And you think YOU have a grunty bike! :-p

[Hans]

No, he ain't.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotary_engine

If you must.

[Toaster]

I'm pretty sure I saw a review of this beastie in a mag... must see if I can find it...

[kneescraper]

Oh my bad, I know nothing, NOTHING!

[Boob Johnson]

I think Xerxesdaphat is correct, I remember being a lil boy and seeing some strange old plane with an engine that spun at a local air show...at the time I thought of it as the coolest thing (this was before I had seen boobies).

lol.

Anyone got a vid of this thang in action? Sound preferred

[alexthekidd]

jeez imagine trying to take that thing over the takas

[Grub]

Am I confused or just outdated?

Well confused ... between 'rotary' and 'radial'. Some of the very earliest 'radials' did rotate all the cylinders around a stationery crankshaft (the early Gnomes I believe - and are 'rotary' engines). For obvious reasons that technology was failry shortlived for general use. There were the odd exceptions into the 1920's but I think by then fairly rare.

The modern radial (the Bristol Freighters had them) has a rotating crank, usually an odd number of stationery cylinders.

My bet is that is a show/project bike that, for the reasons mentioned re cooling, probably does the odd demo run and nothing else

[Steam]

From the Wiki on Rotary aircraft engines:

"Castor oil was the lubricant of choice, its gum-forming tendency being irrelevant in a total-loss lubrication system. An unfortunate side-effect was that World War I pilots inhaled and swallowed a considerable amount of the oil during flight, leading to persistent diarrhoea. "

[jonbuoy]

From the Wiki on Rotary aircraft engines:

"Castor oil was the lubricant of choice, its gum-forming tendency being irrelevant in a total-loss lubrication system. An unfortunate side-effect was that World War I pilots inhaled and swallowed a considerable amount of the oil during flight, leading to persistent diarrhoea. "

They were nick named slippery bums I think too, Biggles never mentioned that in his exploits. Poor maintenance crew...

[terbang]

The modern radial (the Bristol Freighters had them) has a rotating crank, usually an odd number of stationery cylinders.

The Bristol freighter engines were radials but not so conventional. They were also sleeve valve engines whereas the now accepted norm in radial engines is poppet valves, like our bike engines.
The bristol Hercules was in the freighter and the Centaurus (something like 2800 Hp) was in the Sea Fury, a bloody fast piston engined fighter.

[marty]

there's an article about the sopwith camel in the latest wings mag - it was powered by a rotary (that is that whole engine rotated around the crankshaft) which LOOKS like a radial until it is running.... gyroscopic precession was not well understood back then, and it lead to more deaths due to loss of control than in combat. (bit like motorcycle riding really.......)

[Boob Johnson]

So no one has a vid of one of these they can share with us all?

[ferrix]

LOL, this engine definitely does not rotate! It is as mentioned above, a Rotec R2800. 2.8 liters, measly 82KW and 217Nm/3700rpm. It also weights 102kg.

The advantage of radial engine is that it is very smooth and well balanced. Also when mounted the way it is on this bike, (not ACROSS the frame, like another design I've seen) its torque effect is directed towards the back, rather than to a side, like some other engines.

But somehow I don't expect to see too many radial-powered bikes on our roads in near future

Edit: The designers claim they were concerned about cooling the back cylinders at first, but they found it is no more of an issue than cooling the back cylinder of a V-twin, in other words, not much problem at all.

[Hans]

Still unconvinced about the cooling thing. Notice, how the baffles are designed for the engine to be mounted head-on, not sideways? That's going to be a problem especially on the back cylinders. I do realise that the baffles are there mostly because they increase the surface that radiates heat, but airflow, hence heat transfer is also very important.

[Bass]

That's a pretty small radial. Also pretty high reving. The IL14 in our Wilga is 10 litres and does about 240 hp at 2050 rpm and I thought that it was a small radial. This one is giving about half the power with around a quarter of the displacement, which is pretty good performance.
Does anyone know what the motor was originally built for?

[Forest]

Here's a couple of links to radial powered choppers:

http://www.rotecradialengines.com/Osh/Osh.htm

http://thekneeslider.com/archives/20...ed-motorcycle/