Since the Le Mans 24 is this weekend, how about a look back at SA22s at Le Sarthe:

 

Thanks for posting this. I watched a little, but gave up because I don't speak Japanese . Does anyone know how this car differs from a normal RX-7: engine, suspension, etc? My understanding is that it's not a tube-frame car or anything, and really was a modified RX-7. Obviously the bodywork is different, but what else? I'd assume it's 12a powered. 14th place doesn't seem like much, but when you consider that only 18 cars finished out of at least 50-ish it becomes much more impressive. I mean it placed ahead of loads of cars with probably far more horsepower, I doubt this had more than 250 bhp if it was 12a powered.

 

stock chassis, you can see it in the videos the tops of the stock strut towers, engine was either a 12a PP or a 13b pp which would give it either 280 ish or 340ish at the flywheel. that was the advertised HP at the Mazda dealers if you bought a MFR 12a or 13b peri port. 13b pp could be had at the local dealer for about 7k (at that time and dollar to yen rate) fully assembled with dry sump in 85-86 when I first arrived here in Japan.

kenn

 

Thanks for the response! Yes I did see the strut towers, and I assumed it was the stock chassis for that reason. If it was a custom chassis they probably wouldn't have been using MacPherson struts I didn't know they were able to make so much power out of the 12a/13b engines in the 80's. Looks like some people are around 400 bhp on NA 13b PP engines now, but we have better engine management, etc. Regardless the stock origins of the car make it all the more impressive, especially considering it's competition.

 

that was cool see, the funny part was the look on the guys face after they changed the trans, been there done that! bettersweet...

 

Mazda had a competition version of the Rx7 right from the start, http://foxed.ca/rx7manual/manuals/comp.manual.pdf

for Le Mans they practiced with an injected 13B, its a mechanical slide throttle setup, i think 320hp. for the actual race they switched back to the carb which was 300hp. for an endurance race, since reliability is so important, anything experimental is usually not run.

bodywork i think was by Mazdaspeed

 

Aww I didn't know there was a quick ratio 14.5 steering box. Now I want one of those.

 

the cool part is that they incorporated many of the competition features in the later models. so the comp catalog is from 1979, but in 84-85 they have power steering with 15:1 ratio...

 

I have one! It's awesome.

 

I also forgot about the Z & W Enterprises RX-7 which finished 21st at Le Mans in 1980. Not bad by any stretch of the imagination, especially considering the competition.

 

cool post..thx.