Rotary Internal Combustion Engine

The gyro affect.
I had heard something about that John.
I remember when I would rev my BMW Boxer engine, the bike would rotate slightly to one side.
 
I always love watching those engines. I guess one could say they were amung the first multi cylinder engines that had no distributor. The coil was stationary, and the spark jumps the gap as the cylinder goes past it.

Another forgotten cool item from that time, is the inertia starter. Some were hand crank, some were electric, and some were either.


 
Here's some more on the Gnome rotary in a Sopwith Pup at Fantsy of Flight.
 
I recall reading these engines do not have carburetors. I read these engines have only 2 speeds.... on and off. To adjust airspeed for landing they would turn the gas off then back on to slow down. The rotating mass of all those cylinders would restart the engine when the gas supply resumed.

I think the guys in the video would get farther if they added a couple of wings!
 
Many years ago I heard about these rotary engines. I thought it was a joke.
Who the heck would build an engine where the crankshaft is stationary and the propeller is bolted to the engine block?
I would imagine balancing this configuration was a nightmare.
It's problematic from many different angles.
But, wheels were square once :)
Actually, one of the advantages of these engines were that they were balanced and did not need a counterbalance like many of the early fixed blocked engines. They also did not need a flywheel. Well, let's face it. the engine block is the flywheel. And since the block spins, it was an easy way to keep the engine cool. These early engines did not have a lot of power, so this was one way to get a higher power to weight. One interesting thing is that the intake valve was mounted in the piston. 30 years earlier there was a motor cycle that used a 5 cylinder engine of the same principle.
 
Anyone interested in Man's ingenuity should have a look at 'Some Unusual Engines' by L.J.K.Setright.
 
There were many ingenious details in the Gnome engine..........Ford made them,and developed a method of forming the finned barrel by wrinkling a steel tube ,then welding the whole into a finned barrel.....the cylinders were near paper thin for centrifugal force reasons,and made of hard high tensile steel.....the barrels were also egg shaped in the bores because the front (leading) surface cooled better than the trailing parts............if an engine cut out on takeoff,the plane would dive sideways into the ground,due to gyroscopic effects......
 
I always love watching those engines. I guess one could say they were amung the first multi cylinder engines that had no distributor. The coil was stationary, and the spark jumps the gap as the cylinder goes past it.

Another forgotten cool item from that time, is the inertia starter. Some were hand crank, some were electric, and some were either.


Those are radial engines, not rotary engines...
 
this type of engine since the late 1800's was termed as a rotary engine or a rotary radial engine,, wankels or the type started out as pistonless or pistonless rotary engines, most likely didn't advertise well making buyers think parts were missing..
 
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