Hello, a couple years ago when I was living in Colorado, my buddy brought his '93 RX7 out from his home state of Missouri. When he bought and modded the car he had it done when he lived in Missouri. It has a big turbo.. a "John Deer" turbo .. He said it had a port job done, standalone ECU, full exhaust, not really sure how much else was done to it. He did show me his dyno sheet that read at 397 hp. Anyways when we drove it to Denver from Summit County, we had no problem. It is about a 45 minute drive from an elevation of 8500 feet down to about 5100 feet. However when we drove back up into the mountains, it over heated on us 3 or 4 times. Also when trying to accelerate hard, the car would have severe power fluctuations, or maybe it was just cutting out repeatedly. It only happened when we floored it and the turbo was spooling hard. It would probably be like if you had a lightswitch hooked up to the ignition and flicked it on and off really fast repeatedly.
So on to my question. Does a rotary engine have issues with elevation changes like a 2 stroke engine does? I am wondering this because of where he had his car set up orriginally compared to the elevation of where we were living at 8500 feet.. big difference. Could this be an issue or does it sound like anything you can put your finger on? I am interested in buying one and he wanted to sell me his. So I'd like to know what the problem is before considering buying it.

Thank you

 

Most ECU's, as far as I know, work on the "difference" between the atmospheric pressure and the manifold pressure to determine amount of air inducted and therefore the fuel dosage so the altitude one is driving should not matter.

I would be very wary of buying a rotary that you know has been overheated. They don't like it at all.

 

Thanks for the info. Yeah, I did a bit more reading and see that overheating is a big no no.