After years of thinking about all this, I have figured out that I bought the right car, but it had the wrong engine.

20b is too expensive, and too eccentric an engine. I don't want to be held hostage at the mercy of the "rotary gurus" every time I have a problem. Bend a pushrod? Big ******* deal. Need some rocker arms or sparkplugs or whatever? Go to the parts store on any corner. Need some help tuning? I have three, THREE great GTO friends right here in town that have all been tuning and racing LSx engines for years. There a guy here that will completely rebuild a T56 transimission for $150. $150?!?!? Are you kidding me?

You see what I mean?

 

Thanks for beating me to the punch.

And plus its called being unique on top of all that plenty of rotary powered 8s around not too many piston ones

 

What kind of investment does Hinson need? I e-mailed then a few times telling them I could drive my car there and they can use it for however long they want. My previous car (06 Grand Prix GXP with the 5.3L V8) was a prototype car for a turbo kit, was a year and a half long process and I was fine with it so I'm used to that.

I see normally they charge 8k to swap a V8 into an RX-7 for a turn key solution (you supply the engine/trans I'm sure) so I would imagine if they use your car as a test car they would cut you some slack on the cost.....

I'll e-mail them again......

 

If my rx8's engine goes, I would be in the market for a v8 swap. But the market would have to be mature enough that I'm not caught up in a crapstorm like people have had with the 20b one-off swaps.

 

I hope this doesn't get deleted but some of you may remember me posting about a year or two ago seeing who was interested in doing such a swap and I got flamed hard for even mentioning putting an LS1 or any other kind of piston engine in the RX-8 chassis.

I have done an LS1 convertion for a customers FD, it worked flawlessly. Amazing to drive, so much power.

I have wanted to do the LS1 swap into an RX-8 for more than a few years now, nobody has stepped up.
I have an 04 GT shell at my shop right now that is stripped down, we are in the process of building it into a drift car for a customer, the plan is to power it with an LS1 engine and use a Corvette transaxle in the rear to get more weight in the rear (easier to drift).

If anyone is serious about having an LS1 and T56 6speed transmission swapped into their RX-8 I am fully willing and more than capable of doing such a thing.

My plan is to build a complete tubular subframe to replace the factory one and offer it along with a PPF for the LS1/T56 combo. My shop is located in Cambridge Ontario Canada, anyone willing to send a car to us or drop it off, email me joe_ferg@live.com.

 

To me, I'd rather keep as much stock as possible to keep the "essence" of the car intact and to keep costs low. It makes sense to use the rear mounted Vette transaxle for balance and strength for drifting, but to fabricate something like that doesn't sound very easy. The car we see in this thread just uses an LS1 and a T56 out of an '04 GTO.

Maybe I'm over simplifying the LS1 swap into the RX8. Just ballpark how long would something like this take? Weeks? Months?

 

Sorry, What I was trying to say was that the RX-8 we will be building for our customer will get the Corvette transaxle. Which of course will require alot of fabrication and will be a long term project.

I want to fabricate a simple LS1 swap for the RX-8's. Just a tubular front subframe, tubular PPF for the T56 and a driveshaft, possibly even a wiring schematic for the DIY guy.

The first swap would take some time, I'd like to say 4-5 months tops. Jigs would have to be built, CAD drawings would have to be drawn up, parts would need to be laser cut, wiring would need to be figured out ect. The first one is always takes longer. After all that has been done, I'm almost certain we could turn an LS1 swap around in a couple weeks.

 

This would be awesome, if there would be an ls1 kit then i am sure it would be very simple to just get the kit for a LS2 or LS3 for those who want even more power.

 

how fast how fast??
really fast???

 

You already know what the detractors will say about the swap. Back then I'm sure part of it was that most here had shiny new engines that weren't in any danger of needing replacement.

I hope you continue down this path though. My rebuilt engine only has about 6k miles on it, I likely won't be a customer for several years, but I know that once you have a finished product to sell, people who are replacing their engines will view this as an alternative that they currently aren't even aware of. Many are in the 60-80k miles range, so it's only a matter of time

 

I hope some kit comes out soon. I was less then 24 hours from finalizing the sale of my car and then backed out. The car is great for reasons stated earlier in the thread but the engine is a weak link in an other wise great package. There are ways to rectify its lack of grunt but nothing quite like starting fresh with american muscle. Someone please make one. Id be down for the kit for sure

 

Received a reply from HSC today:

 

nice. because i, like so many others, is VERY interested in a swap if my motor ever pops.

 

Ditto, I would love to swap, if I have too

 

I might be a buyer depending on how fast the kit will be available

 

With the price of rx-8s going down and a lsx swap kit in the works i see a lot more people owning rx-8 >.>

 

u guys are crazy

 

i came

 

That is bad ***.

What an awesome project car that would make.

 

you should see this machine on the track its insane!

 

You live over there in Iceland? No kidding...

So, it does okay, but a 12.83 second quarter isn't exactly "fast".

That GT500 Cobra next to it n the video beat it by several lengths, and I bet it was stock.

Are the guys that built the LS1 RX8 going to design a kit? Do you know anything more about it? Pics?

 

First company to come out with a kit for a LSx based engine in a RX8 chassis, gets my money.

 

LOL. That pretty much says it all... I bet it's that way for a lot more folks than people think.

 

I would do it. No questions asked.

 

its a stock ls1 with a 2nd gear launch. it seems pretty awesome to me.