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Many sports cars have recently appeared on the market, and people's interest in and requirements for the cars are continuing to grow. The RX-7 was developed to be a first-class sports car that Mazda can be proud of worldwide as a trend leader for sports cars in the '90s. Among many innovations, its engine is the fruit of all the efforts Mazda has done to realize a “pure RE sports car” that takes every advantage of the rotary engine. This paper describes the aim of the development, main specifications, performance characteristics and major new technologies of the engine.

The latest rotary engine in production features a substantial improvement in power output, fuel economy, quietness. This was made possible by use of a number of new technologies including a refined dynamic effect intake system, a twin-scroll turbocharger, improved gas seal elements, and a thermo-controlled rotor cooling system. Research is continuing to draw out more potential of the rotary engine. Currently being developed are such techniques as pumping loss reduction by connecting two working chambers, timed induction with supercharge (TISC) and three-rotor rotary engine. These techniques take advantage of structural merits of the rotary engine.

The present trend of internal combustion engines toward higher-speed and higher-output capacity is pressing the need for improved lubrication of sliding parts in the combustion chamber to secure reliability. To meet this need, investigation into frictional phenomena was made with a rotary engine, which led to the development of a method of coating the inner surface of the rotor housing with fluorocarbon resin superior in self-lubrication and friction resistance. Rotary engines given this surface finishing showed no trace of irregular wear of the sliding surfaces even when subjected, prior to completion of run-in firing (in green condition), to high-speed and high-load tests, indicating this method's noteworthy benefit of improving comformability. This method offers an excellent surface finish for sliding parts of internal combustion engines (rotary and reciprocating) which will gain increasingly higher output in the future.