Red single turbo new engine, 400rwhp or Silver V8 making 400rwhp?
Not Jim but I would go for the red single turbo. Reasoning it resale of factory engine will hold up and you dont know about quality of swap job done or history of engine.
True, however, there is a shop that specializes in the swaps that did the job. There is a pretty long spec sheet on the engine. Main reasoning I'm leaning toward v8 is they are more reliable over the rotary, as much as I love them.
V8 for sure.Lots of aftermarket support. Reliability like you said and its different.
Coincidentally the red car is 30 miles outside my overnight on Friday. It's definitely the cleaner of the two and fresh paint. Might be hard not to buy it.
Quote from: 94touring on September 09, 2014, 05:39:26 PM
Coincidentally the red car is 30 miles outside my overnight on Friday. It's definitely the cleaner of the two and fresh paint. Might be hard not to buy it.
Road trip?! Past due for one of those? :-[ :-[
My last road trip was in flur and I almost froze to death!
V8 sold. Looking at the red one Friday.
Drove it. Bought it.
Close enough to drive home or do you need to ship it? Looks good, fun too.
Well it's in Baltimore, but I figure road trip. 4.gif
Awesome. Look like a fun ride.
Nice going to be a fun ride.
You picked the right car. V8 is cool but ruins the car, makes for great burnouts though.
The linear delivery of the Rotary will be more fun.
400RWHP is perfect IMHO. More and you will have issues with traction and less will make it boring. You are right on the edge where it will scare the hell out of you anytime you want.
More specs?
Turbo?
Engine Management?
Not a fan of the fuel pressure regulator location, on top of engine might give you some heat soak problems on long trips. Be sure to pop the hood any time you stop. I had mine mounted on the engine and it was a mistake. Caused a lot of fuel delivery problems when the engine was heat soaked. Get it up on the firewall over by the brake booster and try to insulate it a little.
Looks like a super clean car, congrats. Wish I could tell you I miss mine, I do sometimes, then I get an email from the new owner with the problem du jour and I am happy to not be dealing with it anymore.
My RX8 handles like it is on rails, and has a bumper to bumper warranty for another 3 years and 50K miles. I like those options. It is not winning any straight line races but will crush on an autocross course or in the mountains.
I'm trying to get the turbo specs from PF supercars who did the work. The owner was an older guy and pretty clueless about turbo trims and AR sizes. It's a precision 62mm turbo as per the receipts, which meant nothing to me, lol. It looked similar to my T62-1 though and from what I recall felt about the same, with the normal lag down low, then bat out of hell around 4k. Has a power FC and commander, 1600cc secondaries, he said it had a midpipe and I looked under it to verify, but I almost think it has a high flow cat, because it wasn't god awful loud like I was expecting. Has a fat ass exhaust which I will replace with a dual tip racing beat to be less rice rockety. ACT street strip clutch, front mount intercooler, some kind of greddy looking BOV, and a ported engine with about 1k miles on it. His son wrecked the car the motor was in after the rebuild, they picked up this shell in Texas that had 83k original miles that just popped a motor, and swapped everything over. The car has ALL the interior and everything works. No cracked plastic or anything. One of the cleanest ones I've seen in a long time. New paint and no dents. AC work and the seats aren't even ripped yet. I didn't like that it has the stock radiator and he didn't have an ignition amp. Those will go in asap. The wheels will be coming off and I'll go with 17" Enkei rfp1's like my other FD had which are wayyy lighter and better looking imo. His vacuum was a little on the low side and I'm having it sent back to PFS to have that looked at to see what the deal is there. They had a couple rigged up plugged vacuum lines with screws in it which I'm hoping just means it has a minor leak and not low compression. Pulled hard so I'm not sure what the deal is there. Maybe the ports are just that big. Idled good and fires right up. I will definitely move that regulator, glad you mentioned that!! I'm suppose to get a copy of the dyno sheet when he takes the car back in for it's checkup this week. Made 406rwhp. Then if everything is good, I'll need to fly out and drive it back.
Peter Farrell has a really good reputation. So you know the work is good, so that is assuring.
My last turbo was a GT35R and I LOVED it, ball bearing and really good spool time, we had it boosted to 15PSI and making 440RWHP. I ran it at 12 PSI for every day driving which was around 370RWHP and it was a blast. I was fully spooled at 3700 RPM.
Yeah, your fix it list would be a better radiator first, I am hoping they already got rid of the plastic expansion tank. The ignition should not be a huge deal, I was making all my power with stock FC coil packs and Nology wires.
I love the RPF-1 idea, I love those rims. I put a set of them on the RX8 and tossed the 19" rims into storage. I have 17x9 all around with 255 tires all around. It looks bad ass and really waoke the car up with the handling.
Great get, good luck with it!
EDIT - I remembered the Turbo, it was a GT35R. Fantastic turbo!!
I was trying to research precision turbo and was lead to believe it may be ball bearing. Expansion tank is gone. I was surprised he dumped all that money into it but didn't do the radiator. Seems funny to me being the rotary head that I am.
I also just noticed that the Red FD was parked next to an Audi... LOL!! I bet they think they upgraded to a more reliable car going with the Audi. Joke is on them.
Signed
Disgruntled former Audi owner.
Lol I've never owned an audi. What's really funny is I've owned 3 rx7s, 20 minis? A ford probe when I was 18 and a beater Mustang briefly in between rx7s.
Ha I should add you're quickly on your way to becoming a disgruntled mini owner! I imagine you're pretty much done working out all the kinks.
VERY close to a Honda swap I just hate to do that to a rare bird like this truck.
I wish I had more time, I am swamped at work, and when I am off I am exhausted and do not feel like doing anything. Once the temps drop in October maybe I will be more prone to go tinker in the garage.
September is a really busy month for me, with the little guy back in school, his Birthday the first week of the month any my wedding anny on the 3rd week. I am not giving up on that truck, I will just keep throwing new parts in it until it is right.
I feel an engine is coming this winter. Probably just going to buy a engine already built and swap it in myself maybe over the Christmas Holidays when I have some time off. If anyone sees an 1275 for a good deal (has to be rebuilt) let me know. I will keep my eyes open on Mini Mania.
The low vacuum turned out to be the gauge, so he's replacing that. Compression was good. Also found out there is a wide band installed with air/fuel gauge that reads in actual ratios. That will be killer for tuning! Ordered a bunch of things to improve noise and reliability.
Quote from: 94touring on September 14, 2014, 08:47:32 PM
Ha I should add you're quickly on your way to becoming a disgruntled mini owner! I imagine you're pretty much done working out all the kinks.
To the contrary, I understand my piece of British Rubbish is going to give me lots of problems. It is not German after all. It is also over 30 years old and closing in on 40. So I am expecting it.
what I did not expect was a brand new 10 miles on the odo off the showroom floor 60K Audi to be the biggest POS in the world. Then the way the service department fucks with you? You swear you must be on a reality show. I first purchased a CPO off lease car and it was horrible, I should have ran right then, nope traded it in on a brand new one hoping that would make it more reliable. It was worse.
I never paid so much money on a lease in my life and the killer was the car was in the shop so much it was pathetic.
So, no, this Mini will not upset me, frustrate? Yes but not on the level of a brand new Audi.
If I didn't say already, I drove the car from Baltimore, up to Philly to spend the night with my lady friend, then made the trip west to Tulsa. I drove non stop here from Philly, took a 3 hour nap at a rest stop, got here, went to the shop, installed the hks twin power, and went for another drive. That's passion lol. Today I changed the plugs, put in 10mm plugs, fuel filter, oil, strut brace, torque brace, and radiator. Tomorrow I'm going to weld up a resonator on the mid pipe to get the noise down. The plug wires were all easy except for one that required taking the oil filler neck out to get the damn thing on. The fuel filter I forget is jammed between the differential and body, but I managed to create a hole to get an arm in there to get things off. Relieved the pressure in the fuel system and didn't dump any in my face. The radiator was a royal pita. It's so much fatter than stock that I barely had enough room to cram the fans in and get the intercooler piping to fit. I couldn't reuse the old brackets that hold it in place, but it's in so snug I don't think it even matters. I may fab up something eventually. Took a little bit to burp the system to get the air out. Oh and the plugs that were in it were these greddy plugs I've never seen before. Not the standard ngk, instead have one little electrode. They were very worn looking. Took it for a spin and the power gain with the upgraded ignition was very significant. Broke the rear end loose pretty much all through 2nd once the boost kicked in. Definitely didn't do that before. Has a lean spot from 1200 to 1500 rpms at 10" +-5 of vacume which makes stop n go pretty shaky with the hesitation. It's nice having a wideband to see what it's doing. I bought the datalog kit so will richen up that little section. A nice break from minis that was needed.
Plug comparison.
What was the temperature rating on the standard style plug, I am willing to bet he was trying to run colder plugs in there, typical move when someone is going after higher boost and running race gas.
Run 93 run nominal boost and run standard 7 and 9 plugs in it and you will have a happy car.
Amazing what a little TLC does for a car and its power, that was how it was with the Mini, once I sorted out some maintenance issues, put in the solid state ignition etc.. she pulled nice and hard.
Stock plugs were 7 leading and 9 trailing. He had 9s all around which is smart. I put in 4 stock 9s. Here's my home made resonated midpipe... still a bit droany on the highway but a few decibals quiter overall.
I used a Magnaflow pipe for my Mid pipe, about the size of a small car pipe but IIRC it had metal inside so it held up the the 700°+ pounding a rotary dishes out.
I melted my exhaust running Homestead Raceway in Miami in the summer. It actually sagged in places where there was no support from the heat. We had 700+ at the exhaust tip. No idea how hot up line further.
I made my own cat back also. Ditched the 4" ricer boy tip and used a dual tip exhaust that looked stocked. 3" in and two 2.5" out. Took it apart and packed with stainless steel wool specifically for hot temps/rotaries.
I had one of the first Apexi N1 cat backs on my car, ricey looking yes, cost $1200 when I purchased it, mostly because it was a single and exited on the passenger side, where the car was lightest. I corner weighed it and it was very light in that corner. The battery and muffler went there.
People would scoff at it, calling it boy racer, ricey etc... I pointed out it cost me a grand. then once the car moved, they usually shut the f*ck up and started stuttering and pondering how what they saw was happening.
Track days, I would come in with it on a trailer. Smirks and pointing in laughing at it.
After the 1st session, visits to my pit spot. "WTF have you done to that thing? It is crazy fast!"
"what kind of car is that?"
"What mods does that have?"
Does that thing have NOS?" (Which is illegal as hell at track days)
On the track the Z06 dejouer would crap himsself as I ran him down almost embarrassingly in the twisties on the track, the added insult to injury in the straights. Then the inevitable, and dreaded, point to pass.....
Loved it.
It made me embrace and love my ricer exhaust.