Post #12
Right, job number one was to mock up and adapter plate to get the RX-8 engine onto the VW gearbox, as well as machine a new flywheel with a counterbalance weight to fit a smaller clutch, as the the Mazda unit is too large for the bellhousing.
So, a decent 2800lb pressure plate, plus an AP cerametallic 3-puck clutch plate, with the centre cut out and a VW one pressed in, made it's way onto the engine:
Which lets us bolt the engine on for mock-up of the ancillaries and hoses, before taking it back off and machining the various brackets and fixtures out of ally to keep the weight down - it's easier to mock-up in steel as you can just whack the MIG on it to tack something in place - but it's a hell of a weight penalty when you add up the amount of brackets and adaptors on a car, so all the final versions are ally where they can be.
New seat mounts to replace the steel ones, although we still haven't fitted em yet
And a couple of hours work to get the exhaust manifold sorted out - unequal length manifold as the centre port is siamesed on these, like an a-series, so the centre branch meets at a different length to the others to keep it from causing problems with pulse tuning.
As you can see, still not touched the plumbing!
We've kept the standard intake manifold on this engine, as although it's quite large, it's an extremely good design, with several variable intake ports on it, replacing it with throttle bodies would result in a marginal top end gain for the cost of a huge amount of midrange.
A month or so later on and the car had the rest of the exhaust made up, a new crank trigger wheel on for the DTA to read (they're a right pain to make up!), most of the plumbing in, and the loom stripped out for wiring to begin, hence the big pile of old wiring on the floor:
A new rear bonnet to keep it all dry:
And we finally got the thing running about a month ago, there's still a few jobs left to do on it, and a lot to tidy up, but at the minute she's sat on the dyno having a flat spot sorted out and the top end mapped, as it had only been to 6500rpm due to an injector problem - the rev. limiter is at 9600rpm...
Hopefully, we should soon be back to this:
I'll get some video when it comes back, the engine noise is amazing.
We'll run this car for a year or two to prove the drivetrain, then sell it and make a new car with the RX8 engine (well, the new 1.6L version, when it arrives) in the middle where it should be, multi-link wishbones and a body with at least some kind of nod to aero
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phillipm
Posted 16th Nov 2009 at 15:20
