Holy smokes, what a nice build!

How was setting up the Ronin 8.8 kit? I kicked it around just to run 5:12 gears on my NA and it seems cheaper and better then messing with the randomness of the NA RX-7 rear and lack of options.

I love the turbo manifold setup, super clean. Congrats on going to the moon!

 

The Ronin kit is nice, but I bought it used and that created a few headaches. Someone had already welded on the front mount that sets pinion angle. In my car, the angle was way off, so I had to do some funky stuff to get the pinion angle correct. If I'd bought the kit new, I would have been able to weld the kit in from scratch and it wouldn't have been an issue.
The most annoying part was removing the stock CVs from the TII axles to reuse on the Ronin axles. I ended up breaking 2 TII CVs trying to get them off the old axles. They are ON there good. But that said, the rear end works great now. I have 3.55 gears and a Detroit TrueTrac which puts power down great. Compared to my original S4 TII diff, the TrueTrac is magic. The car spins a lot but is way more predictable and controllable than a worn clutch diff that randomly unlocks and locks. With the V8, longer gears are a luxury - more traction, less shifting, and more comfortable cruising.

 

I figured it'd be fun to plot the dyno curves for the V8 vs 13B. Apples and oranges, I know. The V8 was on 18psi. Rotary was on 26-28psi.
The tuner was worried about ramping the boost in as early as possible and left the timing very soft until after peak torque since the V8 still has completely stock rods and pistons.
EMAP with the little twin EFRs was also pretty high. I think it was a little over 2:1 on 18psi of boost. Not ideal, but it still was making decent gains per psi of boost.
V8 dyno was on 55% ethanol. 13B dyno was on 93 octane and a lot of water injection.

 

Been a couple years since I've updated this thread, so thought I'd take a minute to post what I've been up to.
The engine setup hasn't really changed. The junkyard 5.3 is still kicking. The only thing I’ve done to it since 2018 is put a smaller 218/227 cam in it for better street manners.

Last summer I repainted the car in my garage with moderate success. It needs wet sanded and buffed, but still looks much better than 33 year old chipped and cracked old paint.

The biggest project I've had has been the DCT swap. I swapped in a BMW 7 Speed DCT from a 2016 M5. The DCT is controlled by a HTG GCU and has paddle shifters I mounted to a Momo wheel. It also has a factory BMW M3 shifter in the stock shifter location.

I still have a lot of tuning and refinement needed for the DCT to drive like OEM, but it drives pretty decent for an old car with basically every mechanical component transplanted at this point. Goals for the winter are to redo the trans crossmember and exhaust to reduce NVH and make it more relaxing to drive. The crossmember I made has tiny polyurethane bushings and very little flex and transmits a lot of noise. I also had to remove the resonators from the downpipes to fit the DCT, so it’s a bit more droney now. I think all that can be fixed and I hope to put a bunch more miles on the car next year.


Here’s a short video of the DCT in action:

 

I haven't updated this thread in a couple years. 2022 I drove the car a ton. It was basically my daily driver on nice days from April-December.
I pulled the SBE 5.3 and twin EFR6758 kit out and sold it over the winter and have been building a new engine and turbo kit (taking WAY longer than I expected lol).
The new setup is a forged rods/pistons LS3. I'm hoping the better flowing heads and extra 0.9L of displacement will make easy 93 octane power so I no longer have to drive to get ethanol.
The turbo setup is very similar to my last setup, except I'm using G30-770 mirror image turbos (VS Racing clones). I couldn't justify forking over $6K on genuine Garretts when knockoffs were 1/4 the price. G30-770s are still small by V8 standards (58mm/55mm), but I really wanted a snappy and responsive setup again.
I'd actually bought IndyCar EFR7163s to put on the LS3, but after staring at the compressor map for a while decided they weren't a good fit.
The DCT factory clutches are the limiting factor for power now. They're good for 650-700wtq with the aftermarket GCU I have. Upgraded clutches are about $2600-5500 depending on how hardcore you need to go. A friend made over 1000wtq with the $5500 clutches, but that seems unusable in an FC.

The engine and turbo kit are finally bolted in the car. All that's left is some fab work to connect the mid-pipe of the exhaust to the rear muffler. I also made an "active" 4inch exhaust with a 2.5" bypass loop as a quiet mode. We'll see how well that works soon.