Bobby,

There are many parts available to the drag racing crowd that are intended for short time use. One guy even built nearly solid aluminum rotors. These parts are like the Top Fueler engine blocks that don't even have water jackets built into them. When you are only running the engine for less than a minute you can get away with a lot of things. When Steve Beckham and Everett Hatch were doing their initial experiments for their superlite engine they tried all types of available aluminum side housings and coatings. None of them held up long term. They tried plating, plasma spray, high alusil aluminum (Vega block material), ceramic coatings, and several others before staying with iron housings on the engine they intended for production. The last thing was a built up steel housing considerably lightened from the iron versions. This was working but the company was sold after Everett's death and wasn't developed further. Their engines were also all p-port so they didn't bother to build in any side ports. There used to be a bunch of people that would say that car engines weren't up to producing 60-100% power like and aircraft engine must. That was shown to be untrue with the rotary as it will run high Rpm's forever IF it has good cooling and oil supply. These things are critical however, and don't take care of themselves. Careful radiator duct design and oil cooler duct design just must be done. The thing to remember here is that is isn't simply making enough horsepower, that isn't too tough. The thing to remember is that you are preparing an engine that might be running on a 500 mile long straight-away! A great many of the car tuners realize that their engines will rarely see operation above 20% and then only see WOT for less than a minute. I'm an ex racer myself and can't think of one track other than Le Mans where the car would be flat out for more than 20-30 seconds. Many aircraft operating above 8,000 feet run WOT ALL THE TIME and just vary prop and mixture to control power. The engine MUST have good water cooling. The engine MUST have good oil cooling, if it is going to survive. I don't see how you are going to achieve that with a hunk of aluminum billet and a plating job. I would love to be proven wrong, but I won't hold my breath.

Bill Jepson

 

In a message dated 8/3/2010 6:03:39 PM Pacific Daylight Time, bhughes@qnsi.net writes: