Adapting Rotary Engine to the Gearbox on Rotary Hillclimb Racing Project
Adapting Rotary Engine to the Gearbox on Rotary Hillclimb Racing Project.
So far it has been a simple process I have just shelled out some cash to get a chassis and record information off a known complete chassis, but now the hard work is about to begin, I now have to work-out how to graft the engine and gearbox on to the rear of the Formula Ford chassis.
Rotary Hillclimb Adaptor Plate
This started with deciding on what gearbox to use, if money was no option I would have used a Hewland or Quafe Gearbox but these were well outside the budget for the project, so after some investigating I decided to use a Renault UN5 gearbox. I purchased a rebuilt Renault UN5 box from “Geoff” at Euro-Speed in Geebung on 19-1-08 this box also had a modification to the housing to support the crown-wheel for high horsepower applications, this was suggested to me by Geoff and after suffering from gearbox breakages on the previous car I thought this was a no brainer.
So I have a gearbox but how to fit it to a Mazda Rotary 13B engine? I thought to keep the conversion parts as off the shelf as I could, it seemed that if I used as much Mazda Rotary components as I can this would make replacement later (if required) easier and more cost effective.
An adaptor plate needed to be bolted to a bell housing so again the best option was to use a Mazda Rotary RX4 Bell housing and fit the Renault gearbox to it.
I purchased a slab of aluminum 100mm x 235mm x 345mm to make an adaptor plate. The photo attached shows the adaptor plate bolted to the Mazda bell housing after some 22 hours of machining on a milling machine at my workshop. Although this was doing the job this was still not the finished article.
Rotary Hillclimb Engine & Gearbox
The photo shows the engine, gearbox with the new adaptor plate bolting the whole assembly together, the engine is only a dummy one to get all the sizes etc at this point.
December 17th, 2009 at 9:29 pm
Very interesting car. I had a Peripheral Port 13B 305HP 51 ida weber in a formula car for hillclimbs in the US. Still holds some overall records even though it was sold 5 years ago. 1100 lb, triple plate wings, (1200lb downforce at 100 mph). Shoot me a note and I will attach a picture if you like. You may still find it on the internet under Mazda Bandit AR1 or Jerry Kieft Bandit. Or you may have no interest. I will be building a 1985 reynard ff200 this year with a 13b supercharged engine and a 12 inch shortened wheelbase. Atlantic rubber.
Thanks, Jerry
December 19th, 2009 at 6:25 pm
Hi Jerry,
It is great to see we are not the only people silly enough to run a Rotary 13B engine formula racing car around a Hillclimb. Your old car sounds like it was a very completive, and I would like to see a photo or any info you have on it. I have tried to Google it but all I get is finished result times and no images.
Your new car sounds like a good combination 13b supercharged is very instant power unlike the turbo versions, I was going to supercharge our current car but decided to turbo it due to costs and ease of mounting etc. What gearbox are you going to use and what wings are you using?
It would be great if you can keep us informed of the progress on your new project as it is a car of interest, i.e. it is a rotary hillclimb racing car which is exactly what this blog is all about, please let us know how it progresses etc
Kind regards
Warwick