Thanks guys....
they are a rare car these days, the Elford turbo particularly so.
That Elford turbo powered Viva belongs to Alex in New Zealand....his work on the car is awe-inspiring!
The car that Alexs' engine came from is this one which is a good example of how rare the Elfords are.....
The car was rusted out and Alex stripped it and shipped the engine to NZ for his Viva and I made a 300 round trip to collect the front bumper/spoiler off it. The spare parts hardly ever come up for sale and demand is high if they do.
This is the engine in my car...
As you can see, it's a very simple setup....
A small fast spooling, oil cooled, T3 Garrett turbo sucking directly through a HIF44 SU carb. Unusually for a turbo engine, the comression was left as standard, not lowered which meant the car drove as a normal RX7 off boost but when the turbo kicked in, it flew. The boost was limited to a pretty low 6psi because of this but the performance is non the worse for that.
The Elford conversion was so good and professionally done that Mazda agreed to honour the factory warranty on converted cars....
obviously, Elfords had therefore erred on the side of caution and set the boost low.... common consensus these days is that the engine will safely take 10psi which is achieved by overiding the wastegate with a manual boost controller and a slight change to the set up of this...
The ignition control that cuts the engine if the wastegate fails to open and the boost hits 8 psi.
Here's a copy of Elfords brochure for the car back in the day...
All 1st generation RX7's for the UK market were carb fed and used the 12a rotary engine.... a factory turbo version was only ever available for the Japanese home market.
For the last year of production (1984-1985) in the US only, the car came with a more powerful 13b fuel injected engine. Sadly, it was for the American market only and wasn't offered elsewhere in the world.
There will be 7 or 8 of these cars together at the Retro Rides gathering in august which is the most that have been together in one place for a good while...
come and say hello if any of you guys are there.
cheers,
Ian
