Earlier this year, we shared a video of YouTuber Rob Dahm working on his rotary-swapped Chevrolet Corvette C5. Dahm’s rotary Corvette was inspired by the droves of General Motors LS-swapped Mazda RX-7s that have been built over the years, as Dahm is a fan of the Wankel motor and doesn’t like seeing them ripped out in favor of something that he finds to be less interesting.
We recently stumbled across an LS-swapped FD Mazda RX-7 for sale on Race Cars Direct, and while Rotary purists usually hate this sort of build, it would be hard for any car enthusiast not to appreciate this high-quality, self-built race car.
According to the listing, this FD Mazda RX-7 was developed over the last 12 years, with the owner starting out with a rust-free, 1992 RX-7 shell. Today it has a full race-spec roll cage, a wide body conversion with custom body panels and a ton of other motorsport hardware including BBS center lock wheels shod in Avon slicks, two-way adjustable dampers and full AP Racing brakes with six-piston front calipers and four-piston rear calipers.
The powertrain is where things really get interesting, however. For 2019, the owner dropped in a new 7.0-liter LS7 built by Mast Motorsports, which is good for 590 horsepower and 500 pound-feet at the rear wheels. A Quaife 69G sequential gearbox with pneumatic paddleshifters, a carbon fiber propshaft, Ford Racing rear end gears, a billet lightweight flywheel and a twin-plate clutch complete the package. This car also weighs just 1,104 kgs, the seller says, equivalent to 2,433 lbs.
This listing will be of interest to any of our readers located in the United Kingdom or Europe, as the seller and car are in Great Britain. If you’re only interested in the Mast Motorsports LS7 and Quaife racing gearbox, the seller will part with the powertrain and body separately. That means this FD Mazda RX-7 body can still have a Rotary dropped back into it, if you just so happen to be among the contingent that feels as though a Rotary being replaced by an LS is sacrilege.
Check out the listing at this link for additional information and photos.
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Source: Race Cars Direct
Comments
I love this. Rotaries are terrible engines for anything other than acting as generators. This fixes a beautiful car.
To be fair, rotary engines are most definitely *not* terrible. They offer a long list of benefits – no reciprocating parts, mechanical simplicity, low weight, small packaging, high revs, lower vibration, absurdly high power-to-weight… the list goes on and on.
Sorry to call you out on that, but gotta set the record straight here.
Actually, OP should add aircraft powerplant to the list besides generators.
Rotax makes some stunning little motors for light aircraft.
For automotive use, they suck for one MAJOR reason: Fuel economy.
Always have, always will.
Yeah they work for aircraft too. The point is that they have terrible power efficiency except at very specific rev ranges.
Jonathan clearly doesn’t understand this. They’re horrible for a car; unless they’re just used to power electric motors.
Rotarys are terrible when dumb ppl work on them.Personally had many low mileage to high mileage knowledge is power my friend.Power to weight is unbelievable example 12a which is a 1.1liter just broke 6secs on a quarter mile about 9months ago respect the wankel.Stop talking about an engine you know nothing about
A don’t take that car a put any Ls7,8,9 a destroy the car they run more faster with that little engine the 1/2 of LS7 don’t make that mistake spend 25000$$ on LS7 for make run