The rotary tax, and why I keep paying it
Everyone warned me about the FD. They were right. I bought it anyway, and I would do it again tomorrow.
A rotary asks for things a piston engine never will. Heat management is not a nice-to-have, it is the entire job. Get it wrong once and the engine remembers forever.
So the FD build is unglamorous on purpose. Cooling, fuelling, oil, a conservative tune. None of it makes for an exciting thumbnail. All of it is the difference between a car that runs and a car that is a very pretty paperweight.
People ask why not just swap something reliable into it. Because then it is not an RX-7. The engine is the reason the shape exists. You do not get one without the other.
It ran clean for forty minutes last weekend. Forty minutes felt like a victory lap.
Jonathan Chow
Building & breaking cars since 2010