Is that an APU I hear whining prior to start? Shiz be knutz

 

I don't see how else you can possibly crank that thing without an APU.

 

Loved the sound of round......I noticed the car never even wiggled so a clear photoshop fabrication, but great video non the less. Thanks Joe!

 

It's an inertia starter, an electric motor turns a flywheel and you engage a clutch to spin the radial.

 

??

Look at the reflection in the right-rear quarter window starting at :08 when they begin cranking. That car is definitely "wiggling".

 

well... on a lighter, less-well thought out note... At least this guy SUCCESSFULLY did a stupid swap, unlike alot of the claims in the intro posts....

 

To be fair, I have utterly no idea whether the car is actually driveable, or if this was just a stunt. The crankshaft of the rotary radial engine is definitely at a higher plane than the stock crank and input shaft to the transmission, so you'd have to fabricate some sort of belt or chain drive to transfer the power to a lower intermediate shaft, and then a clutch assembly to couple it to the transmission.

Looks cool as hell though.

Irony:

Notice the license plate? It's a California car. And since that's an early 60s vintage Bug, this engine swap is CARB legal (unlike, say, putting a turbo onto a clean-running '00-'05 Miata.)

 

FTFY. No doritos in this thread.

I did a little E-stalking, looks like this is a salt flat car.

 

(facepalm)

Yes, I do actually understand the difference between a radial and a rotary ((not a wankel, an actual aircraft rotary), I just have the dumb this morning.

 

Win.

 

I can't imagine what a rotary A/C engine would be like to operate. You think BP's vibrate terrible...

 

They're supposedly quite well-balanced and run very smoothly. Consider that in a rotary design, the crankcase, cylinders and heads all collectively act as a gigantic flywheel.

On the downside, power is limited by the amount of air which can be sucked in through a hollowed-out crankshaft, and they are lubricated in a total-loss system, somewhat like a two-cycle engine. Pressurized oil is supplied to the bearings by a pump, but it is never recovered and instead goes out of the engine through the cylinders.

 

And how exactly do you connect a rotating engine block to a transmission?

 

Very carefully.