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THREE RX-3s AND THREE 13Bs<br />
www.storemags.com & www.fantamag.com<br />
WORDS Charles Trieu SNAPS Sean Klingelhoefer<br />
Mazda used the name RX-3 to indicate the<br />
third rotary experiment for themselves.<br />
And just like Mazda, this was, in a couple<br />
ways, Arnel’s third rotary experiment.<br />
Along with a few other old school cars—<br />
an AE86 a TE27 and a 510— he’s owned a total of three<br />
RX-3s. One of which being a mint virgin, one-owner RX-3<br />
SP that he couldn’t bare to modify. The SP is like the ‘Type<br />
R’ or ‘V-Spec’ for all you younger tuners. And so instead of<br />
building that one, he sold it and bought himself a KPGC10<br />
Hakosuka (‘box’) Skyline. There’s more to why he had to buy<br />
a Skyline, but I’ll get to that in a bit.<br />
Five years ago when Arnel found this RX-3 it was a<br />
non-running retired ITA racecar. His original intention was<br />
to rebuild the rotary 12A engine, add a downdraft carb and<br />
make it a clean, street-going weekend car. But he soon<br />
realized that the 13B-REW from the fourth generation<br />
FD3S RX-7 was the only engine he wanted in his car. The<br />
swap wasn’t too difficult, only requiring some other OEM<br />
parts, a 12A front cover, GSL-SE oil pan and FC3S Turbo II<br />
transmission for an almost bolt-in swap. Wiring the<br />
standalone EMS was probably the most difficult part, but<br />
that wasn’t a problem for a guy who’s already had experience<br />
with that on previous cars. Soon after, the car was<br />
back on the track at Willow Springs Raceway only to come<br />
home on a trailer with a blown motor. Another motor was<br />
quickly purchased and again he rebuilt it, this time with<br />
a street port. But like the title of the story and the name<br />
of the car indicates, that motor quickly blew up, too, and<br />
Arnel had to rebuild the 13B-REW and go for a third setup.<br />
With 550cc primary injectors and 1000cc secondary<br />
injectors, the new motor was only able to safely pull off<br />
312whp. Arnel has just picked up a set of 1600cc injectors<br />
and will be heading back to the dyno at Rotary Reliability<br />
Racing, in hopes to make it to at least the 350whp mark.<br />
Back to the Hakosuka portion of our story: in 1971,<br />
the Hakosuka Skyline dominated the racetracks in Japan,
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