Any good car enthusiast is well aware the benefits of an LS swap. Dropping one of General Motors’ compact, V8 pushrod motors into the front of a sports car is a relatively cheap and easy way to make huge amounts of power and get that desirable eight-cylinder soundtrack. They are extremely common for this reason, however – making them a bit unpopular among those who like to go against the mainstream.
One man who certainly isn’t mainstream is Rob Dahm. The popular YouTuber is a Mazda rotary engine evangelist and has built the spinning Dorito motors up to be extremely powerful in the past. Dahm recently outdid himself, flipping the LS swap narrative on its head by pulling the LS6 engine out of his C5 Corvette Z06 and dropping a two-rotor 13B rotary engine in its place.
The two-rotor engine he dropped in the C5 was actually sold to Dahm by Mazda USA, who made an exception for him and his ridiculous Corvette Z06 build and sold him a motor that would have been intended for a race team and not a consumer. He plans on bolting a turbocharger to the two-rotor engine and showing his YouTube following just how much power this rather unconventional engine design can make.
Mazda fans could see Dahm’s build as payback in a way. There are countless RX-7s out there with GM LS engines sitting in place of the rotary engine that originally came with the car, which rubs some RX fans the wrong way. Finally they will get to see a build that forgoes an LS in favor of a rotary – no matter how strange of an idea it may be.
You can see the beginning of Dahm’s wild rotary Corvette build in the video embedded above. We’ll be providing updates on the project as it comes along as well.
(source: Rob Dahm on YouTube)
Comments
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Oh, boy, more Social Justice Warrior (SJW) nonsense on GMA again from Sean…”Gender Equality” article posted today that GMA blocked all comments to because they don’t like people having their own opinions? Proof positive the article is just pure propaganda from GMA.
Keep up the left-wing extremism, Sean, and President Trump will be re-elected in a landslide.
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I didn’t read anything about politics in this article so why is that the first thing that comes to mind?
Makes me think of the 2019 Chevrolet Silverado with a L3B 2.7L DOHC-4v 4-cyl turbo.
Interesting swap, but why … and why not.
Front suspension would have to be recalibrated to restore handling.
This particular swap is blasphemy in the Corvette realm. However, I have been wondering how long it will take for someone to swap into a ‘Vette the LV3 4.3l V-6 with a couple of turbos on it. Especially in the C5’s with a worn out/blown LS1. Sort of in the same vein as the 87 Buick Gran Nationals but TT’ed. Maybe someone has done but I’ve yet to see it anywhere.
these guys obviously have too much time on their hands….
The problem with the rotary engine is the lack of torque at low RPM and that’s where the relatively long stroke Chevy engine shines. As you no doubt know the very short stroke of the rotary engine promotes high H.P. at very high R.P.M. but lacks sufficient torque at anything much below 5000 R.P.M. Also, as I’m sure everyone knows the Mazda Rotary engine is a very short reciprocating engine with a rotary piston.
Most Corvettes are relatively heavy when a lot of the options plus a full tank of fuel and one or two persons are added to the curb weight of the car( 3200) plus 3 or 4 hundred pounds of options and that requires a fair amount of torque to get the car off the line and the rotary engine seems to lack that feature.
Further, the weight distribution of the Corvette which under normal conditions is relatively close to 50/50 will be thrown way off and will cause the car to under steer excessively when cornering.
I agree with your assessment of the rotary engine but I believe you mean oversteer due to the lighter weight in the front. Maybe I’m wrong but it’s what I know from racing and confirming my suspicion. Thumbs up anyway.
OVERSTEER!
Additionally… the Rotary engine is not a “Reciprocating” engine.
And, there is no “stroke”.
If you go to Wikipedia and look up Wankel Rotary Engine there is a good description and visual operation of the Wankel engine that clearly shows the two chambers that the rotary piston must travel through. The rotor must travel from the upper chamber to the lower chamber to cause compression and the compression is the result of the stroke of the rotor.
There is another good explanation of the Wankel engine as explained by Ryan Douthit under the heading Rotary VS. Piston engine where under the heading Mechanical Equivalency the term Stroke is used several times.
Also, if the Wankel is not a reciprocating engine why would the rotor gear be considerably larger than the gear on the engines output shaft.