Wankels . . are a sort of Lovecraftian fever dream that seems to set in upon the brow of mech eng greybeards every now and again. There you are, comfortable mid

Wankels . . are a sort of Lovecraftian fever dream that seems to set in upon the brow of mech eng greybeards every now and again. There you are, comfortable mid-career at LockBoNorthRay, but then you have to go open some weird geometry called NECROWANKELCOM from a Forbidden part of the vault and before you know it you're ranting about how four cycle engines are a Jewish plot. Ok, hyperbole, a bit. But for reals, check out the man himself. It's pretty wild. From an engineering perspective, there's some hard limits. Heat is going to always be a problem for Wankels due to the low thermal mass of the thing, and, of course, the fact that there's always a power cycle. The actual rotational efficiency is pretty bad, combustion impulse goes towards the center of rotation, some of it goes backwards. Compression is inherently limited from the necessities of spinning a triangle in an circle. It's nearly impossible to lube the thing effectively; early on they tried to intermix oil and fuel only to create a high-revving Soviet-era ecological disaster because Wankels tend to spit fuel before it's done combusting. I love, love, love cutting Gordian Knots like this, which makes me want to love the Wankel, but at the same time, sometimes Gordian Knots are tied for a reason. High flow, high RPM, low weight, yes all super awesome, but . . honestly, that's called a turboshaft. I dig this Wankel Rebooty from the Liquid guys, but they also seem to have killed the one solid advantage of the rotary design: its low weight. The thing's a brick. Also, that wobble it has when the rotor engages, do you see the back and forth? That's some weird oscillating vibration there, and I couldn't help noticing what looks like some wicked counterweights. Of course that could be some other doodad I'm ignorant of.