poseurp

Okay, so I've been a mazda owner since day1 (well I had a small civic lapse) I'm currently in machinist training and realizing how simple once expensive-seeming enginework really is. and I've ALWAYS been fascinated with rotarys, So prettymuch it's inevitable, just kind of a matter of howlong it'll takeme to actually find money and find a car, etc. For some reason I totally identify with FB's. I DO understand that with cars of that age/performance level I'll have to do ALOT of screwing with it, but really I guess that's kinda the point. I don't intend for this to be a daily driver. I'm merely looking for a fun project car. Perhaps I'll want to go a different direction, I'm not really absolute about anything at the moment, anyone have any advice before I jump in to the rotary world?

Really mostly I figured I'd come in and say hi while I was perusing for info, etc. I'm the Regional and caraudio Moderater over at protege5.com (my otherride) Actually here's the lamepage someone talked meinto making.http://my.prostreetonline.com/member/Poseur/

z-beater

I do not think that the rotary is all that unreliable. Or at least compared to my 95 Turbo Diesel Suburban...6k in 6months. It is blast to drive and no matter what car I drive I have always like the FB the most. And this is with less that half the hp.

Welcome to the rotary world...it is better than pissed ons

EDiddy

Rotarys are unreliable............ if not taken proer care of just like anyother engine

the really big difference i see is that when you blow a rotary it blows and the car isnt usually driveable but with a piston the car will usually run if you blow a head gasket or something like that, hell sometimes even a whole cylinder, till you can get it fixed if you dont have the money right away
as long as you take care of the car everythign will be fine
buying a used rotary though you will prolly have to get a rebuild and work all the little kinks out of the car due to age and neglect then maintain it properly and it will be jsut fine

ddub

It's not the engine that is unreliable, it is all the other parts around the engine that are not (as they get old). This is what many people don't understand, and unfortunately most owners do not do proper maintenance to these parts which causes them to go out, fail, have issues, whatever. Then the engine follows as more and more parts start to contribute problems due to improper maintenance.

poseurp

I'm fairly familiar with workings and such. At least general theories, no hands on experience as of yet.My comments about having to mess with things mostly involved initial work. Which I'm totally fine with. We've been building complete small engines piece by piece (short of carbs) at school, I'm currently trying to find some decent rotary plans. My instructer made one awhile back, but it ran for about 3min before he discovered that his tolerances were tootight and it seized.

My hopes in getting ahold of a FB would be to be able to do the vast majority of the work myself. I DO have another car for daily driving, so getting it up and running instantly isn't a necessity, and I figure it's an atleast somewhat inexpensive learning process even if I do windup giving up and selling off parts and pieces.

Kouta

I have no other experiance with cars, but I love working on the 7s that me and my girlfriend own. They might not look the greatest right now, but they are hella fun to drive and really zippy... well at least compared to the minivan we have... my old 86 1/4ton gmc suburban... and my parents old 3.5L v6 96 dodge intrepid.
Plus there is a ton of knowledge on this site... basically everything that you will ever want to know

KompressorLOgic

iTrader: (6)

you know really thinking about a rotary engines reliability it is kind of hard to determine how reliable it really is.....

if you look all the rotary engines in the last 20 some odd yrs they have all been put in sports cars. which naturally take ALOT more abuse then the avarage grocery getter.


thus it would only be fair to compair the rotarys reliability to that of other high output sports cars....

i dont see very many rotarys going over 200K on the origional engine
and i dont see very many high output sports cars doing that either!

so i think reliability is on par with the avarage of the sports car catagory of vehicles now days.....

if a detuned na rotary engine was say, installed in a new bland, 4 door grocery getter how long would it last?? its hard to say its never been done!!!

rmriggin

i think FBs are a good starting point. I am selling mine in fact. Just thought you would be interested... Maybe?

poseurp

Hmm, I just might. Details? But alas, I'm really not in a place where I've got piles of cash that I'm sitting on at the moment. I was shooting for perhaps late winter/earlyspringish in my mind, but that's by no means set in stone. I figure I'll start looking, and if I find something, or something finds me, we'll just see how it all falls into place. Things seem to happen like that with me.

Jeff20B

iTrader: (13)

The rotary is very reliable. Anyone who tells you different is either an FD owner, or an idiot.

z-beater

^^^that is funny! Sadly true though

Jeff20B

iTrader: (13)

I wouldn't be into rotaries if they weren't reliable. It's so much cheaper to build a fast rotary than a fast boinger. They last longer too.

It goes something like:

One rotary for an entire racing season.

One piston engine for each race.

Yeah, something like that.

Hyper4mance2k

iTrader: (40)

rotaries are very reliable. the thing is that there are one of 2000 things that break every 20,000 miles in a pissed on. and then with rotaries there are only 14 things to fail every 20,000 miles. it's not that they're not reliable it's just that when something breakes it causes a rebuild cause there is nothing to them. I've put some hard miles onmy car and it's been more relible than any other car I've ever seen. not even a well built honda would last as long as my engine has with the abuse I put it through.

poseurp

Solike I really was never questioning rotary reliability. As I said I've got a daily driver this is to be a toy-car mostly so that I can play with it. to me that means pulling things apart and whatnot. I'm already looking at potentially Bridge porting, etc. Mostly I like to play with things and I've got cool tools at my disposal.

So I never realized before the difference between a GSL and a GSL-SE. Is the 13B a better starting point than a 12A? Forgive me if I should be posting elsewhere, mostly I just don't have time to check differetn threads in diff sections everywhere, and there seems to be a pretty decent base of knowledgeable locals.

Atkins Mama

Welcome aboard, These Rotaries can be Adicting! Good luck with your project :-)

EDiddy

i believe the 13b is a better starting point
and i think if you get a GSL-SE its a realtivly easy sway to put a 13bt in there
not sure as i dont own a 1st gen but since the car already coems witha 13b i would think the engione mounts would be somewhat close
jsut have to upgrade your tranny and rearend to handle the extra power
im sure someone will chime in with how wrong i am on this or how im somewhat right as i know some people have put 13bt in the 1st gens