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What Rotary? Check Out This Cummins-Swapped Mazda RX-8!


What Rotary? Check Out This Cummins-Swapped Mazda RX-8!

Sometimes, we wonder about fans of the Wankel engine. We get why cars like the Mazda RX-series has it’s fans, and we love the noise a radically built rotary makes, especially when it’s built for kill, boosted to the moon and revving to RPM ranges normally associated with sport bikes. But you can’t ignore the other side of the rotary as well: seal failures, rotary bearings wiping out, oiling issues, and the like probably don’t help the “Please Don’t LS-Swap It!” argument any.

The RX-8 is a bit of a strange beast as well. The 13B-MSP engine tended to have a useable life of around 100,000 miles or so before oiling issues, seal failures or other maladies set in, rendering the Renesis a “builder” engine at best. Normal protocol is to yank the rotary out and find any V8 to shove in, despite the howling from the purists, but this particular machine is much, much more than that. Forget your LS swap altogether. Ever thought about jamming a Cummins 6BT into one?

Sticking an 1,100 pound diesel mill into a sports car that weighs in at about 3,000 pounds seems like several steps backwards, but when the Mazda is dead in the water, a DAF truck is ready to be stripped, and the measurements look right, why not? If you have any issues with the build, you can direct your hate mail to Comhghan Locke, the man who slammed this beast together. We’ll buy him a round just for the creativity alone.


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