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This website is absolutely fascinating if you're a technically minded gearhead. It has Gasoline, Steam, Sterling and Jet engines animated to show how they work, plus static diagrams and descriptive explanations. Click on the engine names and watch the GIF file animations.

If they don't animate, you'll need to change your browser settings. In Firefox, mine was set to "once" and I didn't see much. Fixing it is complicated, but here's how. Put "about config" in a new Tab's URL command line and press the "Enter" key. Then scroll down (alphabetically) to "image animation mode", Right mouse click it and select "Edit". In the data field that before said "Once" or "False" enter the word "normal". Don't screw with anything else!! Finally, Right mouse click the "about:config" Tab and select "CloseTab". They'll animate now! So will everybody's Emoticons (HappyFaces) too.

I spent a good half hour at the engine website and finally got a handle on how Sterling engines work.

-Enjoy-

Cool site.
One engine I have a hard time grasping the concept of is the rotary engine. Maybe that site will help but it still doesn't make too much sense to me.

The Blue eccentric is the crankshaft. There's a large needle bearing between it and the red triangular rotor that drives it. Notice they are turning at different speeds. The black center gear is held stationary. The rotor is therefore forced to trace the motion it makes without touching the outer cylinder walls for it's cyclical motion . The rotor would move the same way even if the outer cylinderwalls weren't there. The 4 basic combustion cycles follow one rotor surface. Upper right is the intake port. At 5 O'Clock is the compression, at 7 O'Clock the Power stroke's expansion drives the rotor, then it's exhausted in the upper left.

Early Wankels had durability problems, but Mazda finally mastered the lip seals and precise combustion chamber contours required. It's 3 shortcomings are high oil and fuel consumption and a dirty exhaust - - - which is why they aren't very popular today. The HP per Pound is fantastic. They do not vibrate. The HP per cu.in. is very high.

COOL! I love the Wankel rotary GIF.

I wish they had one for the BMW Boxer twin.