I recently purchased a 73' 914 with a Mazda 13b already swapped into it. I am the second owner of the car, previous owner was from Arizona. It has NO RUST at all and the swap was done properly. The motor mount and radiator frame were both very well done. As well as the plumbing from the radiator to the engine. The car also has an interesting exhaust system, which I found out although it looked cool, was not the right type of exhaust for the rotary. The passenger side rear brake caliper bleeder was broken. The swap was never completed and the car never drove under rotary power. The only thing left was fabricating a new shift linkage, since the old one would go right through the oil pan.

I bought the car purely for the condition of the body and wasnt really counting on a good engine or transmission but after messing around with it in the garage I got it running. I discovered the engine was streetported and in decent condition. The engine only had hours on it from the rebuild but it suffered from sitting for all that time.
Click to view attachment Click to view attachmentClick to view attachment

Click to view attachment

Click to view attachment

I was given a ride in a 914 with a stock F.I. 13B rotary and it was great. The "rev-ability" of the engine really suited the gearing of the 901 and the car was quick. I really liked it. One of my favorite 914 conversions.

There are a couple of others here that have a rotary conversion. They're peppy at higher rev's. I won't say gas hog because everyone of us that does a conversion could give a rat's ass about MPG. Post pic's of your progress.

Nice to have another running rotary around! Well it was running,,, Yours is really clean.

after you get the carb rebuilt and put back in,,,, be sure to keep an eye on the temp guages. Although your cooling system looks sound,, you have to make sure it can handle it. And really watch out on hot days.

Nothing revs quite like a rotary,, and a street port revs and pulls strongly up to 8.5k!
I think you have a good combination.

-Robert

Nice car...never driven a rotary..been stuck behind a few at Thunderhill...so glad I was in something that could pass them so I didn't have to suffer with all that noise they make! hahaha

INB4 Mike Bellis

I've blown up enough rotaries. I'm sticking with the Audi...

Post some more pics of the radiator setup. Rotaries run hot when flogged.

My friend won the IMSA RS Championship back in the day with a rotary Mazda RX2, so we had a lot of fun running the rotaries. My ears have never recovered from the noise of an unmuffled Wankel!

How much did the car get chopped up for the conversion? Just wondering if you still have the option of sticking an aircooled engine back in, if the rotary conversion gets to be too much of a headache. The car looks pretty nice.

Looks to me like its not shrouded.


But its fixable!!!

I had an Rx7 in CA twenty something years ago, drove it cross country back to NY. Not great mileage around town but was pretty good on the highway. More than once with the music up I found myself in third at 75 or so, it was that smooth. The 8k redline made it very elastic... I'd think the 901 would work well with the 13b. Plus it's so darn small.

Piston engine goes boing boing boing

But the Mazda...

Since I got the car about a month ago, Ive fabricated the shift linkClick to view attachmentClick to view attachment
and rebuilt the engine because it was smoking A LOT.
Click to view attachment Click to view attachment Click to view attachment

I also had to add an oil cooler to help with the overheating issue. Made a scoop for it and mounted it in the front left corner of the engine bay area. Now I have to make a shroud for the radiator and then I'll be running nice and cool.Click to view attachment Click to view attachmentClick to view attachment

The front trunk has a nice big hole in it and the wheel wells have a slot for the air to escape. I don't think Ill be going air-cooled again unfortunately

Neat!

Great color!

The boy has skills!

So its been a while since I've updated this thread, but since then i,ve done so much. Fist off I ended up changing the whole radiator setup that it had when I bought it. The problem I was having was that not only was the engine overheating after a high way drive but the gas was boiling as well. This was due to the angle of the radiator and lack of shrouding. Since a figured this was not ideal I decided to switch to a bigger 2 row aluminum radiator and mount it differently.
Click to view attachment

Click to view attachment

I shrouded the back of the radiator so that the air can escape through the hole in the floor. And made a fan shroud for the twin fans.
Click to view attachment

The radiator is flipped in this picture, the fans pull, not push!
Click to view attachment

Ever since I switched over to the aluminum radiator I've been having no problems cooling at all. My temp stays between 175-185 degrees F. Even during spirited driving

Man this thing is looking good would love a rotary powered one!!

On top of the radiator, I also worked on the exhaust. The issue I faced was that the whole system was too restrictive for the rotary. I ended up switching over to a 2" to 3" Y-pipe. And switched from a cahmbered muffler, which did not produce a pleasant exhaust note, to a Hushpower Pro Series muffler by flowmaster. This new exhaust is much less restrictive and gives the car a pretty nice sound in general.
Click to view attachment
Click to view attachment

This is the finished exhaust, with the new flowmaster muffler.
Click to view attachment

Nice handy work you got there.

Only owned one rotary. Was fun while it lasted is how I like to describe it. But it had a huge turbo on it nothing like this. Seems to be a really neat car there! Look forward to the progress.

Quick video of the new exhaust at 3/4 throttle.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9EEYwkJAx8

WOW that's sound nice!

BTW I still have a Kennedy plate and motor mount set-up for a Rotary to put in your 914 if anyone wants to make me a offer ....sorry for the hijack PM me.

Neat looking car! Back in the day I had a '93 RX-7 twin turbo and that car was quick. Take good care of those apex seals. I think Pettit Racing sells a lube that you put in the gas, which extends apex seal life.

Standard 2-cycle oil is all you need. Add it to the gas at the normal ratio and it'll protect the apex seals. We race a '79 RX-7 in LeMons, and we removed the stock oil injection system (because it tends to fail with catastrophic consequences) and just pre-oil the gas -- works great and no problems! We use one ounce of oil per gallon of fuel.

yeah, i bypassed the oil metering system and run premix. It gets annoying at times, having to put oil every time I put gas but its well worth the protection!

Heres a current picture of the engine bay, finally chose a spot for the coils.

Click to view attachment

And heres my lithium ion battery. Weighs in at just about a pound!!!

Click to view attachment

I used to run premix in mine too. I used Red Line smokeless and marine measuring cup. I would buy it by the case so i always had some available. I still have a case and a blown 13B... I now use the Red Line in my chain saw.

I have recently found what I believe to be the swaybar for the car in the piles of stuff I received when I bought it. The only problem is that I dont have all the parts to install it and dont know exactly whats missing.

This is what I have

Click to view attachment

Can it be?

One just sold on the classifieds. The pic shows all the parts.

Been working on perfecting the exhaust system on the car. The cars previous exhaust had two glasspacks going into another muffler but the heat of rotary exhaust proved to be too much. I decided to make my own muffler using the shells of the glasspacks and combining them to make one muffler with two inputs and two outputs. Here is the perforated H-pipe that I made to go inside of the muffler.
Click to view attachment

Click to view attachment

This is the plan for casing the h-pipe with the shells of the old glasspacks

Click to view attachment

And I'm gonna go with coarse stainless steel wool as my absorbing material to hopefully last the heat of the rotary.

Click to view attachment

Here is the final product!

Click to view attachment

I also wanted to try out the helmholtz chamber exhaust system, but since there is WAY too much math involved with that, i just made it adjustable to find the perfect chamber length and then just lock it.
Surprisingly this little chamber changes the tone of the exhaust drastically! The theory behind it being that the chamber will create pulses that will cancel out the unwanted frequencies of the exhaust tone. Normally used to eliminate drone.

Click to view attachment

Click to view attachment

Looks great! Do you have before and after clips?

Here is a clip of the new exhaust.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3x7qZJfIeU

With the engine running it almost sounds like a small, single cylinder motorcycle engine. But man, that TONE is just killer! That's really a great job and good idea to make the chamber adjustable until you've got it just right. Nice job!

Thank You! The motorcycle engine sound is what I was trying to go for

Well, the engine came out again and this time it took longer than expected. Pulled the engine out to finally eliminate the smoking on idle due to worn oil control rings and oil control ring springs. Once apart I realized that I should just replace everything on the motor that would give me any problems in the near future. After taking them to a very knowledgable rotary engine builder in my area, I was told that I needed new rotor housings! Definitely not an expected cost. Old school housings put me back almost $1,000. While newer generation housings were only about $300. The difference between the housings being that there is a groove cut in old school housings for the water jacket seals while newer ones have grooves on the intermediate plates. Now I could probably find a complete 86+ engine for just over 1k but the old school (Pre-85) make the most power and are built better. So I just had to keep my old school, now the issue was how to make newer housings without a groove work. There IS one guy in all of south florida that can cut grooves into the newer housings but he charges $400 per side. Two sides per rotor, two rotors per engine... Basically not worth it, so I found a way to do it myself.

I made a template of the seal groove and used that to make a router template. After 5 discouraging attempts I pulled the trigger and purchased some very good condition housings and cut some grooves into them. They came out PERFECT and I was ready to assemble. Then came the idea to port the engine even further. The port timing was already maxed out for a street engine but the runner could have been bigger, so I maxed those out too! Before this rebuild I took the car, not tuned or in perfect time, to the dyno. Made 165 whp and around 117 lb/ft with an a/f mixture under 10 (extremely rich). This was before the bigger ports, and once I get the mixture down and the timing correct I was told I can expect between 220-230 whp naturally aspirated.

As of today the engine is back together and in the car and broken in. I am in the re-tuning stages, trying to dial in the carburetion. The plan is to eventually ditch the Holley and go to a 48 DCOE Weber as I was told that this combo is amazing for the street/autox. Looking forward to some autocross within the next couple months and maybe even some HPDE and Homestead Speedway or Palm Beach.

Click to view attachment

Click to view attachment

Click to view attachment

Click to view attachment

Click to view attachment

Click to view attachment

Click to view attachment

Click to view attachment

Click to view attachment

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUklupMBnRc

sounds so sweet

Absolutely amazing. What a sweet ride. Did you get rwh stats?

165 rwh and 117ft/lbs running extremely rich (a/f under 10). This was before the last rebuild, in which I ported the motor further and will fix the air/fuel mixture. Shooting for around 220 rwh on the next pull