander Van der Kammen yea I guess it was a little of both. They were sorta all over the place and never focused on one market until later on and then due to poor management when the EPA put in the new guidelines for emissions they weren’t ready and tried putting out the vein rude E-TEC before it was truly ready and it was downhill from there.
There are whispers that they have been working on a new rotary engine for a while now that can comply with modern emission rules, but as alot of manufacturers are ending development of ICE its likely they will give up on it if not already
Check out this bad boy if you haven't seen it already, 250cc radial with a gear reduction. Jump to 3:50 and you have to try hard to think it's not full-size (unless you know what the real plane sounds like)... ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-9rFVBrKj4Qw.html
@@jeepmanxj For a chainsaw I would say otherwise. The great power to weight ratio and not too much problems with emissions make it great on one. Cannot argue against it needing rather constant maintenance tho, and don't know if a two-stroke would outperform it in power to weight (and power per volume, that is also a point in the wankel's favor vs 4 strokes at least).
Wow. Tell that to the fifty year old Sachs 303 that I had that ran great and has never had the case opened. All Sachs singles wankles idle Brupp brupp brupp. I’ve owned several.
Maybe manufacturer or people who are very keen about economy and pollution hate it but for me they are my drugs. Big blocks,Two strokes and Rotaries are my real drug which keeps me alive.
I have two KMS-4. The one specific one in my video you used went to a museum for close to $2K USD. The other rotary on the display cart is a 303 off an Artctic cat snowmobile.
Well, i knew Fichtel&Sachs has put a rotary engine on top of a regular engine/transmission unit(might be a Sachs 2501/7 A transmission?). But the fact that they've put this into a Hercules "Geländesport" is crazy and also new to me!
I am a wankel fan, have rebuilt a couple of sachs engines and a couple of OMC wankels. Very easy to rebuild, parts are hard to find these days and are expansive, but if you are a die hard fan for wankel engines WHAT THE HELL.
Ya know what it be crazy? Installing the most powerful Wankel Rotary Engine in a Mini Cooper and other small cars that weigh a lot less. That way its not too heavy and the rotary engine can really get that vehicle a good amount of performance. That way small cars can be able to keep up with the supercars on that
@@sav22rem22 Because you could get much better performance and reliability from a reciprocating engine. Not really, unique would be a steam engine that runs on hydrazine and peroxide.
The Suzuki RE5 was a colossal sales and financial failure that nearly put Suzuki out of business. Thousands of unsold RE5s were returned to the factory and destroyed.
