Hot Wheels! Triple Turbo 3 Rotor FD RX7 Catches Fire on First Start!
It was a scary moment for a crazy build, but we are happy that this three-rotor FD survived to see another day.
It seems that rotaries are naturally attracted to fire. Even the tamest of rotary engines (i.e Renesis 13B) will shoot a good sized flame with a stock ECU and a cat delete. However, this rotary-powered Mazda is far from tame, it actually is quite the opposite. This build is borderline insane and we honestly can’t believe it exists at all, but here it is nonetheless. This is a 20B peripheral port 3 rotor with three turbos stacked on top of each other. Yes, it is as exotic as you just heard. The video goes over the group over at Angel Motorsports attempting to do the first start up on this crazy FD. Not to mention it has a widebody kit with matching wide three-piece wheels. This car definitely has extreme written all over it. Thanks to Angel Motorsports YouTube channel, we get to watch how this first startup goes down.
As you might imagine, Angel Motorsports specializes in rotaries. During their first cranks, they had forgotten to turn on the fuel pump on the initial run. This then prompted them to add some starter fluid into the intake in order to get the motor to turn over successfully. What they didn’t realize at the time was that was a leak at one of the injectors and of course, starter fluid is highly flammable. Thus, a slight mis-spray of the fluid catching the injector leak would immediately start a fire. This obviously, is exactly what happened here.
In the panic of the moment and with a fire extinguisher not available, the team attempted to do anything they could to quell the flames. This included pouring a two liter Mountain Dew all over the engine compartment to try and stop the spread. Can you imagine pouring soda over a $20k+ engine? Eventually, after they find a fire extinguisher the flames die down and everything seems okay.
They slap the intake manifold back on and after adjusting some timing and fuel settings on the ECU, they finally get the 3 rotor to idle. The idle on this particular engines sounds crazier than 95% of engines at wide open throttle, but that’s just a detail. According to the team, it still needs a couple of details before it gets put on the dyno to see what crazy power figures it can make. If the idle is indicative of anything, this engine will be the definition of insane once it runs right.
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