Here's one for Old Skydog

[Bob Core]

I didn't know this existed until the other day; it's a multi-row rotary engine from 1918:

http://www.enginehistory.org/Museums/SNECMA/128%20%20Le%20Rhone%20%2028%20cyl.jpg

Four rows of seven cylinders for a total of twenty eight, kind of like a Pratt R-4360.

For the uninitiated: before Wankel engines became widely know, a rotary was an aircraft piston engine that had a stationary crankshaft and a rotating crankcase. Common practice during WWI, but they were usually a single row with seven or nine cylinders.

Imagine the gigantic rotating mass along with the gyroscopic effects the pilot would have dealt with if it had flown.

[oldskydog]

That's a pretty little engine Bob. Do you have the dimensions or any tech info? I see the valves, pushrods, and plugs but are the copper tubes intake or exhaust? If they are intake then where is the carb and the exhaust? I never understood how they got the fuel to the rotating cylinders on those early rotaries.:scratch

[Bob Core]

The ducts are for intake; rotaries were generally fed thru the crankcase via a hollow crankshaft. The fuel was mixed with castor oil to provide lubrication.

There was no exhast system per se, they just shot the flaming exhaust straight out of the ports! Since the crankshaft was stationary that would take place at the same place for all cylinders, which is why the cowling was open at the bottom.

http://www.enginehistory.org/Museums/SNECMA/126%20%20Le%20Rhone%20%2028%20cyl.jpg

Here's a link to some more tech info:

http://www.enginehistory.org/rotaries.htm