I've been on here parousing the froums and threads for info but never had a reason to post until now. I finally got ahold of an n/a '88 vert from my parents. They've had it literally forever and after letting my little brother find out he doesn't know how to take care of a rotary, I get it for free.



The motor runs still, thank god, but it dies every 2 seconds unless you hold the gas pedal down, I figure vacuum hose or TPS issue. The top has a nice big tear in it, so that's gonna get ordered when I figure out the best place to get one from. The seats have seen better days, and he was nice enough to destroy the radio bezel that I fiberglass reinforced a few years back, so now I gotta get one of those too. Thanks little brother!



I plan to just get it running right for now so I can work on my truck project, but then I plan to toss a 302 in it with a shaker intake to put through the hood.



I want to get some wheels for it, since it has those tiny little Mazda BBS on it right now, but I have no clue what backspacing I should go with. I want to run either 18's or 19's with about a 1" drop. I don't want to go too low with this car, just enough to make sure the wheel wells are full. I've found everything from -45 to -35 on backspacing, but I don't want rub at all.



Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!



Ryan

Congrats! welcome to nopistons

Wait, you get it because he can't take care of a rotary, so you're putting a 302 in it?



Not flaming the piston swaps, just confused.

To aleviate your confusion, I will explain, I was expecting a little flak for mentioning the swap. I love the rotary engines, but to get what I want out of the car retaining rotary is out of my budget, but the car itself isn't. I "borrowed" the car from my parents for years and love driving it, and it will retain the rotary for several months until my other project is finished. If I could afford to keep it rotary, I would go all out and try to do a 20B, but that'll only happen if someone else pays for it. Doing the V8 swap affords me the ability to retain most of the same driving characteristics and the added value of easy to find performance and replacement parts.



But in the same respect, the swap is also a "plan" so nothing is set in stone just yet. Things may change and I may be able to keep the fun little thing under the hood where it belongs. When it comes to engine options, it's going to come down to availability of resources when I'm ready to pull out the wrenches. So if funds allow rotary work, then that's what it'll get, if they don't, then 302 it is.



Ryan

That makes sense.



I know it isn't a 302, but I rode in a LT1 FC once. I was underwhelemed. Which is sad, since I drive an N/A GXL.



Not saying my N/A was faster, by any means. Just that with all that extra power, I expected a bit more.



Maybe it would have been more impressive if I drove it, instead of rode along?

The RX has a rotory for a reason. Keep it in there and tune it or just throw a turbo motor in there. It will cost just as much as a thrown together 302 swap. I love big V-8's but hell i love having a car that 50/50 in weight. If you throw that off to me it just seems pointless in even having it. You might as well buy a mustang or a corvette. Have fun with it and keep it a mazda not a ford.

dont waste your time, if you want a fast car get a fast car off the bat, get a t2 for 1k with a blown motor and build it up over a couple years, buy an old muscle car or something just dont bastardize the car its not worth it and it would be totally useless in anything but a straight line the polar opposite of what mazda was going for.

Lt1's arent the greatest, LS1's are way more impressive.