Larry Chen: James Deane’s 4 Rotor Mazda FD RX7 Video

Larry Chen Video Transcript

That’s so legit Somehow I made it onto James Dean’s four rotor fdr7 but I’m gonna talk with him a little bit about this latest iteration of this build Mr popular over here I basically I basically had to pry you away from your fans I was telling your family that you might need a security guard

I love coming back to Ireland like I’m traveling so much and when I come home and just to spend some time and even seeing so many familiar faces that have been coming and meeting us when we were just starting out and they’re still coming here 15 years later it’s it’s

Amazing so Mandela park for me is really special yeah so this is pretty much where your career started yeah yeah so I actually had a chance to photograph this exact car many years ago very different version back in 20 2012 2012 yeah so September 2012. 11 years ago yeah uh daiyoshihara

Came yeah you know obviously DMACC had his uh 86 build yeah you know you had this with the SR20 SR20 yeah 2.2 liter Sr um we built this car originally back in 2009 after the Red Bull World drift championships which I had my very first S14

Um I crashed that car in Long Beach at the in the docks for that crazy Red Bull event and for the 20 2009 Irish drift Championship we needed a car and we had this car my brother had this car in the yard had a blown two rotor and we took

That out we didn’t know anything about rotary so I took that out we had uh we just met an Sr fit into this car and I used it with an Sr until last so my drove this car was two years ago so the dream always was to have a rotary

But you know it was never possible firstly with knowledge secondly just when I was my my driving and career was progressing like as chassis with a 2J just made way more competitive sense than trying to develop the SR even further and having you know reliability issues so we kept

This car as a demo car with the dream of eventually putting a crazy rotary into that and it’s finally come this weekend yeah so it’s so interesting like I came here shot you some stuff happened mainly you winning three championships yeah yeah and then uh now we’re here so you’re

Back in FD which is super cool to see yeah but this is is this just going to be your demo car yeah this is just built for fun for just even my own my own pleasure like I think if I was at home or you know after a tough week or

Something I would just go into the workshop start this off and just start smiling because this thing is it’s a crazy crazy setup and it’s just been a dream like it goes way back to my days before I was even competing playing Gran Turismo like I love watching racing when

I was growing up and the 787b noise I don’t know how many YouTube videos I’m after watching over you know the past 20 years just listening to those guys fire up and just idling and I always dreamed of doing it of course Mad Mike with his

Car that’s always been insane for me to watch and uh listen to and uh yeah we finally finally been able to make it happen so this thing I had a chance to watch you during practice and oh my goodness it just sounds so good We finished it like pretty much this morning it came from the dino yesterday everything has changed in the car like even steering rack positions suspension things lots of changes so we came here the car like come here with nobody nothing we had to finish all of that overnight and this morning

Um so yesterday evening before practice finished we managed to just take it out there as a chassis with almost no breaks no handbrake just to get a feel for it and make sure it was running okay and then overnight we put on all the body kit and today has been the first time

We’ve seen it completed it looks sick I love it I personally love it I love I love of course the the classic Falcon Scout delivery we just changed it up which if you look at it from a distance it’s like a triangle a bit of a inspiration from the 787b and the same

With the wheels so the terrible fans in the front and gold big dishes on the back yeah and these are actually your wheels yeah so uh Strom this Irish company they’ve they’ve um we’ve been working with them and they want to do make a custom wheel when they heard

Their idea and they made it happen really quickly for us for this event so with inspiration from the 787b did they actually so they they made the original wheel in on the inside and then my local shop Lexi brake they’ve managed to make these

Uh we had we went to them told them the idea left it with him for a few days and uh he came back with this the turbo fans are just so cool yeah they love that they’re still the design of the wheel yeah yeah yeah yeah so it’s cool and

It’s a it’s really simple too they’re just we drilled the wheel and this is like a spacer on the inside so it’s actually a three-piece fan this is a spacer then as well to the actual disc and then all these fins are welded on the inside too there’s no even steering

Vibration nothing Everything feels great it survived this long yeah yeah yeah so far so far so cool uh let’s check out the engine bay yep so here we have a 26b forward order um yeah it’s kind of I can’t believe it to be honest how many uh four rotors are in Ireland

Zero this is it yeah this is it as far as I know there’s no one in them might be in the UK I’m not sure but as far this is definitely the only four order drift car in Europe for sure so then our rotary is pretty big in Ireland not

Really not really so people don’t have much knowledge with them that’s so that’s why I was dealing with a ppre in New Zealand so they built the engine and shipped it to me and gave me all the advice on what parts to run and and uh

You know what to do and things like that but so far it’s been super um super reliable no issues come straight after Dyno we’re revving it to 10 000 RPM sounds crazy it’s loud as hell it shoots fire yeah it’s it’s like a flamethrower it shoots so much fire yeah man it’s

Crazy so then uh on the dyno how much did it make uh 550 horsepower so all in a 550. so like it’s not like competition spec drift cars these days but this runs on three tires so it’s perfect we still have some things to refine like handbrake it’s not really

Working that well we’ll change the gear ratio to have really short splits between all the gears but today is like a test day in front of 10 000 fans watching so it’s cool it’s literally the first time you’re running first time yeah so then what transmission so it’s a Samsung a sequential five-speed

Transmission same as what I run in all my Pro drift cars in Europe yeah why is five on the front BC racing coilovers so because the rest of the car was built already the rest of the car was built already what made it tricky is we had to

Move the steering rack lower to fit the engine nice and low now we could have put it in that you’ll see a lot of uh forwarders sit at more of an angle but we wanted it as level as possible and as low as possible why is that just for

Center of gravity and just the look of it sitting like without the intake like this is the top of the engine it’s so low so it’s interesting because most of the drift cars here in the paddock have rear radiators yeah this one since there’s still room you you put the uh

The radiator in the front yeah yeah so that’s mainly it’s not a pro drift car it doesn’t need crazy grip we’re not looking for every little piece of uh weight transfer like nor you normally would be and these engines are like a rotary engine is known to run pretty hot

So we just over build the cooling system and it’s way better to have airflow up the front the car is not getting hot at all like it’s running super cool I I’m so impressed and surprised and so what kind of feel are you running so it’s

Running VP c85 uh with a blend of two-stroke head two-stroke oil for lubrication well so when you were warming it up earlier I started crying oh yeah I got in my eyes you know but it was yeah it’s like wow this is yeah I’ve been asking myself am I really crying

Because it’s finished or is it the fuel yeah it’s uh it’s definitely pretty fumey it is so cool I love the design I also like that you added a little bit of orange too yeah yeah yeah again a bit of inspiration from the 787b also were

Running quite a bit of orange in the RT or Ford Mustang and Formula Drift so just keeping the theme going with this maybe we’ll add some other things maybe it would be nice to have like like that continue with some orange or white on the lift the lower lip or something to

Show how low it is what’s the kit the kit is it’s from a company in the UK called Aero kit and they cost them we we built this like 10 years ago hey so I have shots of this yeah I’m good with that yeah yeah 2017 2018. yeah yeah when

It was just a normal teal and blue yeah yeah it’s still teal and blue underneath so you can see look you can see the original oh yeah so this was it was painted uh so the car is painted and then wrapped over yeah because I could see some of the

Older yeah yeah it’s still yeah she’s uh she’s a bit beat off on the inside but looks great on the outside yeah exactly let’s just talk about the interior real quick so in terms of the Interior did you have to change anything no it’s not even finished so

This was built in an insane timeline all we did was try something because then behind this firewall area added that we don’t even have the dashboard in like we didn’t bring everything to finish the car fully so it just has the dash it has all the ECU Master the latest

Um latest software from them and uh yeah sounds unbelievable so then do you want to hear it fire up in a minute yeah sure yeah that would be amazing so yeah you can see the back isn’t even painted yeah this is what it was before when it was

Running Sr yeah yeah yeah so it’s like the back is as it was and we basically worked from here forward so then after this event after the world tour you’re going to probably take it apart again there’s lots of little things so it’s pretty much finished under the Bonnet

Things to tidy up but loads of work to do in the interior uh but we’d probably do it in the off season just enjoy it for now and then when there’s a bit of a gap we’ll repaint the inside uh fix all little things you see inside the Arches

And and stuff like that but it’s here we made it we built this car with the rotary and in a matter of weeks yeah congrats so in so for the LG World Tour there’s like a group chat with all the people and I remember you sending like a video yeah

You guys just like tuning it on the street yeah yeah yeah it is uh oh crazy crazy times some push to get here yeah no sleep I got here yesterday um the car got here literally we tried bleeding the brakes got the ham rate working a little bit

Um and we had five minutes to spare before practice finished just took it for a few runs and uh yeah we’re just happy we made it yeah I have so much new with this it’s not like a 2J or an Sr which we’re so experienced with it’s

It’s so new and when something is so new you’re like double checking a lot of different things uh but it’s been good A little yeah I can’t wait for you to start it I think of all the fans yeah are excited about that too you guys want to hear it yeah foreign [Laughter] yeah I love it just like that I love it I love it the noisemaker yeah amazing it’s a dream man dream come true that is it’s funny because it’s like it sounds so distinct yeah it’s almost like it’s so smooth it’s like when you floored it’s like so smooth it’s amazing

It’s almost like you’re playing a sound clip of the seven eight yeah yeah you know it is so distinct that there’s no other way to make that sound no I can’t believe we’ve done it man 10 000 RPM Redline Anakin start talking to ppre who built the engine they said

We can keep going really so yeah they said 11 is okay but I’m just like let’s let’s leave it at 10. so do you think you’re gonna leave it n a or do you think oh for sure is the sound no silence you know what I

Mean it’s just the perfect zone so it’s staying in a no matter what if we ever get to the point where we need a little bit more maybe a small sniff of nitrous ah yeah but I don’t wanna like no stop stop stop no no stop putting ideas in my

Head cool thank you so much my pleasure I appreciate it pleasure having you back in Ireland hey thanks for watching if you want to support us directly go to larrychanprince.com I print and sign every single one of these this is the perfect gift or it’s the perfect piece of art for your wall

Oh You need me [Applause]