Faster Than A Superbike: A Real 1,017hp Street Fighter
Cherry picking
the best parts from around the world, Craig Taylor has spent the last
15 years transforming his Mazda RX-7 in to a 1,017hp, twin turbo,
tyre-killing freak. With the capability to make 1,500hp on the current
setup, is it madness or magic?
This is a story of how one man just wanted to go fast. And I mean really, really fast.
Bench
racing with your mates aside, have you ever experienced that kind of
power in anything? It’s a serious question. The sense of mild fear when
you climb into a passenger seat – or better still, the driver’s
seat – knowing there’s a magical amount of power waiting for you to
command it, brings on a powerful sensation. It’s an addiction that you
have to satisfy – sometimes at any cost.
To
get a better handle on how we got here today, I’m going to run through
Craig’s history. I think it’s vital when you try to understand how a car
like this exists, that you know as much as possible about the person
who built it, because this is not the sort of project that just happens,
or appears. Some people might dismiss it as just another V8-swapped RX-7, but to do so would be a massive mistake.
There
are many reasons why we’re looking at a twin turbo V8 in the engine bay
of this Mazda, the first is because Craig is based in Birmingham,
England. Nearby you’ll find the Land Rover factories, and before they
went to China, Rover too. Historically in England, if you wanted a V8,
you got a Rover. The 3.5-litre (215ci) was initially produced under
license from Buick, but after years of refinement displacement was
increased to 5.0-litre and the engine was available in all sorts of
cars.
In
the mid ’90s, Craig was doing a lot of experimentation with bigger
displacement engines. “They sounded good and you could buy the parts
easy enough,” he recalls. “I first had a Ford XR4i [Merkur] that ended
up with a 4.6-litre V8 Range Rover engine in it, but looked stock from
the outside. I’d come up through the Ford ranks and always loved the
XR4i for being rear-wheel drive – it was great.”
Next
came a 5.0-litre that got dropped into a first-gen Toyota Hilux for
some off-roading. “It was ridiculous,” says Craig. “It used to bend the
chassis and hit the cab on the bed as it twisted.”
What I really
wanted to know though, was what made Craig an engine swapper in the
first place – and by that I mean somebody who naturally mixes and
matches without caring for marques – so I ran that question by him. “I
ran a bike dyno centre at the time and for a lot of the guys it just
came down to speed – it didn’t matter how we got there. As for an engine
swap, once you’ve done it and felt the results, there’s no going back.”
And
that’s the second reason right there: speed – all you can handle and
more. Bike guys have always argued that cars can never be as quick, so
when a bike guy builds a car, you know it’s going to get serious.
I’ve
got to tell you about another creation before we get to the Mazda, as
the more I heard about it, the more I understood why something like this
RX-7 makes sense to Craig.
It
was a Range Rover Classic, which was bobtailed (when you shorten both
the rear chassis and body overhang), lowered around 8 inches with wider
Discovery 2 axles and a load of other bits, and was running a 4.6-litre
Rover V8. Oh, and it could turn a 14-second quarter mile too…
As
abundant as Rover V8s are in the UK, you’re always limited to how much
power they will make for reasonable money spent. That’s kind of a
sticking point, as in the last two decades access to bigger power from
smaller capacities engines with supercharging and turbos means they’ve
become a bit of a dinosaur. The kind of thing your dad’s mate has got in
his hot rod, but really, you could probably beat it in a race with a
modern hot hatch.
In
the late ’90s Craig realised he wanted to get back into a sportscar, so
he went on the hunt for a suitable donor for the Rover engine. Craig
remembers, “I looked around and found a Porsche 944 Turbo, then an Audi
Quattro, which I really liked – but they were too much money. Escort
Cosworth – the same, plus they’d just get nicked.”
CHAPTER TWO
I Like That One
It
was around 2000-2001 when he stumbled across this FD3S Mazda RX-7 at a
rotary specialists, parked up with a blown 13B motor. “I told the bloke
he could keep the engine and ‘box – he was horrified when I said what I
was going to do,” says Craig.
Confessing
to not really knowing anything about the Mazda model then – apart from
that fact they liked blowing engines – why the RX-7 then? “It was a
9-year-old car at the time and really straight and solid, but I didn’t
know much about them,” Craig said. “I just thought that looks good. It ticked all the boxes and had a nice big engine bay and transmission tunnel.”
There
weren’t many late-model RX-7s on the road in the UK at the time,
and officially Mazda only sold 124 series 6 models (’92-’95), so it was a
rare thing. Craig’s is an early import that arrived in the UK prior to
the massive influx from Japan in the early ’00s. With the rolling shell
back in Birmingham, Craig dropped the Rover motor in – a 4.6-litre with a
lower plenum – and drove it around like that for a bit.
Then
somebody was selling 5.0-litre crank and rods, and stage three heads,
so in they went. “I put a bigger cam in but it shunted it’s brains out,”
says Craig. “Jenvey sorted out some throttle bodies, it had an Emerald
ECU and made 345hp which was quite a lot back then. It was good fun but
it wasn’t, enough.”
That need for speed shines through, right? Don’t forget that this is all back in the early ’00s…
As
luck would have it though, the requirement for a new gearbox led Craig
to his now favourite engine. “A friend of mine worked at Vauxhall
looking after all the motorsport stuff,” he said. “I tuned his bike
and told him I was after one of the gearboxes they used in the Monaro,
as I’d heard they were good.”
“I
said I’d make a plate up to run it behind the Rover. He told me they’d
had a car in with about 450 miles on it that they’d prepped for the
press fleet. It had been given to a journalist who’d gone up the road
and put it backwards through a hedge after about 10 miles.”
Journalists
eh? Pah… This was when the Monaro first got launched in the UK in
mid-2004, so did Craig want the engine to go with the box? Err… yeah!
With the insurance all cleared up, the pair were collected. It’s kind of
ironic really that a Chevrolet engine replaced the Rover, which was
originally a Buick – also a GM product.
Slotting
the LS into the RX-7, Craig recalls, “I put it in bog-stock and it made
414hp. It drove beautifully with power and torque everywhere.”
Selling
the 5.0-litre Rover V8 and gearbox that he pulled out actually brought
in more money than it cost him to upgrade, and this is how it’s worked
pretty much ever since. As Craig upgrades whatever is under the bonnet,
customers come along and want to buy whatever they’ve just been taken
out for a ride in. Plus, Craig is really good at putting cars together,
so nothing stays as it is for very long.
CHAPTER THREE
Everyday Is Power Day
Craig’s business these days is called Dyno Torque, and he had a big part to play in the Driftworks 86 build, and subsequently looking after it at events. It’s all starting to make more sense now, huh?
With
a stroker kit fitted to the LS1, it made 538hp at the crank, but one
passenger ride later and the engine was sold to a customer and a stroked
LS3 was purchased. Just in case you don’t know your LS engines, I think
it’s probably worth explaining the basic differences: LS1 is 5.7-litre,
LS6 is 5.7-litre and the LS2 is 6.0-litre with the better heads – so
the LS6 came out as an interim motor. The LS3 is 6.2-litre and the LS7
is 7.0-litre.
Craig
likes the LS3 as a base as they are thicker walled than the LS7, with
more meat left between the bores. That LS3 ended up getting long stroked
to 7.1 litres with a big cam, and Craig smiles as he says, “Around town
it was horrific on fuel and your eyes would water if you stood near the
exhaust. It shunted a lot too,” – shunting being the hunting of revs
lower down the range, which makes the car annoying to drive at slow
speeds. Hang on, didn’t we hear that same complaint a few hundred
horsepower ago?
This is
when the gods of forced induction arrived to smooth everything
out. Yes, I said smooth – it’s turbo time. These days there is no real
reason for lag unless you actually want it. Craig dismissed a
supercharger – not because he doesn’t like them (far from it), but
rather because it would have meant modifying the bonnet line of the
Mazda.
He
didn’t want to do that, because by this point he’d properly fallen for
the shape of the FD3S and wanted to maintain the purity of it.
Naturally,
it was going to be a tight fit, and everybody who looked in the
LS3-equipped engine bay told Craig it couldn’t be done. Craig being the
man he is took that as a challenge and decided twin turbos were the way
forward. That initial install is pretty much as you see it today, with
the turbos sat out front. The intercooler and radiator are under the
sweeping front end too.
Looking
at the engine bay now, it just makes sense the way it’s all been laid
out. But hopefully if you’ve read the story so far, you’ll understand
that this is the result of years of experience. With the engine
up and running it made 750hp with just 4psi of boost – lovely smooth,
linear boost. That was about 2011 and over the last four years Craig has
had a lot of fun in the car, whilst forever refining the package.
For
a man so used to swapping engines and cars, it’s a testament to the
Mazda that Craig has held onto it for so long. Considering he admits the
name doesn’t mean much to him, the shape has kept him loyal.
Modifications like the rear over-fenders took him 18 months to decide
on, just in case they ‘ruined’ the looks. For the record, Craig is very
happy with them now. For a man with no real affinity to the Japanese car
scene, I wonder how it’s come to look so right?
“With
Driftworks being next door it’s always got to be lower, wider and have
the most ridiculous wheels,” Craig said tongue and cheek. “I guess I’m
easily influenced.” The Work Emotion Kai wheels are 10.5-inch wide at
all four corners, and they need to be, because with fine tuning the RX-7
now makes 1,017hp at the crank, at 1bar (14.7psi), and
generates 980ft-lbs of torque.
“I
rev it to 7,000rpm normally, but it peaks at about 6,500rpm,” says
Craig. “The gearing is always a battle, but it’s got a Dodge Viper diff
in it now, a 3.07, so it’s got a lot of legs.” Another ironic stroke
considering Playboy magazine tested the FD3S against the Dodge
Viper when they were both new back in 1993 – the Mazda coming out on top
as the better car. Go figure!
FINAL CHAPTER
Power & Pain
Of
course, with power come problems. The RAM twin plate-clutch was bolted
up to an alloy flywheel, but the power was elongating the holes in it,
so it’s been replaced with a steel one. And after Craig found paint
flaking off the propshaft, he realised it was twisting under load, so
there’s a carbon equivalent under there now. “It’s crazy, it’s glued
together,” he says with a smile.
It’s
been a long hard battle to get to this stage, but I get the feeling
that Craig is almost at his destination. Going back to the title and
just how fast this is, he has this to say: “It can never be fast enough,
but this is the only car I’ve ever had that’s bike speed. It will
outrun a Hayabusa on 4psi of boost – 80mph roll-on is crazy. I’ve been
with a mate who’s on his R1, and I mean he’s on the gun and I’m staying
with him spinning the wheels – and then it grips and goes. They’re not
slow bikes either – the Mazda is genuinely quite fast.”
Notice how he said “quite”? Genuine quote right there, because for Craig I don’t think it will ever
be fast enough, so what else can he do? “I want it to work. I don’t use
it an awful lot but it’s there when I want it,” he added. “But I could
put 1.5bar (22psi) in it and it would do 1,500hp easily, but it’s still
an alloy block. So if I put the LSX block in it, just as it is, and put
2bar (29psi) through it, it would do 1,800hp to 1900hp.”
With
a grin you kind of know he’s serious, and if that wasn’t enough, I
spied an LSX block in the engine building bay of Dyno Torque. Really.
But I want to know what his take is on those people who aren’t a fan of
the V8 swap? “‘I used to take a lot of flack, but I’ve swapped LS motors
into 16 RX-7s, and I’ll bet at least 10 of those would have been
scrapped [otherwise]. It’s just a car with four wheels, I really don’t
get it. The engine doesn’t make a car. If Mazda had made the RX-8 with a
2.3-litre turbocharged Duratec, they’d still be selling them now. What a
good car that would have been!”
In
fact, Craig is building an RX-8 for his next car, but we’ll save that
story for another day… For me though this RX-7 might just be
perfection. It has the power to keep 99.9 per cent of us happy, the
looks to satisfy the purists, a full interior complete with retrimmed
Recaros and a proper Nardi steering wheel to make you smile when
burbling along.
Take
a look at this video to see how subtle the Mazda is on the move – until
Craig decides otherwise that is. But bear in mind it was filmed in the
private industrial estate where Dyno Torque is based, and I don’t think
Craig used more than about 3,500rpm!
The
next time you think you can never have enough power, or that a V8 swap
is an easy option, just remember this story and realise that nothing comes
easily – you have to fight and work for it. But listening to Craig, I
think it might just be worth it… So you just have to ask yourself, how
badly do you want it?
Craig Taylor’s Twin Turbo LS3 V8 Mazda RX-7 Engine
GM Chevrolet LS3 block bored & stroked to 6.9L, steel crank and
rods, forged Diamond pistons, line-bored block, ARP bolt kit, ported oil
pump, dual timing chain kit, ET Performance CNC heads, roller rockers,
chromoly push rods, dual valve springs, stainless valves,
titanium retainers, custom 238/238 cam, Emerald ECU, custom wiring loom,
FAST intake manifold, 90mm throttle body, K&N air filters, billet
belt tensioner, 45mm headers, 4-inch exhaust system, dual 3-inch tail
section, Aeromotive fuel pump, Aeromotive fuel pressure regulator Driveline
Tremec TR6060 6-speed manual gearbox, RAM twin-plate clutch, carbon
prop, Dodge Viper diff unit, OS Giken 1.5-way diff, Driveshaft Sshop kit Suspension/Brakes
Nitron 3-way shocks, bump steer kit and increased lock mods, AP GT Spec
380mm front discs, AP 4-pot 328mm rear discs, SPOT handbrake calipers Wheels
Work Emotion Kai 18×10-inch Exterior
Flush-fit HID headlight kit, Burnout front bumper, Feed bonnet, 99-spec rear spoiler Interior
RX-7 Type RZ Recaro seats retrimmed in leather/Alcantara, Nardi steering
wheel, SPA gauges integrated in to dash surround & door pod
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