Hi all. I'm back again with more technical BS!! Hey wdwflash you were so close! Suzuki's bike was called the RE5. Obviously the RE is the rotary engine and the 5 signified the capacity. It came in at 499cc and was a single rotor engine sporting only one spark plug but unfortunately wasn't a success due to being quite heavy and QUITE underpowered compared to it's 3 cyls, two strokes of it's day. My local Tech. college has one for show and I had a chance to throw the leg over and take it for a spin in the car park. It wasn't slow but I certaining wouldn't say it was exhilarating!!

 

Here is a pic I found on the net.

 

Hey all. Hey Isamu, that's the one alright!! I knew I had some more bike info laying around. So I suppose this is tehcnical BS 2!! 1974 was the first release of the RE5 and it was updated in 1976 under the name of RE5A. Basically most of the changes were styling related, different guages and the like. I've got times of a quarter mile time of 13.9 seconds and 0 to 60mph of 5.3 seconds. The one I rode didn't feel that fast but it didn't do a lot of work.

Yamaha played with the rotary idea in 1972 with a bike called the RZ-201. It had a twin rotor engine with a 660cc capacity. Their other bike was called a W2000 which was a single rotored engine with a capacity of 294cc. I'm not sure if either of the bikes ever made it production or were merely prototypes.

Norton/Triumph's effort in the rotary era was a twin rotored engine with a capacity of 588cc but I'm unsure of it's codename.

Van Veen had one of the largest capacity rotors of the early bikes. It came in at almost a litre from two rotors and was called the OCR-1000.

If anyone has any other technical info I'm more than interested in a read!!

 

Theres a site that offers info on 2 different rotary bikes. The Suzuki RE5 and a german made one.Rotary Reycle

 

Norton made a racing bike that was a rotary > it one isle of man i know that. I also know it hooned, had a top speed of well over 300kmph, and had 180hp.

It total blew away all the racing ducati's, and all them. As far as i can remember the rotor was about the size of a fist. It was N/A and had 2 rotors.