Rob Dahm, infamous rotary-powered automotive builder, has firmly jumped into the deep finish of the pool together with his newest venture: The world’s solely 15.7-liter, tri-turbo Y12 rotary engine. If that does not make any sense, you are not alone.
Skip again 15 years when Tyson Garvin, founder and innovator at Apex Manufacturing & Design, obtained a wild hair up his … you realize … and designed and constructed this insanely unbelievable Wankel engine with twelve rotors configured in a Y design.
Garvin constructed the Y12 from a stable block of 7075 aluminum – the identical stuff utilized in NASA’s Area Shuttle and the Saturn V rocket – as a consequence of its mild weight and talent to face up to excessive stresses and excessive temperatures.
Rob Dahm
Why? As a result of his big-block Chevy-powered speedboat that he raced wanted extra energy, after all.
He constructed the Y12 rotary to suit comparable general dimension specs and bolt sample because the big-block Chevy, however so far as we will inform, the engine merely grew to become an engineering web sensation and by no means really made it into his vessel – or anything, for that matter. Even with its light-weight supplies, the engine nonetheless weighs in at a hefty 830 lb (376 kg) or so. A good bit greater than the same old 680-750 lb (308-340 kg) cast-iron huge block of the Chevy.
It did, nonetheless, make it to the dyno and produced some pretty spectacular numbers. Like 800 lb-ft (1,085 Nm) of torque at 2,000 rpm. Or 497 hp (371 kW) at 3,200 rpm. Or almost 1,400 hp (1,044 kW) at 8,500 rpm, all on 87-octane pump fuel.
Rob Dahm
Garvin says the engine is designed to be run as excessive as 14,000 rpm. He reckoned that there are a variety of how the motor might be reconfigured to punch out insane horsepower figures, like 3,600 hp (2,685 kW) with a pair of turbos and race fuel.
However that is all outdated information.
The brand new information is that Rob Dahm, the deep-end-of-the-pool man I simply talked about, has the large Y12 Wankel on mortgage from Garvin and has been prepping the powerplant for a stable year-and-a-half to realize these actually huge numbers Garvin thought his engine is able to … like perhaps 5,000 hp (3,728 kW).
Rob Dahm
“‘I need to see that factor eat,'” quotes Dahm in a YouTube video recalling Garvin’s want to see huge horsepower numbers from the Y12 he constructed.
“And if that man needs to see it eat, it is gotta eat!” He continues, additionally explaining that Garvin was the explanation why he’d determined to go along with a fair greater turbo than was initially within the plan.
And never one, not two, however three Garrett G55 96 M24 turbos! He’ll don’t have any argument from us. Let it eat.
Rob Dahm
The engine is a tri-bank design with 4 rotors per financial institution, so every financial institution will get its personal huge Garrett G55 turbo. These bad-boy turbos are designed for big displacement motors that put out severe horsepower. Assume: 1,850 to 2,900 horsepower (1,380-2,163 kW) per turbo exceeding 40 PSI (2.76 bar) increase.
To accommodate the large consumption for 3 turbos, Dahm and crew needed to redesign the gas rails and exhaust, amongst different issues. Given the engine is made nearly fully out of aluminum – as are the gas rails, consumption manifold, and many others – warmth is the enemy and one of many lovely customized 4-into-1 exhaust headers sit instantly beneath the consumption manifold … and between the gas rails.
Rob Dahm
They’ve put in fairly a little bit of effort (and some huge cash) to make it as thermally compliant as potential, together with switching from gasoline to ethanol gas whereas testing – which inherently burns cooler than gasoline – however has its personal points. Like when working wealthy, extra water spews from the exhaust, or quenches the spark plugs. The tip objective is to run the Y12 on methanol.
The staff additionally needed to tear the motor right down to nothing after they realized it was having rotor clearance points. After milling 5 to 6 thousandths off the rotors, they rebuilt it once more, making certain all the pieces was tip-top.
Rob Dahm
Through the Y12 test-fire, Dahm was in a position to attain 6 PSI (0.41 bar) of increase at 7,700 rpm at partial throttle with the turbos spinning at 47,000 rpm – far beneath their max pace of 88,000 rpm. However the staff seemed as if they had been barely apprehensive of actually giving ‘er the beans after an incident a number of days prior, particularly an explosion … a little bit of a ~200 PSI (13.79 bar) back-fire situation that blew the consumption manifold aside after they tried to start out the engine for the primary time (nobody was harmed).
We will not wait to see what sort of dyno numbers this beast places out after they actually give it some throttle! And even higher after they lastly get it mounted into some form of car!
Rob Dahm
You possibly can try Rob’s video right here:
Turbo 12 Rotor Screams to 9,000 RPM – Prepared for the Dyno!
Supply: YouTube/Rob Dahm
