Honda 125cc Wankel Rotary Prototype...

[tobytronicstereophonic]

https://scontent.fman4-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.6435-9...

I've spent too much of my late evenings looking at imaginative videos about 'revolutionary' engines on YT then wasting time in the comments denouncing them as FAKE. Some of the animations are really well done, though...
Some of the comments about these engines make me wonder how some of the posters actually manage to function in modern society.

This one is an experimental 125cc wankel Rotary Motorcycle which Honda 'made' in the seventies. I can spot several signs of photoshop and as there are only around three mentions of it on the internet...

Anyway, have a look and tell me I am wrong and Honda really did plonk a crude air-cooled rotary engine atop of a (CB350?) bottom-end? :-)
If the link doesn't work, try 'Honda A16 CRX wankel' which should work, unlike this motorcycle.

Edited by tobytronicstereophonic on Friday 21st July 02:01

[wildone63]

Its actually a CB175 that its fitted into but does not look genuine to me.
Honda,along with Suzuki (whose RE5 was in production for a year or two) and Yamaha and Kawasaki who made prototypes would likely have gone the whole hog and built a complete rotary engine/gearbox as one unit rather than just plonk a small pre-existing rotary engine on top of one of their existing bottom ends

[trickywoo]

There is so much wrong with that picture.

The engine isn’t mounted to the frame for a start, then you have the exhaust routing before you even consider how the crank is attached to the gearbox.

[Fundoreen]

wankel is like the flintstones idea of an electric motor lol.

[Bob_Defly]

Fundoreen said:

wankel is like the flintstones idea of an electric motor lol.

Ah the Flintstones, when the 60's were great!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAExoSozc2c

[bongtom]

There’s a reason why the traditional engine hasn’t changed much and why all these new engines are codswallap.

Rotary never caught on because they’re inefficient and expensive.

[klootzak]

Here's another pic of the same engine/installation from a different angle. Looks a bit more genuine, though whether it ever actually worked is a different matter.

Either way, rotary engines have proven to be a bit of an engineering blind-alley (so far) with few, if any, real benefits. Hardly surprising Honda didn't pursue this one.

k

[srob]

I'd be surprised if it was real. Honda were renowned for resisting change - just see how long they persisted with small four strokes when Suzuki and MZ were consistently showing two strokes were the future in GP racing.

Honda made some incredibly complicated engines to resist the changes.

The exhaust looks a bit OTT on the first picture too

[srob]

bongtom said:

There’s a reason why the traditional engine hasn’t changed much and why all these new engines are codswallap.

Rotary never caught on because they’re inefficient and expensive.

Sorry but I completely disagree with that!

I've worked in and around engine development for 25+ years now, and I would say that most of the powertrain engineers in that time that I've spoken to about this subject (it's a pet subject of mine ) agree that four strokes are a bad design.

The reason we still have them is because they've been consistently developed for 150 years, so they are very, very well developed. That doesn't mean it was a good design to start with. Rotary engines have always been compromised by small development (Mazda excluded, I guess) and fashion. People are notoriously wary of new things and manufacturers who have set up lines and have donkeys years of data on a four stroke aren't going to force through expensive changes and start again unless 'people' demand it.

The basic design of starting and stopping an object in a linear motion to convert it to a rotary force is flawed. You lose so much energy starting and stopping a piston! Had the free thinkers who came up with the four stroke engine in the 1880s had the design and manufacturing tools we have now there's no way we'd have ended up with such a compromised basic design now...

Either they were incredibly clever to draw that design up on a board with no other tools, or we've been very lazy since.

[bongtom]

srob said:

bongtom said:

There’s a reason why the traditional engine hasn’t changed much and why all these new engines are codswallap.

Rotary never caught on because they’re inefficient and expensive.

Sorry but I completely disagree with that!

I've worked in and around engine development for 25+ years now, and I would say that most of the powertrain engineers in that time that I've spoken to about this subject (it's a pet subject of mine ) agree that four strokes are a bad design.

The reason we still have them is because they've been consistently developed for 150 years, so they are very, very well developed. That doesn't mean it was a good design to start with. Rotary engines have always been compromised by small development (Mazda excluded, I guess) and fashion. People are notoriously wary of new things and manufacturers who have set up lines and have donkeys years of data on a four stroke aren't going to force through expensive changes and start again unless 'people' demand it.

The basic design of starting and stopping an object in a linear motion to convert it to a rotary force is flawed. You lose so much energy starting and stopping a piston! Had the free thinkers who came up with the four stroke engine in the 1880s had the design and manufacturing tools we have now there's no way we'd have ended up with such a compromised basic design now...

Either they were incredibly clever to draw that design up on a board with no other tools, or we've been very lazy since.

I am not doubting you and your colleagues skills and knowledge but there is probably another reason why 4 strokes are still the de facto design today, and it no doubt has nothing to do with efficiency and flawed design, as you call it.

Maybe you're thinking as an engineer not as an accountant!

People don't demand anything. They get told what is best with regards to tech.