# The NSU Spyder "Wankel" Car



## jack.39 (Apr 22, 2014)

In 1965 I had the good fortune to experience driving an NSU Spyder powered by a Wankel rotary engine. The car was marketed out of Germany, and my company had bought one specifically to investigate what market might exist for sealing products used in this engine. I worked for Victor Manufacturing and Gasket Company, which later became a division of Dana Corporation. 

 We disassembled the Wankel in our Field Test Lab. I may still have a pic of the deal somewhere, if anyone cares to see..    jack


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## bmt (Apr 24, 2014)

jack.39 said:


> In 1965 I had the good fortune to experience driving an NSU Spyder powered by a Wankel rotary engine. The car was marketed out of Germany, and my company had bought one specifically to investigate what market might exist for sealing products used in this engine. I worked for Victor Manufacturing and Gasket Company, which later became a division of Dana Corporation.
> 
> We disassembled the Wankel in our Field Test Lab. I may still have a pic of the deal somewhere, if anyone cares to see..    jack


*The NSU Spyder "Wankel" Car,
hi jack.39,
you wrote about your experience around apex-seals of the NSU/wankel rotary engine, you made in the 60ies. I´m very interested in your story.

GeGe
*


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## Omnimill (Apr 24, 2014)

A guy I used to work with used to convert NSU Ro 80's to Ford Vee four. The Wankel engines were sold for scrap, no idea how much he got for them!


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## jack.39 (Apr 25, 2014)

The Spyder, first commercially-built vehicle powered by a "Wankel Engine", is of interest for several reasons. The name "Wankel" was included in descriptive material for the car. Wankel, of course, was the engine concept's inventor. 

 Mazda has since produced a huge number of rotary-engine vehicles, the name Wankel being dropped in favor of simply "rotary powered". I suspect, and seem to vaguely recall, that Mazda bought the patent rights to produce, but not positive on this.

 The rotor in our Spyder's engine was about the size of a large pie-plate, perhaps 2-1/2" thick, and had periphery seals made of carbon strips, spring-loaded to assure constant contact with the trochoidal chamber in which the rotor "spun", power being drawn from the rotor by an internally-cut gear within  a hole in it's center. I was at that time a young man, employed by my  company only 2 years, quite "green" still, but carrying a good amount of practical experience in Automotive Engineering, even though I had obtained an A.A.S. Degree in Electronics Engineering. The person who ran the Field Test Facility, Paul Gallo, a burly, self-made mechanic of amazing ability and dislike for "helpless Engineers", took me under his wing after seeing some of my building accomplishment.

 I traveled back to Chicago in 1992, and looked him up. He was still employed by Victor, 6 years older than I, and we greatly enjoyed an evening of old-times chat. At the time, I was 50; we had not seen or spoken to each other since 1972, twenty years! He was quite grateful that I would have gone to such length to see him again. In the late '90s I tried to contact him, and learned he was deceased. How I wished I had gone to see him one more time, before it was too late.......I have been, unfortunately, unable to find the Wankel Engine pics. Below is a pic of Paul Gallo, taken in 1964, working on an aftermarket speed control. After 50 years, sorry, it's the best I could do!     jack


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## bmt (Apr 27, 2014)

That´right, in the mid 1970ies several engine conversions had been tried. But nowadys the NSU Ro 80 is a century car and has to be in original shape, so also thess people, who made the modifications, later refusbished the broken rotary engines and put it back to the original Ro 8ß bodies.
Witeh rotary greetings  bmt.


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## bmt (Apr 27, 2014)

jack.39 said:


> The Spyder, first commercially-built vehicle powered by a "Wankel Engine", is of interest for several reasons. The name "Wankel" was included in descriptive material for the car. Wankel, of course, was the engine concept's inventor.
> 
> >>>  That´s right, only 2375 were built. Teh NSU motorwors had to show, that the new NSU/Wankel rotary engine was usable as a car power unit. A lot of patens had been sold worldwide an the seller wanted to see that their engine concept was suitable for driving a car, the Spider showed it. It had alos been used successful in motorsports.
> See at: http://www.wankel-spider.de
> ...



I'll answer into you post >>>


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## DICKEYBIRD (Apr 27, 2014)

I worked for a small shop from 1968-1971 that was an NSU dealer and I worked on a Spyder or 2.  Just small peripheral stuff mostly.  At least one engine was replaced for tip seal failure but another tech got the job.

My boss was a German and a gung-ho fanatic of the boys from Neckarsulm.  They were a brilliant company for sure and their little air cooled rear engine sedans (Prinz 1000 & 1200 if I recall correctly) were IMHO so far ahead of anything else it was amazing.  The Volkswagen's of that time were archaic pigs in comparison.  IIRC, Audi absorbed NSU for obvious reasons.

Oops, back to the Wankel.  The boss was an SCCA racer (Prinz 1000 TTS) and went back home to Germany for a month or so on vacation.  He came back with starry eyes and rosy cheeks after seeing the factory race team's cars run at one of the famous tracks of the day (Nurburgring?)  He also came back with a 40 DCOE Weber setup to replace the Solex's, a trick header, pistons, cams, close ratio gears, etc, etc and glowing tales of their tricked out Spyder race car.  The stock Wankel was red-lined at 6K but the race engine was spun up way higher and had to be exchanged after every race (if not sooner!)

He also said it had a custom stainless tuned exhaust megaphone and was absolutely the loudest thing known to man, short of an atomic bomb.;D


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## jack.39 (Apr 27, 2014)

bmt, much obliged for the history facts you wrote! Anyone  who was actually involved way back then, must be almost as old as I am!

 Dickey, thank you, too!    jack


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