Looking at today's global truck power chain, diesel engines and natural gas engines account for the vast majority of the market size. The remaining part is also occupied by "new energy" such as battery drive and hydrogen fuel cells, which seems a bit boring. In the last century, however, many different dynamic schemes emerged. Among them, even the mainland has invested a lot of painstaking research and development, and has also come to the forefront of the world. In the end, however, this dynamic scheme did not bear fruit.
What is this powertrain? In fact, it is the famous rotor engine. The familiar Mazda RX-8 sports car uses a rotor engine. In the last century, automotive engineers on the mainland also developed a number of rotor engines. Not only cars, but also trucks use domestically produced rotor engines. In today's article, we will take you to review it.
Let's talk about the history of rotor engines first! In 1795, British scientist James Watt built the world's first steam rotor engine. Unlike ordinary engines, this engine has a Lerough delta rotor installed inside the cylinder, and the high temperature and high pressure gas generated by combustion pushes the rotor to rotate, which in turn generates power. In 1929, the German engineer Felix Wankel invented the world's first internal combustion rotor engine and registered a patent. However, due to the subsequent Second World War, the study of this type of engine was shelved, and it was not until the war that it was back on track.
In the early 1960s, Chinese automotive engineers also looked at this unique engine system. Rotor engines have many advantages such as strong performance and compact size, so the rotor engine has also become the target of China's automobile industry at that time, which is responsible for the FAW engine department. FAW engineers have conducted extensive research with the help of foreign technical information and related magazines. Eventually, the first domestically produced rotor engine rolled off the production line on March 8, 1960. According to literature, FAW engineers connected the engine to a water pump to test whether it would work properly. After that, the unit was sent to Beijing, which was well received by the central leaders and people from all walks of life.
In the same year, FAW's rotor engine project was officially approved, and the project code was code-named 602. In April of the same year, the second batch of rotor engines began trial production, with a total of seven units being built. These engines are mainly used for testing and verifying key parameters such as the rationality of the design. The seventh engine was installed on the then Dongfeng CA71 sedan and tested on the road. After the completion of the test, FAW improved the engine problem and started the trial production of the third batch of rotor engines in May of the same year, and a total of 12 units were manufactured, of which the 11th engine was installed on a Jiefang CA-10 truck for testing. The Liberation CA-10 truck was a domestic version of the Soviet Zil-157 truck, which was equipped with a rotor engine displacement of 0.65 liters and a horsepower of 50 horses.
In the 200 km range test, the engine exposed a number of problems. In response to these problems, FAW has begun to conduct new research and trial production. The fourth batch of prototype rotor engines has been able to meet the 50 hours of normal working hours. However, due to the tilt of resources within FAW, more researchers and R&D funds have been allocated to the CA140-1E truck project. In the end, the 602 project was stopped in 1967, and the relevant technical data and documents were handed over to the three factories of Beijing Automobile Factory, Tianjin Power Machine Factory and Guilin Machinery Factory.
Let's talk about the Beijing Automobile Factory: After receiving the relevant technology, the Beijing Automobile Factory developed a new double-rotor engine, which can output 116 horsepower. The engine was loaded into the BJ130 truck for road testing, and the mileage reached 25,000 kilometers, and at the same time, beijing automobile factory also put another two-rotor engine into the BJ212 jeep for 20,000 kilometers, and then put it into the BJ130 truck and tested it again. 80,000 km. These tests collected a lot of valuable data for the Beijing Automobile Factory, but in the end they did not continue to develop.
Tianjin Power Engine Factory, after getting the relevant data, they also got prototypes from abroad, and finally developed a new 2210 type double-rotor engine in 1969, with a displacement of 2.2 liters. With 120 hp at 8500 rpm and 280 Nm of torque at 8000 rpm, the power parameters are already quite good. According to the data, about 100 engines of the Type 2210 were produced. At the same time, the Tianjin Truck Repair Factory coordinated the production of 40 TJ140 trucks equipped with 2210 rotor engines.
The rotor version of the TJ140 truck was born in November 1969, and the whole vehicle was manually manufactured by the workers of the Tianjin Truck Repair Factory with their hands. This truck has a maximum speed of 140 km/h and can also carry 4 tons of cargo. To prove the reliability of the engine and vehicle, the TJ140 was also tested for 10,000 kilometers. The director of the factory led the workers from Tianjin and drove all the way to Lhasa, which can be called the most dangerous road. The truck also lived up to expectations, not only arriving in Lhasa, but also bringing 4 tons of rice and salt to help the local supply of daily necessities.
Zhang Lianke, then director of the Tianjin Truck Repair Factory, and three factory employees drove to Lhasa in the TJ140 truck behind them.
Although its power performance is excellent, the disadvantages are also quite obvious: the rotor engine has a high speed and wears more on the engine itself. The engine consumes high fuel and is poorly economical. Moreover, the rotor engine also has a unique high-pitched noise, which brings resonance and noise to the cab, and the comfort is not good. Combined with the above reasons, the TJ140 was discontinued after two years of production, and only 40 units were produced. Moreover, these TJ140s are all prototype vehicles and are not on the market.
In addition to the above two, the Jinhua Repair Factory in Zhejiang has also carried out the development of rotor engines. From the single-cylinder rotor engine in 1971 to the later classic JZ211/JZ211B engine, Jinhua plant invested a lot in rotor engines. In 1971, jinhua factory installed its single-cylinder 1L rotor engine on a Qiantangjiang brand truck and tested it for 50,000 kilometers.
The test results are shown in the figure above. It can be seen that the early rotor engine has advantages in fuel consumption and power output. As the test progressed, fuel consumption levels and reliability declined, as did power output. Moreover, the rotor engine has higher requirements for oil and design and manufacturing processes. Subject to the development of the times and the backwardness of the factory's own technology, these problems have not been effectively solved.
Later, the JZ211 series rotor engine of Jinhua Factory was born. With a displacement of 2.2 liters, 160 hp and 320 Nm of torque, this engine has a large number of applications on the JT662 passenger car. The JZ211 series engines have a unique power output and compact structure, which has more advantages than conventional engines. At the same time, the engine mounting position and gearbox gear ratio of the JT662 bus have modified the compact layout of the rotor engine and the high-speed output characteristics, so that the vehicle has more internal space and a maximum speed of up to 90 km/h.
Not only in the field of commercial vehicles, but also in the field of rotor engines, the use of rotor engines has also expanded to the fields of hovercraft, generator sets and water pumps, which is quite revolutionary. But in the end, the rotor engine is still eliminated by history, why?
There are many reasons for this. First of all, the rotor engine has high requirements for related fluids and accessories, and the weak industrial level of the mainland in the last century could not meet the needs of related manufacturing and supporting. In turn, these rotor engines have a serious problem of poor reliability. At the same time, R & D resources are extremely scattered, each manufacturer has its own products, and there is no accurate national standard for coordination, and the degree of marketization is extremely poor. There are also rotor engines with high fuel consumption, high noise and other inherent problems, after the domestic diesel engine technology has been developed, this type of engine with high manufacturing costs, complex structure and poor reliability has been completely abandoned.
Looking at the history of domestic commercial rotor engines, it is not difficult to see the efforts and painstaking efforts of the predecessors in truck technology. Although the rotor engine is gone, this enterprising spirit still flows in the blood of contemporary Chinese truck people. Today, the development of China's truck industry is inseparable from the joint efforts of everyone. Including the owners of domestic trucks, they are also supporters and witnesses of this spirit. At the same time, this history can also give us enough enlightenment to enable domestic truck companies to move faster, better and more solidly to the future.
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Text: Heseaotter