I have friends who owned the RX-7's. and from what they've told me, the
rotary engine sucks up as much gas as a small block V-8.
Hey! My spitfire gets 16 miles to the gallon! (blah)
I know in the grassroots upgrade, they installed a fuel cell. I think the 8
gal tanks our cars have will be an issue if you go to any moderately larger
or stronger engine.
Besides, I don't think I could go very long telling people my car had a
Wankel engine (the psuedonym for a rotary named after the inventor).
I've done a lot of research and have come to the conclusion that the
Spitfire engine is pretty robust and is the only engine that will fit
without hacking up the frame in one way or another. And there seems to be an
almost endless number of modifications appearing for them (PSI has a Mikuni
quad carb set-up). Anyone seen the ALL fiberglass body called the HURRICANE
that mounts on a spitfire? (Is that ugly or what?!)
My plans for next year are to save-up about $7k/US, and build a race engine
for a spit (using a 1293cc block .060 over bore, aluminum pistons, moly
connecting rods, lightened-balanced-knife-edged crank, aluminum flywheel,
mild race cam, competition valves, etc. and every single inch CBC or TLML
ceramic coated.) And from the outside it will still look like a spitfire
engine!
With a decent header, exhaust and carb set-up. You can probably pull 150
horses out of a Herald engine (Even that will probably tear out a stock rear
differential or twist both half-axles into pretzels).
And I think this will cost a lot less than some people have with their
larger engine swaps. The most difficult part is going to be figuring some
way to down-load all the information lodged in Ted Schumacher's brain into
some utilizable format.
Terry L. Thompson
'76 spit 1500
Maryland
>
> Mazda RX7 rotary.
>
> The complete rotary is about the same height as the Spitfire shortblock,
not
> much wider and definitely lighter.
>
> Not a lot of low end grunt in stock form.... easy on the diff.
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