The 26B rotary engine used by the Mazda 767 and 787B race cars is arguably the most iconic and desirable powertrain from the Japanese carmaker. This RX-7 features a custom 26B and was recently featured over at the Hoonigan Daily Transmission channel on YouTube.
The owner of the car is a man named David Mazzei. As Pas Mag detailed back in 2018 when the car caused a stir at SEMA that year, Mazzei fell in love with the screaming V10 and V8 engines once used in Formula 1 and wanted a street car that sounded just as remarkable. It’s virtually impossible to buy an F1 engine from that era, though, so Mazzei opted for the next best thing: Mazda’s four-rotor 26B.
He was able to acquire a 26B engine from an overseas company and was promised that it would be a drop-in swap with everything needed except for an ECU, wiring, and fuel system. Sounds too good to be true, right? Well, the saying was correct: things weren’t that simple.
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Mazzei discovered the engine had a number of issues, including insufficient wastegate priority, inferior primary tubing sizing, insufficient oil pressure, incorrectly sealed peripheral ports, an improper exhaust manifold and an oil pump with incorrect ratio gearing. Extensive work was done to make the rotary run how it should of from the get-go and a lot of work was done to fabricate a custom exhaust manifold to mimic the sound of the iconic 787B.
Aided by a Work GTX5593 98 mm Gen 2 turbocharger, the car now produces a neck-snapping 1,000 HP and 650 lb-ft (881 Nm) of torque and revs through to 10,000 rpm.
This video offers a taste of the RX-7’s powertrain – and boy, does it sound incredible.