How A Rotary Engine ACTUALLY Works...

Added: 2026-05-23

[00:00:00]Re Amenia stands for rotary engine Amenia. He has invited us to his factory.

[00:00:05]>> Let's meet the man, the myth, the legend.

[00:00:07]>> And this is the legend himself, Mr. >> Thank you.

[00:00:14]>> Yeah.

[00:00:16]>> He's going to show us some of the engines.

[00:00:17]>> How long has he been doing this for?

[00:00:19]>> Very long time. He is 80 years old.

[00:00:22]>> He's 80 >> 80 years old. So, he uses this crane here. He lifts up the engines with with this crane. It brings them up and then he puts them onto his engine stand right here. And this is where he builds some of his legendary rotary stuff.

[00:00:33]>> Holy. It goes underneath >> and then Yeah. Oh, so he can hoist it all the way down below.

[00:00:38]>> All the way down below.

[00:00:39]>> That's smart. And these are all just pieces of rotary engines. You know, I know the basic concepts, but I I'm very curious like how the engine actually works. I see a rotor right there. I believe >> he says the rotary is a very simple engine that really anybody can figure out. It's I think people over complicate rotaries quite a bit in America but it's quite an easy engine when you think about it. There's only a normal housing like the engine block if you will >> part of it. It's a sandwich. Think about it as a sandwich.

[00:01:13]>> All right. So this is a stock up to about 300 horsepower housing. This is a side port.

[00:01:19]And this is a peripheral port. And so there's different ways to port. So in a peripheral ported uh version of of this.

[00:01:25]So what they do is they they make these ports bigger. And that allows it now bigger 130 horsepower increase. So from 300 horsepower with with a housing like this to 400 plus horsepower with housing like this. This started as this. This is modified from this.

[00:01:43]>> Yes.

[00:01:44]>> This is kind of cool. This is really cool to really understand how these work and to see it by electronic himself.

[00:01:50]Pretty cool.

[00:01:51]>> So this is a norm this is a stock.

[00:01:56]>> This is a normal side port. When they modify >> the housings. So a side port would have come in from the bottom here. You see down below where it's open down here.

[00:02:05]This is what would be normal. What they wind up doing is then creating this peripheral porting.

[00:02:12]>> This is a normal setup. This would be a stock setup.

[00:02:15]You can see there's nothing open here.

[00:02:17]>> It's all it all comes in through down here and up this way >> and the rotor sits inside the housing.

[00:02:23]So instead of on a stock engine where the fuel would enter through here at the bottom and come up, that peripheral port allows it to open up and come straight into here as opposed to down and up this way.

[00:02:34]>> So it's more direct.

[00:02:36]>> I see it.

[00:02:36]>> You see the direct way in there.

[00:02:38]>> Yeah.

[00:02:38]>> Yeah. Which which is increase of 130 horsepower on an engine that uh like this.

[00:02:45]So what happens in this case this you get more you get more horsepower but you lose torque with a configuration like like this. So a little less torque but a rotary engine is a high winding engine anyway. So >> what's the red line at?

[00:02:56]>> Close to 10,000.

[00:02:58]>> Makes my brain hurt cuz it's like round but it's it's oval not round.

[00:03:02]>> It it exactly. And you look at the shape of it. You see how it's kind of like that. But that's how it's designed. You have a centric shaft. You have the housing. You have the rotor. You have a shaft that comes through. And then now you're going to bring another iron on top and another housing and then close it up just like a sandwich. That would be a normal two two rotor configuration.

[00:03:19]>> So they always had two rotors.

[00:03:20]>> Stock two rotors.

[00:03:21]>> Stock two, >> right? But then there was a three rotor too. Three rotor configuration too. The 20B. There was a 10A, 12A, a 13B, and then the 20B is a three rotor. Here's some an old rotor. This is a 10A. So this is a small smaller type of rotor. I believe you can see the difference.

[00:03:39]>> Oh wow. Way different. And those are factory sizes based on generation.

[00:03:43]>> 10A, 12 A, and a 13B. And this is where what's called an apex seal sits. 6 millm for an apex seal on these. The apex seal is what creates the seal around the around the house.

[00:03:54]>> The apex seals are what fails. And then you have you have failure on a lot of these.

[00:03:57]>> How many years doing this?

[00:04:02]>> 70s.

[00:04:03]>> What?

[00:04:03]>> Way back to the 70s. in the world.

[00:04:05]There's nobody more famous than him when it comes to to rotary rotary building some of these time attack cars and other things that he makes.

[00:04:13]>> What he likes to do is drive, man. And he likes to drive fast.

[00:04:16]>> He still drives at 80.

[00:04:17]>> Fast. Yeah.

[00:04:21]>> Maybe we can get him to tell you a story about about a guy in a Porsche and him driving a little rotary car.

[00:04:29]>> He was building rotary engines and there's a Mazda that's a Japan model. He built this rotary engine. The guy had a brand new Porsche 930. Had a good-looking guy with a beautiful girl in the car. And they get out onto onto the roads out here. And he starts toying with him in the shanty. And this guy can't shake this little K car running with a rotary engine. He wound up beating the guy, destroying him, embarrassing him enough that his girlfriend got up, got out of the car, and left him there because he got embarrassed by by maybe it's an in a little Mazda shanty that was running a rotary that beat a brand new Porsche.

[00:05:01]>> You add oil to the fuel. So, a lot of cases you add oil to the fuel. I believe now he's talking about there's some there's some oil systems and other things that that help them stay lubricated, but he puts the engines together dry and when they run the motors and they put in the fuel, you wind up putting in rotary uh an oil or like almost like a two-stroke oil into the with mixed with the fuel that keeps everything lubricated inside. He's admitting that, you know, rotary engines are not totally reliable engines. They they break fast. He's saying detonation, bad detonation, bad ignition systems or other stuff will blow that engine up real quick. So, a lot of people are scared of them, don't understand them, and uh they're not very reliable in that sense.

[00:05:33]>> What keeps him in business?

[00:05:35]>> It's He's been in business for a long time doing it. This has been his thing, but uh admittedly, it's not the uh easiest engine or the most reliable engine on Earth.

[00:05:42]>> I see two rotor.

[00:05:45]>> You got two rotors.

[00:05:46]>> I'm getting good at this now. Going to be a street car, but he's building for the street. It's going to have air conditioning. It's going to be daily driver, but he's building it where this car can go to scuba to about a time attack. He's looking for about 56 seconds in this machine at at scuba. How much power will this make?

[00:05:59]>> About 420 horsepower.

[00:06:00]>> Nice. I like the blue.

[00:06:01]>> He likes blue. Blue is his color. So this is the color. He he >> don't let it >> This was a car was on a rotisserie, so he he put it on there.

[00:06:09]>> Oh, so it's like brand new.

[00:06:11]>> Yeah.

[00:06:12]>> If Damon and I wanted to build a a rotary one day, which we've never done.

[00:06:15]>> Yeah.

[00:06:16]>> So we shipped the car. Does he build motors and sell motors?

[00:06:19]>> He would build for you.

[00:06:22]>> Depends what you want to do with it.

[00:06:23]What what the purpose of the car would be, but >> tell him,000 horsepower.

[00:06:36]Well, >> he says he's afraid it would break. You break that engine thousand.

[00:06:41]>> What's like a safe? What can you build you can daily drive? That's the most power you can get out of it.

[00:06:45]>> You know, the turbo creates a problem and then the gasoline and American other stuff, too. The quality of the gas is not good. So, he says you push tur turbo with bad gasoline through, you're going to blow up the engine. He says he hates building cars and having somebody blow it up. He doesn't want that to be the case. His recommendation, no turbo, NA.

[00:07:00]Make a nice good NA engine rotary, lots of noise and and that's the best way to do it. You're not going to blow it up.

[00:07:06]>> They do sound amazing.

[00:07:09]Sounds like a street bike. I don't know if DD can handle a rotary. I think we're too hard on our vehicles.

[00:07:14]>> You might be, huh?

[00:07:20]Then you're going to blow up you're going to blow up a rotary engine in no time. the way you guys are. So, he's a good guy. That's why he's around. 80 years old, still doing what he's doing.

[00:07:27]>> 80 years old building >> building >> RX7s and stuff. That's really cool.

[00:07:31]>> Look at his hands. He's he works.

[00:07:35]>> Ask him if he ever plans on retiring.

[00:07:38]>> You know, Tokyo Auto Salon, every year he puts on a big big presentation at Tokyo Auto Salon. After up to Auto Salon, they work on building cars. Once it's over, he resets and wants to build the next car for the next Tokyo Auto Salon. So, as long as there's Tokyo Auto Salons and things like that, he's going to want to keep building cars. He's saying he's totally ripping him all about how bad his car looks right. Look at him. He's just ripping it apart.

[00:07:58]>> He's giving you a hard time.

[00:08:00]>> Yeah.

[00:08:02]>> The car. Poor car.

[00:08:09]>> No comment to this.

[00:08:11]>> Is there no comment?

[00:08:12]>> No comment. There's no comment.

[00:08:18]Just giving him just giving him the the 80-year-old grandpa treatment.