13BT, not reliable
Dave
oh i'm dying to hear the reasoning behind this, dave...
rotors aren't unreliable. the meatheads driving them are.
these same meatheads are quite capable of blowing up ANYTHING put under their right foot.
my 13B was 100thou old when i bought it, and i leant on it everyday after for 3 years and another 160thou before it needed resealing.
why? because i followed my warm up procedure to Mazda's letter, used quality mineral oil and filters every 5000ks and STUCK TO A FUKCING REDLINE.
winding 20psi into an unprepped 13B import engine and expecting to run 11s all day will result in that "grind-ping-pop" sound that so many misinformed rotor owners experience at the drags.
if you put 20psi into a wreckers CA18DET and launched at 7000 with flat changes for 400m for a whole night trying to run 11s you too would end up with an engine bay full of hot shiny bits.
so please - no more about rotors being unreliable unless you have
a) owned one and
b) driven one and
c) followed the correct operating procedures.
then AND ONLY THEN will you be in the boat to criticise them with any kind of merit.
that said, if you want fuel economy + a rotor, the 13B six port engine is a good one to use with a jetted 600 vac sec 4barrell edelbrock carby.
about the same outrigth power as street port (extend port) but with much more "round town" economy than an RX7 12A (and subsequently less primary power - open up the secondaries though and YEEEEHAAAAH).
anything other than that combo and you might as well throw the word "economy" out the window.