Meet the gigantic 12-rotor spinner!

Screenshot: Rob Dahm on YouTube

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The rotary engine continues to attract many enthusiasts. Because very few cars have been built with powertrains of this type, automakers haven’t fully exploited the limitations of this architecture. It’s been the tuners who have done big projects for us, with huge turbochargers, four-rotor blocks and even some with six. But the protagonist of this story can conquer them all because we are talking about it Engine no less than twelve rotors!

Huge engine

The idea was conceived and implemented by Tyson Garvin of Apex Manufacturing and Design, but it caught our eye via Rob Dahm’s latest video. No stranger to wild cars with rotary engines, Garvin and his engine called Dahm into the shop for a deep dive. The block is huge, beautiful and completely absurd. But it is designed for a mission that few imagine: speedboat racing..

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Garvin and his crew, like most speedboat racers, Big Block Chevy engines are used as a base“We’ve done everything you can do with a Big Block Chevy. Even if you buy the best components and go to the best tuner, there are still parts that are going to break, like valve springs. You’re going to bend metal back and forth and it’s going to break no matter how you build it,” says Garvin. His solution was unorthodox.

“A rotary engine has no real known failures. For example, some gaskets can wear out, things wear out, but nothing breaks for fun like a Big Block Chevy. So we set out to measure one. And see how many rotors we can fit.” In the end, we came up with this design, which is the exact shape of a Chevrolet Big Block.. I mainly did this to replace my boat engine, says Garvin.

The end result is a giant, beautiful, and intricately designed engine. A set of rotors rotate backwards to help balance out the harmonics and to make the setup of the exhaust and intakes symmetric from side to side. The current setup powers both the front and rear rotors simultaneously, so there is no need for counterweights.Although Garvin points out, the flexibility of the spinner setup means you can run whenever you want. You just have to balance it.

Difficult to improve

Unfortunately, its size posed some challenges that did not appear to be fully resolved. While the engine was running before, it ran on a carburetor which choked it before it reached full power. Garvin says he didn’t have engine control software available that could manage all 24 of the injectors, and that the V12 engine’s control systems had some limitations. However, he’s got a great personality: The engine achieves 1,355 Nm of torque at 2,000 rpm and can rev above 9,000 rpm.

Cooling and airflow certainly present challenges, but the Garvin seems to be up to the task. There is also a legitimate reason behind the rotary engine. In addition to the lack of known malfunctions (you don’t need valves in such a block), the need to run on wide open throttle for hours seems ideal for such a solution, which generally works better at high revs. However, Now that it’s in Rob Dahm’s hands, we’re hoping it will end up in a wild project based on a specific car.. When that happens, we’ll be sure to let you know.