And the Winner Is…

by Murilee Martin

Published: July 10th, 2011

At the end of yesterday’s race session, it appeared that we had a Stealth-626-Supra battle for the B.F.E. GP win on laps. All day today, however, the Ghetto Motorsports Mazda RX-7 (winner of the 2010 B.F.E. GP, not to mention the LeMons Mountain Region championship) kept creeping up on the 1-2-3 cars.

Late in today’s race session, Ghetto Motorsports took the lead, grabbing the second-quickest lap time of the race in the process (the quickest lap was turned by the heavily-BS-lap-zapped turbocharged B18C-engined Civic of Casino Racing). When the checkered flag waved, Ghetto Motorsports had a little over a one-lap lead on the second-place car… and needed every bit of that lead, because its ignition coil crapped out right at the end. Congratulations, Ghetto Motorsports!

Note: For more B.F.E. GP adventures, check out Longroofian’s coverage over at Hooniverse.

#1980s #24HoursOfLeMons #24HoursOfLeMonsDenver #BFEGP #Denver #Mazda #MazdaRX-7 #Racing #RX-7

Murilee Martin

Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.

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4 comments

Zeus01 on Jul 11, 2011

Musta been the primary ignition coil that s#!t the bed (Mazda rotaries have two coils, two ignitors and two plugs per combustion chamber). The secondaries fire 15 degrees after the primaries, so if you lose the primaries your power goes way down. Had the secondaries failed instead the only indication would have been a failed tachometer...

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- Mekarooch on Jul 11, 2011
  
  I think they replaced the engine with : RX-7s are great race cars, but the Mazda rotary engines suffer from reliability problems. The solution: Mazda B engine out of a Miata.
  
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- Zeus01 on Jul 12, 2011
  
  @Mekarooch "...but the Mazda rotary engines suffer from reliability problems." Only partly true. The early-70s rotaries (and more recent sequential twin turbo'd and even more recent Renesis) engines had reliability issues. But the normally-aspirated rotaries in the 1st-gen RX7s (pictured above) and the second-gen cars) were reliable and durable. I've owned six first gens and rebuilt several high-mileage 12A and 13B engines from that era. It was not uncommon for them to get 200,000 bullet-proof (and fun, high-revving) miles with normal recommended maintenance. But they were very unforgiving of the "secretary treatment". ie: "Check the oil? I didn't know I was supposed to do that. I thought they did that at the factory!" Rotaries are designed to use a small amount of their engine oil to lube the apex seals. This oil is not retrieved. It's necessary to add about a quart of oil every 1000 miles depending on driving habits, and to change the oil every 3000 to 5000 miles, about the same frequency as most engines of that era. This means that rotaries with clueless owners will run dry of oil around the 10,000-mile mark. And we all know what happens to engines--- rotary, piston or turbine--- when this happens.
  
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AJ on Jul 12, 2011

Cool! I had two RX-7s (1st generation) back in the day. Fun to drive and I regret selling the last one. As far as the rotary, my second RX-7's rotary lasted to 180k. Even still runs today (a friend has it). And I wasn't easy on it at all... What fun it was!

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