Let the dood be. It's his car and his money.

I've seen people drop V-8s into Mazda Miatas and B-series Honda engines into original Austin Mini Coopers.

I hope he can pull off the rotary swap because I'm looking forward to seeing how it affects his car's handling.

s2000s are pretty neutral out of the box. The mazda rotary engine is pretty light and would sit lower in the engine bay, so it may actually make his car turn quicker.

 

About what I thought would happen reading through the first couple of pages and reading the OP's responses to objections and criticism.

 

I'm waiting for someone to put a V4 Harley engine in the "S".
http://v-quad.com/index.php
I've seen this engine in a bike and it ran and sounded very good.
So if you have 25 or 30k just sitting there why not spend it.

ROD
p.s. you could even put a supercharger on it for more HP.

 

a driver mod would do more for turning ability than to swap engines.

 

All the hate for the Rotary is hilarious

 

Still, I'm not a fan of engine cross pollination.

 

I'm a big fan of doing a V8 swap where you actually benefit with a stock swapped in engine. 400-500 hp/tq swapped in stock engine would be great! With the rotary you just lose pretty much since they are less reliable than turboing your stock engine, and direct swap in do not really provide much of anything.
Still would give props on doing the swap but would be the last engine I would want to swap in personally.

 

Some people are in love with the technology while others are in love with results.

 

I'm not saying it's good one way or the other. What I am saying is it's funny to read all these people rip the rotary when most have never driven nor owned one. In my experience the "reliability" issues with the rotary stem from the sequential turbos strapped to the 13BREW. The added heat of the system coupled with the sophistication led to the motor becoming known as unreliable. Add to this that the 13BREW uses a MAP sensor, so when people "up the boost" and don't add fuel they blow the motor and then complain it's not reliable. This is the reason you see most with a single turbo. Rotaries are great RACING motors, and have proved reliable in endurance racing. Many competitors in LeMons races use rotaries because they're light, balanced, reliable and produce good power. That being said, the rotary has to be run up into high RPMS to expel carbon. This is a problem with RX-8s as some owners get the automatic version and putt around town, never shifting above 3500. The downside is they pollute like crazy and get horrible gas mileage. In the end they are both great engines and are pretty similar. I just don't see all the hate when most of it is based off heresay and not experience.

 

Right, well I guess it's racing virtues are kind of moot on the road. Fact of the matter is that Mazda never created the RX7 and RX8 to be dedicated racing machines. In addition to being fast, they also have to be reliable on the road for everyday folks. I do know the RX7 was a nightmare with reliability and it's the primary reason Mazda dropped the turbo for the RX8. Even in stock form, warranty claims on the RX7 were huge.

Now the RX8 is much better with reliability, though it still has its quirks as outlined here. Many folks just don't believe the merits of the RX8's rotary warrant it's drawbacks. I tend to agree with them. IMO, dropping a 300HP 2-2.5L turbo 4 into the RX8 would make it a far better great car.

That said, the rotary is a very elegant design that just needs some work. In it's current iteration it will just get left behind by piston engines, both in terms of power and fuel economy.