This 12-rotor rotary engine is wild.
Garvin and the team, like most speed boat racers, used Big Block Chevy engines as their foundation. But, he said, no matter how you build one, there are weak points that can't be avoided.
"We had done about as much as you can do with a Big Block Chevy," Garvin said."If you bought the best parts and you were the best tuner, there are still parts that'll break, like the valve springs. You're bending metal back and forth and they will break, no matter how you build it.""A rotary has no known true failure," he said.
The end result is an engine that is giant, beautiful, and intricately designed. One set of rotors spins backwards both to help balance the harmonics and to make the exhaust and intake setup symmetrical from side to side. The current setup fires the back and front rotors simultaneously so that there's no need for counterweights, though Garvin notes that the flexibility of the rotor setup means you can run just about any timing you want. You just have to balance it.
Unfortunately, the size of it has presented some challenges that don't appear to be fully solved. While the engine has run before, it ran with a carburetor that choked it out before peak power. Garvin says he didn't have engine control software available that could manage 24 individual timings for 24 injectors, and the twin V-12 engine control systems presented some limitations.
Cooling and airflow will surely present challenges, but Garvin seems up to it. And there is a legitimate reason behind the rotary, too. In addition to the lack of failure points—you don't need valves on a rotary—the need for it to run at wide-open-throttle for hours sounds like solid ground for a rotary design, which usually works best at high rpm. Still, now that it's in Rob Dahm's hands, we expect it to end up in a pretty interesting car build.
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