I grew up with a Mazda man for a dad. The list of Mazdas my family has owned between myself, my parents and my sisters. R100 RX2 RX3 RX4 RX7-3 of them MX6 Millennia protege -4 of them Protege 5 The first engine in my 36 Ford was a 12A with a 4 speed behind it. I have always thought the Wenkel design was ingenious. I have plan someday to install a 13B turbo engine into a model A roadster. I know there are more efficient power plant options out there, but I like em….. anyone else?
Here's my first rotary powered car from back around 1995, a homemade dirt latemodel powered by a homemade 4 rotor! The engine was made by putting together a couple of 4 port 13B's... Here's a link to a page of mine with more info about the car... https://grannys.tripod.com/4rotor.html Grant
I had a base '86 RX-7 in high school, and later an '87 RX-7 Turbo II that I eventually sold to fund my first Model A in 2003. They were fun cars, and I always wanted to pick up another FC3S.
I am floored at the cost of the rotary engines. When I was a kid you couldn’t give them away. The 12A’s had the notorious apex seal failures.
Yeah, they cost a fortune nowadays, and if you told me back then how much a clean original FC3S would be worth today, I'd laugh in your face. My '86 had ECU problems. I had an import shop run all the diagnostics and they replaced the ECU. I sent the original ECU off to be repaired, the replacement failed 3 months later and then the original repaired one failed a couple of months after that when I was on my way home from working at the Ford dealer, and I was over it. I made a deal with a local used car dealer to take my dead RX-7 in on trade in exchange for a nice clean little Suzuki Swift GTi (think Geo Metro on steroids). My '87 Turbo II had some goodies... Street Ported, T04B Turbo, injectors, Haltech ECU,****anium exhaust, stout clutch, coilovers, etc. It was a project car and I was bouncing across Texas for work and never had time to dedicate to it. I sure miss the sounds and smells they made, and watching that tachometer keep climbing never got old!
Great memories.....in the late 1970's early 1980's I was living and working in the Des Moines area. Had a great friend and college buddy that bought a brand new RX7. We would run from Des Moines to Knoxville on Sat night for great dirt sprint car racing. Sometimes my friend would get a little over-served cheering for Doug Wolfgang. He would throw me the keys and let me drive home. I asked him about all the rules for driving a rotary. He told me "run thru each gear until the buzzer goes off......then shift "!!! Those were te good ole days
In 1971 I built an MGB with a 12A engine and transmission in it. Weighed 250lb less than a stock B and had MGA front springs to make up for it. Surprisingly fast when you add 60hp at the wheels to a car that only had around 60 to start with.
Big fan. Put many many fun miles on a ‘79 Rx7, lots of revs and a ball on wet pavement. I’d love another rotary. Just don’t flood it! edit, I see you mentioned some non-rotary Mazdas as well, we have 2 M3s in the family, one MZR 2.5, one SkyActive 2.0, we love both of them. I’d like to MZR swap into a 60s compact.
Grew up around them, but never owned one. Still a strong following in Australia, and often see a good RX2/3/4 turnout at the local Wednesday night drags. Redlines that would turn an SBC into a grenade. Sounds like a swarm of bees, man... angry, angry bees Cheers, Harv
Wasn't having a go at you about the spelling. Was more having a giggle about the guy's unfortunate name. Maybe you guys in the states should google "wank"........ or maybe you actually shouldn't.
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