Im not trying to start a flame war, though i fear it is inevitable. From my understanding, a lot of people here went through 4-5 rotaries, becoming rotary masters through the process, and decided they didnt want the hassle of them blowing up anymore, so they got V8's. But nowadays, it seems that its such a common swap that everyone HATES rotaries. Random ricers with civics tell me i need an LS1? I guess my question is, do most of you hate rotaries or just prefer V8's? I can understand why a lot of people prefer LS1's, but I don't get where these people come from who tell me straight up that a rotary sucks. (people with riced out civics, no less).

Let me re-emphasize, i dont want a flame war, im just curious.

 

Theyre a curiousity to me, to be blunt. I dont harbor feelings for or against them, but I do dislike how people act because OF them.

Like, how the engine acts just like a 2.6 liter engine, but they still insist its 1.3 liters in displacement because of how youre supposed to measure it... ignoring the air flow in, exhaust gas flow out, etc. Then there are the rotard flamewars who flip out because their put-on-a-pedistal chassis is being 'disgraced' by a piston engine. Thats just nonsense... oh, and misconceptions that have LONG ago been proven false such as changing handling and weight distribution.

Personally, for me, going on I was thinking this: "Ok, american sports cars have crap chassis unless you spend the dollar for a corvette, and a lot of the japanese cars handle great but getting performance out of the small displacement engines isnt very cost effective bang for buck, and parts are expensive; european cars are just too expensive period." I was considering a v8->Z car swap, but when I found out about the RX-7/v8 swaps, it really caught my eye, and here I am.

Great chassis, and a cheap, flexible, powerful, reliable engine? Sign me up! I was going to go with a FD, but theyre just too damn expensive. FCs arent very expensive (except in my local market ugh) and v8s are abundant, as are parts for them. Its not out of 'disrespect' (what an overused buzzword) of the car, its wanting to have my cake and eat it too without paying a lot now (corvette) or a lot over a long period of time (FD).

To get back on the topic of the rotary itself.. its not something against it, its just not what I want. I want as much as I can possibly get out of the money I put into it. Rotaries arent the best options for that... especially considering the available engines are 2.6 and 3.9 liters, respectively. Any turbo that can be put on a 20b I can just as soon put on a v8 with more displacement, that costs less and doesnt grenade if it pings.... and its easier to work on v8s.

Purist enthusiasts might disagree, but I really dont give a damn. Unless they'd volunteer a corvette for me, Im going to do this - which is cheaper and easier and in many ways more effective (its lighter than corvettes). So, basically, its v8rx-7, or a C6 :P

 

I understand you're side completely, im just so sick of clueless idiots telling me i have a sweet car but my engine is a piece of ****. It's like the new cool thing to do here. "aw throw an LS1 in there! rotaries suck!". Im just curious if most people who actually have v8 rx-7's think rotaries all out suck, or just prefer the V8.

 

I think rotaries are fine, just not my cup of tea. I have nothing against people driving them, and I hang with the wankel guys in my town. No problemo. I looked at TII swap or LS1, and I did the LS1. Cost me a lot less, and I have a LOT more power.

 

Rotor Motors don't suck. I like them just fine. It's just that an LS1 will surpass a 13B in just about every way possible. Power output, TORQUE output, POWERBAND, reliability, streetablity, gas mileage, and it won't sound like an electric razor. My friends call my 13B car "wheezy".

 

i like them, i mean my next car will probably another rx7, fd or turbo fb, or something. and i plan on keeping the rotary motor those, i just wanted to see how this combo turns out. there is so much difference between the two you have to know both in order to know what your up against. i know ALOT more about rotary motors than i do about v8s but i am learning alot from this.

 

or the fact that the majority of rotaries made were 12As, not 13Bs. With a handful of 10As in there to boot.

No, see, they hate the chassis. To them, the only reason to buy an RX-7 is because it's rotary powered, and the car itself isn't fun to drive. (Oddly most people of this opinion have FCs or FDs... coincidence? )


It's just an engine, it's a tool. Depending on how things go, in a couple years my FC might have something beefy in the V6 vein under its hood. If there's money, a Buick V6, if not, a VG30E (if only because the FC seems like it's trying to be a Z31). I give thumbs up to people doing V8 conversions, even though most of them are Chevy engines and Chevy engines are complete cheese and Ford engines fit better in a 1st-gen anyway. But hot roddin' is hot roddin', you know?

Personally, I'd want a piston engine for a street driven car (noise reasons), but for racing it's rotary or nothing, since IMO piston engines are too abuse-unfriendly unless you inject large amounts of cash into the mill.

 

There was a guy at the drag strip in a crowd of Honda fans, who told me "rx7s are great, but they're always breaking" meaning the engine I guess. He was one of the guys who didn't have a car, most of the others had 14 and 15 second street cars, and the turboed ones were faster than that.

He was right, the motor broke later due to mistakes I made with the street port and side seal clearancing needs. But it still kicked most of those NA high dollar Honda's asses, bwahahaha. Rotary modding is not talked about enough, porting knowlege is not discussed. The rotary crowd is full of bitter fools IMO, with a few innovators quietly pushing the limits and exploring new paths to getting power and reliability. Old time rotary racers seem to be the most helpful / knowlegeable. Orthodox turbo rotary modders tend to be the most abrasive and skeptical.

I love the rotary. It's delicate and very particular to correct modding, and "correct modding" isn't something you can just go research how to do. But yeah, they are awesome when they run right. LS1's are awesome too, but the sound they make just isn't right for a rotary car. It's too american sounding if you know what I mean.

 

BS!

BS!

Okay, maybe you have a point for turbo stuff.... ten-fifteen years ago. But if you think a rotary is "delicate" you should see some of the piston engine JUNK out there that people make good power with. That's where you either learn to tune quickly, or hemmorage from the wallet frequently. Sure one or two pings on a high output turbo rotary will kill the engine, well guess what the same goes for a high output turbo piston engine too! And pistons can do as much damage or more as a shattered seal when the chunks start flying.

 

1. Overheat a rotary and it's a rebuild. Overheat a piston engine and it's a head gasket.

2. Port a head wrong and its got a bad power band. Port a rotary wrong and it will eventually run on 5 rotor faces out of 6

3. Put a free flowing exhaust on a V8 and you're street legal. Do the same with a rotary and you're heard a mile away.

4. Where o where is the discussion on proper port closing scissor angle, radius of the cut at the shoulder for side seal tip safety, and the proper way to lay out a street port with a plexiglass template? The oldschool racers like Mazdatrix founder Dave Lemon, as well as the racing governing bodies know about openign side seal support issues and how to define a street port for racing, no one on the forum ever pointed that out though. How about exhaust port flowbench results? never discussed. Only Paul Yaw's website gave some valuable clues for me after the fact.

Want more?

 

I still respect rotaries. They're not my thing though. My 13brew actually gave me very few problems, I just wanted something different. I still want something different though. There are too many of these swaps rolling around now, so I need to put my own little personal touch on it.

 

i bought my V8-7 cause it was different... something you NEVER see around here, sure there are hybrid cars all over the place with these ricers doing b16,b18 whatever swaps but hey ... i like it cause it DOES sound wrong, it DOES look out of place, and it DOES run like a raped ape

never really been one to be 100% mainstream anyways, and if it pisses off a few militant purists all the better, there is a reason that throughout history all zealotous movemetns have failed, blind faith does not work, being open to change and willing to accept new things ensures longevity, my FC is 20 years old, its still a happy car though

 

I have overheated rotaries many times and have blown exactly this many: zero.
This includes my new engine which uses 18 gauge electrical wire for coolant seals... it withstood pegging the gauge no problem. (That'll teach me to forget to hook the fan up!)

if you overheat a rotary comprehensively enough to fry it, that level of overheat is probably going to do more than just blow a head gasket... like crack the head(s), if not outright warping them to the point that the cam siezes, or (like I've done not once but twice) the pistons stick in the bores because aluminum expands faster than iron. The iron wins that battle.

Put in a cam wrong and you might get dented pistons and bent valves, or you knock the head off of a valve.

You haven't heard some of my boingers. The noise is one thing that bothers me about rotaries, but that's not to say all piston engines are quiet.

The info is out there. Just because it's not spoon fed to you in a convenient one-shot thread on some forum doesn't mean it does not exist.

 

personally i love rotaries, i just wanted to try something different and see how cool it was. no sense in having a closed mind

 

Rotaries are cool, just not practical for me or the power levels I was looking for. They can make some awesome power for their size when tuned correctly. I just don't have the time and money to go down that road.

I tried it, it was fun while it lasted, but when faced with costly rebuilds, nobody local who I would trust to tune it properly and the fact that I did not buy the car for it's engine - the decision was easy.

 

Hence my saying "not discussed"

 

im rotary 4 life..dont plan on driving anything else..lol except my wifes car when im doing the family thing

 

The Rotary's already run quite a bit hotter than a v8. Overheating is just a matter of leaving the car stock enough and running it hard enough in the right conditions... am I right?


You'll find so many refrences as to how to put a cam in, yet so few as to how to build a rotary engine for reliability and power under the curve...

No, it's not, but then again the V8 forums can usually be counted on to provide you with at least 90% of the information you'ld need to build an engine to match your specifications.. maybe not a one shot thread, but many of them do have most of the information posted up.

 

I have an LS1/FD and a rotary/FD.

I use the LS1/FD when I want to have ***** out fun.
I use the rotary FD when I want to go for a more civilized, quiet, comfortable ride.

 

Err... the LS1 is ***** out but uncivilized, too loud and not comfortable? Well what did you do to it? :P

I know that rotaries dont have vibration issues but the exhaust note is raspy as hell and theyre not exactly the best producers of low end torque.

 

I have had the fortune of being in both ls1 and 20b powered fd's (gnx7's and sirjury's respectively).
Both are spectacular cars and I would take either in a heartbeat. They both put out the same power ~430 rwhp. Though the ls1 is n/a while the 20b is a conservative single turbo @ 10 psi, the ls1 is not as mild mannered as the 20b surprisingly. The mileage, as reported by each of them, seem to be within the ballpark of one another.
Cost: Well I look at it this way, the ls1 has a shitload of more parts (more money) that can be modified, but most are readily available and reasonably priced. The 20b has only a few parts to be modified but are either one off or more expensive than their v8 counterparts. Including the cost of their engines (and not the tranny in the ls1 case), these two conversions were about the same price. So far, neither has proven to be more reliable than the other, I don't care what Mark says.

One of these days I'll get these two clowns to go head to head and settle this once and for all.
Care to chime in Mark....

To me, you can't beat the sound of a rotary, especially a 3-rotor.
I'm a rotorhead to the bone (skull) but also like engines with power; any engines for that matter. I've blown several rotaries and still come back for more. I've also tossed the rods of a small block though an oil pan in my old stepside when I USED to be a V8 guy. There is just something about the challenge of squeezing a ton of power out of these engines that I enjoy. Also, working on my car is part of the pleasure of owning it in the first place. However, I can afford it and thank the rotorgods I can

Also, fwiw, if you overheat a piston engine with aluminum heads and think all you need is a head gasket, you are a fool.

 

p.s.
Having faith in rotaries is like being an Islamic fundamentalist. You have to accept the fact that you're going to blow up sooner or later.

 

RX-Heven - ive overheated engines until they dieseled, pinged, blew all the steam out and seized when I changed gears! I let it cool off and start it up and it took me home.

Lesse... Maxima 5sp that blew a rad hose, an Achieva (basically a cavalier) that had a endtank blow out... amusingly my camaros reliable as hell, though I managed to blow out 3rd gear

 

Ok I'm giving my opinion guys, please don't disable my rep points, but this is how I feel about the rotary.

I think the rotary is an awesome engine. It makes power, and it's very simple. Plus I like how its very unique. I feel form my experence that the rotary is best left as a racing engine when modified and kept as a track car for these reason( no plates).

If the engine is left bone stock it's fine; however, I want alot more than 255HP in a project car, while on a reasonable budget. I don't have thousands to make a supercar. If I did, Id buy the new z06.

For these reasons I feel the rotary is best left as unstreetable:

Overheating

Want Hp and boost? Forget is. FMIC is the only inexpensive way to make HP and up the boost. Ive had after market SMIC and they get heat soaked so bad you loose alot of HP. So you have to go FMIC. But now that the intercooler is blocking the radiator, the car runs alot hotter. YOu can buy aftermarket radiaters and duct your airflow to help, but it will still overheat stuck in traffic on a 100 day. I had to pull over in my fancy sports car and was rather enbarrassed after I spent alot of money and the dam thing overheats so easily.
I like to drive my cars at any given time, and if it can't, its not streetable.

Pump Gas and HP

Nothing has changed in 5 years. 400whp is about all you'll get on pump gas, nothing has really evolved. Race gas is really expensive. Supras, evos, all run 20+psi on pump gas with no problems. The rotary cant. Also I dont like the peeky powerband of single turbos, it's really useless on the street.

Blown motors

This is aggervating. I don't like wasting my time and money. Having to replace a motor every week, month or season for 400-500hp is not good and very undesireable in my books. I have patience with cars, but only to a reasonable point.

Loud exhaust

I try to be a mature adult, but when the RX-7 is shaking the windows of a car beside me with a baby in the back, its not good. I feel like a dipshit in some obnoxious car. Also when its time to go out at 11pm and my residential street is quiet with sleeping kids, the exhaust is so loud it wakes the neighborhood, and can be heard like a jumbo jet flying low form above.

Fourm

I hate to say it guys, but the RX-7 does loose. And theres alot of faster, better cars out there. The FD is amost 15 years old now. Don't get me wong, I bought one because it's the best sports car I could afford. THere seems to be an attitude on here that the RX-7 is Gods gift to earth. I think not. However the forum had lots of usefull and helpfull, knowlegeable people. I have learned alot form this forum.

Other personal experence

Well I've had the Rx-7 at the track and it was awesome. It was keeping up with a 2004 Audi S4, and I had minimal mods and stock twins.

However I've seen my friends very highly moded FD loose to a stock Viper, only because he makes his power first. I've also lost dragracing to V8's simply because of peeky HP in the rotary.

My next car might be a V8 because it would be nice to have a usable powerband on the street.

 

That's the same no matter what.

People run rotaries about the same temps as older boingers... 180-200 degree range. Newer boingers don't even turn the fans on until 245F or so. The hotter the engine, the more efficient it is (since less heat is lost to the cooling system due to a lower temp drop combustion to water jackets) and the more efficient the cooling system is (higher temp drop radiator to ambient air).

You can overheat anything.

I rarely if ever see any info online about degreeing a cam, pulling the heads off and claying the pistons to check for valve interference, checking for valve seal clearance, rocker to stud clearance, etc.

I remember someone linked me to a nopistons thread where someone was giving away all of his "secrets" for porting. I was shocked. Stuff that should be basic common-sense items (like making sure the side seals don't fall in, porting a "landing zone" at the closing edge, etc) was supposedly a big secret and everyone was oohing and ahhing.

It was at this point that I remembered that the majority of people in the import scene are morons. Then it made sense.