The Rare Engine that Kills Everything it Touches

[Music] um if i told you of a phantom engine with no pulse no vibration smoother than a new beamer yet long buried for some reason wouldn't you reopen pandora's box [Music] what it's just fancy shapes dancing the same old auto cycle suck squeeze bang blow only that's all handled by one spinning dorito simultaneously every stroke a power stroke behold the machine gun in our world of flintlocks [Applause] [Music] is that's why there's no vibration because there is no piston no reciprocating mass no need for a crankshaft to jerk around with motion conversion nor valves lifters no cam chain no cams there's a carb and a spark plug and that's all it need to borrow from any other engine that doesn't sound bad at all come on baby you want to ride my winkle [Music] [Applause] [Music] yeah fraulein this engine is called the vehicle named in the dark days of west germany maybe that's why i have a headlamp kill switch on the left for midnight runs to the berlin wall no it leaves indicators to fit beside my throttle hand as is impossible to use yeah well this machine wasn't meant to arrive flawless but fast when hercules got their w-2000 to market in 1974 it was the world's first rotary motorcycle the rush job meant buying in a general purpose wankel one of 20 000 units tacked onto motorcycles or chainsaws snowmobiles whatever so if my wankel looks hung on well that's because it is hence premix gas when your unit might be installed down up sideways where do you put the oil sump you don't you lubricate the fuel and have it flow through the main bearing a labyrinthine intake that limits horsepower to 27 nowhere near the wankel's potential nor it's space saving potential see rotary engines are smaller if you don't have a carburetor taking up half the frame space and if you orient the rotor so that it directly drives the transmission rather than a 90 degree bevel gear hercules failed at both because they failed to build their own engine but if they didn't design pandora's box well who did it's the scariest philosophical question born in the bath houses of ancient rome whose wankle am i touching [Music] meet felix wankel geometry genius and complete wanker felix was once fired by the nazis for being too militant he received his pardon in an ss badge from an old buddy named adolf and his engine workshop was provided by another friend named gory so yeah these guys but just because the nazis did it doesn't mean it's inherently bad i once went to poland in september it was lovely you just can't get carried away in the same way our wankle is lovely in that it spins and makes no vibration you just gotta know that when this triangle goes boom most pressure pushes right round but some pushes wrong round and some more pushes sideways which isn't technically possible i've seen better rotating efficiency from a drunk hamster now to some extent we can dig a cavity to give combustion more of a barn door to push against but this carves into our compression ratio which already sucks because triangles and ovals they just don't squeeze much eight and a half to one i could get stronger compression with a bowl of chili and some butt clenching so forget torque forget fuel efficiency the ideal wankle is a lightweight play thing that revs high to make power and really benefits from a smaller vibration-free engine motorcycles how did this not catch on and what we're going to do is sneak the hercules into a modern dealership and see if people react like hey this makes sense i might just sneak it to the front so they're more likely to notice so the rotary cycle kind of ejects gas while it's still exploding red is in glasgow eh [Music] at 25 to 1 oil it's an environmental disaster but how else do you lubricate seals that neither sit nor spin or reciprocate but oscillate and that is why people think this engine is cursed they consider wankel's doodle the stuff of paper not pavement because the man never earned an engineer certificate or a driver's license just paper our w-2000 crumples when insurance companies decide its 294 cc combustion chamber is actually three one on each side of a triangle rotor classified in 882 it's overpriced and dead on arrival norton buys up the pieces of that engine fails to sell four derivatives then also goes bankrupt suzuki narrowly avoids a similar fate by abandoning their rotary after 12 months a one-year stand so shameful legend says they dumped unsold stock in the sea off japan van veen is the last to sell a wankel motorcycle surviving only 38 units before they too fall huh well vanvien's engine came from a citroen which flopped so hard they bought back and crushed them all gm ford mercedes bmw john deere curtis wright oh mazda and they spent half a century learning to machine gaping parabolas then gave up on making wankels work 30 hollow licenses good for 150 million deutsche marks a paper kingdom for a nazi maybe the curse is real then all that evil flew from pandora's box and never quite settles see this very wankle berth norton's r d which is currently taking off in suicide drones it turns out rotaries are worse than the stuff of paper they're finally working perfectly and profitably on air [Music] true killing machines [Music] you

Channel: FortNine

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Id: -3HBAvkc4a0

Length: 10min 2sec (602 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 28 2021