RX500 appreciation thread

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Finland
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Such a cool concept. As always, Mazda produces very enigmatic and futuristic cars, this definitely being no exception. I also literally took it for a spin, not the best behaving car, but look at it :D doesn't come as a surprise.

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pls fix pd
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Here’s some recent news of the engine:
https://mzracing.jp/news/17795 (Translated)
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On January 26, the engine overbur hole of the "Mazda RX500" showcar owned by the Numage Transportation Museum started at the Hiroshima Mazda Daishu store in Hiroshima City, and the composition of the mysterious engine body has been revealed.

The RX500 show model exhibited at the Tokyo Motor Show in 1970 is a concept car designed by Shigenori Fukuda, who later became the director and head of Mazda's design department, and it is 10A in the midship of a sleek sports car form. It is equipped with a type rotary engine. It is a car that attracted attention with an advanced design that looks like it was worked on by Carrozzeria in Europe. It seems that there was a description that a 12A rotary engine was installed in the pumplet of the motor show, but in fact, it was equipped with a 10A peripheral port specification for racing. What has been sleeping in Mazda's warehouse with other concept models for a long time was overhauled when it was donated to the Hiroshima Transportation Science Museum (now Numaji Transportation Museum) operated by Hiroshima City, and it has been reproduced to a runable state and has been reached the present. It is. After running a demonstration at an event called the Hiroshima Motor Festival held at the Marina Hop Parking Lot in the fall of 2011, in addition to being seen mainly at the museum, it was regularly burned into the engine and kept in condition. It was in a state. However, in recent years, it has become difficult to start the engine even during the regular maintenance, and we will carry out an engine overhaul at the suggestion of Hidehiko Ito, a chroma who is in charge of maintenance, and refresh the condition of the engine. It has become a thing.

The engine overhaul was led by Takayuki Kawajiri, who has been working on the regeneration and tuning of the rotary engine at Hiroshima Mazda, while the engine overhaul was led by the race mechanic of Hiroshima Mazda HMR, Shota Tadashi. Kunio Matsuura, a Mazda OB who assembled the original engine at that time, is also present for the disassembly work. In the compression test before disassembling, the rear side showed almost the standard value, while the compression value on the front side was zero for two rooms, and damage to the Apex seal was suspected. If you remove the distributor and the front cover with built-in oil pump and remove the stuck flywheel by force, you can carefully remove the tension bolt next time, and finally be able to separate it into the main part and remove it. Masu. Mr. Matsuura said, "At that time, I was preparing the engine every day to participate in the spa 24 hours race in 1970. Meanwhile, I was ordered to prepare an engine to be installed in the show car, but I think we replied that we would prepare it as soon as it was a racing engine, but we can't assemble a special specification." Masu. Therefore, it seems to be a peripheral port specification that is difficult to handle for road cars. As it was disassembled, it turned out that the front housing was made of aluminum (for the initial Cosmo Sports L10A) and the other side housings were made of steel. Mr. Kawajiri said, "I guess that there was probably some problems with the rotor housing and side housing when it was reproduced in 2011, and some of it was replaced and processed for mass-produced cars." Mr. Matsuura also said, "The water jacket shape of the two rotor housings is different, and the shape of the exhaust port is not the same. You can see traces of struggling to process mass production parts. Still, factory-specific parts are used everywhere, and you can see that the original one we assembled. There are some sports kits that are sold, but there are only factory specifications that are not set and have no processing marks."

As a result of the overhaul, I found that one of the apex seal and the corner seal of the front rotor was sticking, which was the cause of zero compression. According to Mr. Kawajiri, it is better to uniformize the front and rear rotor housing, and the bearing metal of the front rotor is being baked, so it needs to be repaired, but other than that, the rotor sliding surface of the side housing is also beautiful. So, some of the seals were also likely to be used as they were. The stick cause of the Apex seal also seems to be caused by the sticking of sludge and carbon, so it does not seem to be a big problem. " When I disassembled the downdraft cab made by the Japanese vaporizer that was installed, I assembled the missing parts as they were, but I procured the parts and already repaired them," said Kawajiri. It is a show car, and there was almost no opportunity to drive for a long time after the last overhaul, so it doesn't seem to be decisively destroying the inside. Noritsu Tamura, curator of the Hiroshima Transportation Science Museum, said, "I was relieved to see that the inside was not in a desperate state. I think it would be good if we could somehow find the parts that were considered unusable in the previous overhaul, repair them, return them to the original state, and play them." Mr. Matsuura also said, "I never thought that we would be able to stand in the disassembly of the 10A engine for the race we worked on more than 53 years ago. I was shown something good today," he said with a smile.

I would like to see you again when the 10A engine playback for this race is completed and the day comes when the RX50o can run again.
 
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I remember driving this in GT6 iirc. First I ever heard of this car. I slapped a Praiano tune on it and fell in love.
 
Something about the early MAZDA cars touches my love of cars, the L10A Cosmo I had seen one in Okinawa in '83 and thought it was the 2nd most beautiful car next to the E type Jaguars and fell in love with it, wanting one, but to find out it was way too expensive to ship back to the US for a Cpl in the USMC to do. So I had to leave my dream I in Okinawa.
Decades later i find the RX500 in GT SPORT and loved this little car from the start, I use it a lot for grinding and other races in the lobbies.
thank you for letting me share my story.
 
Yeah, the RX500 is awesome!
Mazda's Wankel-engined cars are interesting, I've always been attracted to them since my childhood, when I saw a Cosmo in a Ultraman episode (a rerun) and I can remember a white FC in another Japanese show (Jiban if I recall correctly) driven by a policewoman.
Later I found that Mazda even made a rotary minibus!
I'm a big GT-R fan, but Mazda rotarys also have a special place in my heart
 
I have a love hate relationship with mazda. They love rotary cars and tout them around but when it comes to part support they don't give a rats ass.
You can no longer obtain a master cylinder for a FD..
The drum brakes on the SA and FB are discontinued so you have to swap to inferior disk brakes because the good disk brake on the GSLSE's calipers are no longer made..

These are brake parts.. You know something that wares down and is needed to mot die.
Don't get me started on engine parts
 
I have a love hate relationship with mazda. They love rotary cars and tout them around but when it comes to part support they don't give a rats ass.
You can no longer obtain a master cylinder for a FD..
The drum brakes on the SA and FB are discontinued so you have to swap to inferior disk brakes because the good disk brake on the GSLSE's calipers are no longer made..

These are brake parts.. You know something that wares down and is needed to mot die.
Don't get me started on engine parts
It's becoming common with all manufacturers. Some worse than others. There are parts that are no longer made.
 
I used the RX500 today for the first time in the Le Mans PP700 30min grind race...(tuned up to just fit the PP700 mark with racing mediums)

Oh Boy...what a rocket it is!

One of the few cars that easily can do a one pit strategy(when there is no need to change tires bevause of rain)while running on FM2 or FM1, and one of the few cars(I am not talking about detuned GR1,GR2 and GR3 cars because I never use them for that race)that goes more than 300km/h at three different locations on that track(almost 4 locations, because i did hit more than 290 right before the Mulsanne hairpin)...and it is really soft on the tires...3 laps with RM are no problem at all

Great car, that I somehow overlooked a little bit so far...
 
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I've loved this car even since I saw it in GT6. I do wish Mazda did make the coupe and race models mentioned in the car's description, the coupe in particular is one of the best looking cars I've ever seen.

Speaking of which, here's some pics of the clay model. It has a detachable rear section to quickly change between the three variants.

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And a website in Japanese with information about the RX500 and pics of both the real car and the clay model: http://az-1.chicappa.jp/tokubetu/535/535_1.html.
 
I've loved this car even since I saw it in GT6. I do wish Mazda did make the coupe and race models mentioned in the car's description, the coupe in particular is one of the best looking cars I've ever seen.

Speaking of which, here's some pics of the clay model. It has a detachable rear section to quickly change between the three variants.


And a website in Japanese with information about the RX500 and pics of both the real car and the clay model: http://az-1.chicappa.jp/tokubetu/535/535_1.html.
That last version is like a Picasso of the SA rx7 , the roof/ rear specifically . It's design is all there but the proportions are off 😂😂 . Also funny how the rear lights on the middle version predate the R32 and look incredibly similar to the Corvette C4 in position and style . Mazda was crazy.
 
Used this car to win a few races and found out it’s really a great car to have. I can’t remember exactly which events without looking, but I believe it was lower PP races limited to older cars from before the 80s or 90s as part of an update release that I was having trouble with and this car saved me. I tried all kinds of older Lamborghini and Ferrari and Toyotas but couldn’t get 1st place with any, but once I tried this car it was a breeze to finish 1st. The power to weight ratio and handling just couldn’t be matched by any of my other cars that qualified for those races.
 
Because of this thread, I've been using mine. At 580 PP it's easy to win with for the Historic series even at low 200 HP. I'll by adding the turbo today for the 700PP Turbo series.
 
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