Speaking of Grassroots Motorsports Mag. (GRM) and Spitfires, a few years ago
GRM built an autocross Spitfire with the stock engine that may be of
interest. Instead of buying all the parts for a rotory conversion, you may
want to check-out this GRM article first.
The car was a '73 Spit, I believe, and ran 2 Weber DCOEs with a header,
elect. ingn., and a modified head. Other mods included typical suspension
upgrades along with a plastic rear spring that GRM never really explained.
Anyway, the car looked great and reportedly delivered 0-60 times in under 9
seconds. Not sure how many autocrosses they won with the car, but it was
still streetable and not too wild.
Regarding the RX-7 conversion, to make that engine really run you'll need to
make some of the same investments involved in getting the original Spitfire
engine to "run." This is in addition to the pains and expenses of getting
the rotory engine into the Spit to begin with.
IMHO, it would be wiser to find a nice older RX-7 to start a project with, or
to find a nice Spit to modify for performance. Keeping the engines in their
respective places seems to be a much nicer starting place for performance
mods than swaping-out and starting from scratch. Finally, any Triumph can be
modified for reliability.
My $0.02
Kevin D. O'Connor
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