NoPistons -Mazda Rx7 & Rx8 Rotary Forum

Hey guys,

Just wanted to say hi, and let you know I'll be lurking around here for a while as my project starts to come together.

I was big into cars and racing as I was growing up and spent countless hours watching things like WRC. I briefly owned a 500$ FB maybe 5 years ago, when I was just finishing college. It was a beater and not worth trying to restore so I tooled around with it a tiny bit then proceeded to take the whole car apart just for educational purposes. After I got out of college I started riding crotch rockets and well one thing led to another and now I race professionally in the national and regional series' up here in Canada. I work as a mechanical engineer by day and race all summer which leaves me with all of my winter evenings and weekends sitting around in the garage tooling away at stuff, so I'm about to start up this project so that I'll have something to keep me busy.

A bit about the project, the first thing I ever drove was a 1996 Ford Ranger, actually it was the driving force behind a lot of firsts for me that I'm sure I don't have to spell out. https://www.nopistons.com/forums/pub...#>/biggrin.gif Well anyways my old girl is just about to hit the 300 000-km mark and although it still runs like a top, well, I've got 3 other perfectly good daily drivers so I figure this one is due for some lovin'

The "plan" for the truck isn't set in stone by any means, the starting point is going to be a full teardown and rebuild, and of course upgrades along the way. I'm planning to turn it into a sunny day driver and something I can take to the car show and then hit the drag strip the odd time on the weekend. I wanted to drop some serious power into the truck and for a while I was thinking about dropping in a Ford 302 I have kicking around, but building that to make some power would just be too easy/boring. So then I was looking at a 2JZ-GTTE because JDM imported longblocks are pretty cheap and plentiful around here. But then I thought back to my short-lived 12A-powered car and though it would be cool to do something with a rotary, since they're such cool engines to start with (oh, and that sound.... ahhhh yeah!). So I was thinking a 20B would be a cool motor to drop into the old truck, since they seem to be pretty easily had around here as well, and it would be fitting to have a mazda motor in the engine bay since the truck is basically a rebadged B2300 anyways. I haven't quite decided yet whether I want to tool around with a 13B while I'm restoring the truck and then drop in a 20B once I get used to the particular intricacies of tuning the rotary, or just get the 20B out of the gate, but I'm leaning towards trying out the 13B first as there seems to be a broader knowledge base to pull from with that engine.

So anyways that's my story, long winded but oh well, I've got tons of contacts through my job and through racing that can help me out and I have some fab equipment of my own and then access to just about anything I can imagine, so that should be fun. I'm really looking forward to working on this project and finding some cool ways to build the thing, should be a pretty decent sleeper too, no-one suspects the StRanger! :P