The History of Mazda Rotary Engine. Part 1
Last year Mazda celebrated the 40th anniversary of the release of the first serial automobile with a rotary engine. This engine is also called the Wankel engine.
Felix Wankel, a German engineer and inventor, was born in the town of Lare on August 13, 1902. He was brought up in a poor family and had to leave school to become a pupil of a bookseller. He read a great number of books on engineering, mechanics and car-building. However, entering a university afterwards, Wankel was dismissed due to poor progress in physics.
There is a version that the idea of a rotary engine was born in Wankel’s head in his sleep when he was 17. He dreamed that he was driving to a concert in his own car and boasted to his friends that the car was equipped wit an engine invented by himself. The engine was of a new type – half piston half turbine. Wenkel got up with a scheme of a completely new engine in his head. He intuitively felt that 4 strokes of an engine - admission, compression, combustion and exhaust – could be carried out through rotation. This idea was the base for the creation of the rotary engine.
In 1923 Felix Wankel got down to work in his own lab. During WWII his engines got support from the government, and right after the war Wankel founded the Technical Institute of Application-Oriented Research, where he continued working on his engine. Later he was joined by the motorcycle company NSU, which even before the collaboration with Wankel had created a rotary engine for a motorcycle. The first automotive rotary engine DKM was created by the engineer in 1957. The basic parts of the engine were a trigonal rotor and a trochotron body which is used in this type of engines even today. Still, the construction with a rotating body was too complicated and one year later there appeared the new model KKM 400 with a stationary body, fluid cooling system. This very model is the prototype of the modern rotary engine.
In 1959 NSU decided to reduce the rotary program. But the idea had already possessed the minds of people all over the world – over 100 companies were eager to buy the groundwork of NSU (including 34 Japanese companies). Mazda was represented by Zunezi Mazuda. The negotiations ended up by signing the agreement in 1961. Here is the point where the rotary history of Mazda starts. Mazda is the only automotive company that produces serial cars with rotary engines. A group of engineers was sent to NSU where it got KKM 400 into possession.
At the beginning of the 60s Mazda constructed 3 types of rotary engines – 2-, 3- and 4-rotor. The NSU prototype worked well only on high turns. On low turns the vibration was very considerable which lead to fast wearing of engine case. Moreover, the engine had a very modest torque and was extremely oil-consuming due to bad sealing of the top of the rotor.
The first bi-rotary engine L8A was installed on the specially designed prototype Cosmo Sport L402А (capacity – 399 cm3). In December 1964 another engine was created – 3820 (2 x 491 cm3). This engine was the base of the first serial bi-rotary engine L10A.
In May 1967 Mazda started selling its model Mazda Cosmo Sport with 100 hp at 7000 rpm. The engine was equipped with new sealing made of pyrolitic graphite. Each work chamber featured 2 ignition sparks. In 1968 the model Cosmo Sport took part in the endurance race Marathon de la Route in Nurnburgring where it took the 4th place. The engine 10A in the deforced mode (to 100 hp) was installed on the model Familia R100, and in the 105-hp – on Savanna RX-3.
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