What are your opinions on v8 swaps? Personally I think they are cool but I'd honestly prefer to keep the rotary and upgrade that than a v8 swap.

 

To each his own!....and that is why the Forum houses sections of that nature.
I'd cruise the V8 section and let my own heart decide rather than listening to biased opinions of those who have a Piston engine or the original Taco engine..as honestly they will say "theirs is the best and there is no other"!..lol!

Some people like Coffee..some like BEER..
some like synthetic..some like Real women..I mean regular oil..(sorry)

 

I purchased a kit to mount a ford 5.0 in my 88 rx7. Changed my mind about doing a swap but theirs shops that sell swap kits for a wide variety of motors

 

It's a performance modification. Maybe more involved or radical than porting or raising boost levels, but in the end... a performance modification.
IMO, serious considerations should be made. The same ones you should make for ANY other performance modification.

 

I am swapping an LS1 into an FD. Reasons I did it are pretty straight forward.

1) First and foremost, reliability. Yes, you can have a rotary engine be fairly reliable on the street, but I am planning on doing some road racing and I REALLY don't want to rebuild my engine twice a year. Had a teacher once who raced an FC. Whenever I asked him about how his engine was doing, he would always say something along the lines of "it is on my work-bench in 15,000 pieces like it usually is." V8 is very mechanically simple and reliable, tried and tested, etc... Can't be beat there.

2) Torque; a V8 makes torque basically everywhere, making it very driveable and useful, especially for racing. Also, no turbo so I don't have to wait to spool (I have an Evo, know all about the lag).

3) Parts availability; You can walk into basically any parts store and they have parts in stock for an LS engine. If I need to swap something during a race weekend, chances are I will be able to find parts pretty easily. The whole setup is incredibly easy to work on too.

4) Weight; Swap doesn't add a whole lot of weight (especially with no A/C, no P/S, no WATER PUMP [okay, MAYBE keep the water pump]), and the weight distribution is killer (50:50 F/R).

Rotaries are still cool as heck though. Excellent specific power, and it is refreshing to see an innovative technology. Also, they sound sweet as f***...

 

There will always be pros and cons to either setup, I bought my FD with intentions of performing an LS swap, but I lucked out and it seems the engine had just been rebuilt well... Perhaps an LS swap is in the cards after a summer spent racing...

 

Im undecided as well. I have an FB and debating going with a grannies kit for ford 302. maybe just have 2 RX7's one rotary / one small block V8 !

 

I love the rotary, it honestly and truly does make the car so unique and desirable, however i do feel that an LSx is just a perfect motor in all aspects. Power:Weight, cost, reliability it checks all the boxes, and they sound nasty with cams. Ive always wanted to go v8 but its hard for me to tear apart a perfectly fine Rotary (even though I'm going single, and all said and done i could probably have a decent basic LS swap setup in place of the Single Turbo 13b.) Had i known what was going to become of the car i would have either started with a shell and gone V8 or kept mine stock and paid someone to route new vacuum lines. I plan in the future to acquire a shell and go LS


If you've got a decent running rotary already and aren't planning on going big turbo keep it in there and just maintain it. I was unfortunate and never got to experience the full potential of stock twins before vacuum lines/solenoids/actuators started to wear.

 

^^ After buying a nice car that takes a lot of maintenance and care and dealing with it for a few years, I finally just bought a shell and am building it up as a racecar with an LS. Can't wait to have a car that is so easy to work on. Also, V8's are kinda neat, and I am not European, so... Yeah!