Larry Chen: Rotary-Powered C6 Corvette: The Antithesis of The LS-Powered RX-7 Video

Larry Chen Video Transcript

Foreign [Applause] Before it started raining we actually had a couple good runs yeah it was a bit nice to begin with maybe got three runs in the dry yeah that was fun no it was cool it was actually a pleasure to chase you I was in the beginning yeah you did

That was a pleasant surprise [Applause] So this is um a Corvette that has a rotary which is the opposite of what we usually see yeah so that was kind of the idea we see a lot of people doing the V8 swaps into the rx7s and in the S chassis so we wanted to build something totally unique

And obviously the Corvette is a great chassis you see in America doing really well as I didn’t want to put an engine into something that wasn’t going to be nice to drive so yeah that was where the idea came from so we took the video out we didn’t

Want to have an identical car to Dave from drift games so we knew we had to do something different and this is a concept that we came up with um always wanted a rotary engine in a car and it fits uh surprisingly well yeah so it actually has quite a bit of

Role huh yeah I mean the engine bay in the Corvette is not massive I think a lot of people make mistake thinking of V8 being like a six liter engine it’s it’s gonna you know you could fit anything inside but the Corvette is quite pointy

Um car it’s not got much height so even with the rotary engine it wouldn’t fit if you didn’t dry something so just get it as low as possible although it looked quite good when we first put it in we had a lot of space once you start bolting on everything that goes around

It soon took up kind of all the space so hmm this turbo is massive yeah yeah the rotaries do like uh the big turbos so in this setup if this was an a yeah how much power would it make a free ride or any is probably about 500 horsepower at na

Um and this one with turbo at the moment we’re running at one bar a boost at making 700. the issue why we can’t run more boost at the moment is we’re struggling with intake temps um with the setup we’ve got here it’s just not quite working so we need to

Kind of have a bit more of a play with that I think with drifting going sideways not getting the airflow it’s not yeah perfect so at one Baraboo 700 horsepower um it’s enough but um certainly good for a few hundred more yeah and you mentioned you know the front end is

Pretty pointy yeah it’s always kind of a challenge to get air into the Corvette yeah chassis yeah yeah and is this like who makes this hdk yes it’s a hdk um supplied this is a it’s a exact mold of a Z06 uh wide body like a standard kit

Um say that pretty wide is standard so there’s not there’s I don’t think they’ve done anything to it right so it’s not actually like the the opening is not big no it’s exactly the same they haven’t unlike other body kits where they you know modify or extend pieces

This is a direct replica of a standard front and of course probably I could have cut holes and things like this but it starts to take away the look of the Corvette right um this is clearly still a Corvette um this is uh Kevlar yeah carbon Kevlar so

750 700 other Wheels there’s about 750 brake horsepower 800 or somewhere like depending what they tell you but it’s yeah it’s it’s fast and yeah it should be good for 900 easier you know higher boost this um exit is so crazy yeah so we built this car really quickly and we there

Were some things that we have to do like get the exhaust out here we could have it we’ll probably have to go underneath the car at some point but it’s extremely tight down there so this was a good solution for the time being I love that hot AF you actually shoot

Some Flames when it’s hot the sound that comes out of this thing is so incredible plus you’re making so much smoke in this yeah I can’t even see behind you Because all of the room has been taking up in terms of like the front yeah for um for the intercooler do you want to see the back yeah so this is all a rear radiator setup yes uh George uh one of the guys who helped me build this car hi it’s George

Wiggle this up whoa what a setup so it’s pretty simple South we’ve got the radium fuel tank with the swell pattern everything in the tank so that just connects up uh then we’ve got the radio in the back which does a great job of keeping the coolant uh attempts low

Um you haven’t got the problem with the airflow from the front when you put in the back with the big fans we’ve got the Winter’s quick change at the bottom similar standard drift type setup um standard these cool vets have a transaxle with a gearbox attached to the

Differential it’s quite a lot of people know in America doing this kind of swap where you put the gearbox in the front for serviceability and cost as well I think if you have them separate you’re unlikely to break both at the same time as well yes so the gearbox is moved up

Front yeah yeah so that was a bit that was probably the biggest challenge with this car because the tunnel is designed just for a torque tube it’s not the width that you’d normally have with a big bell housing in the gearbox there and with the Corvettes being quite a lot

Of different materials you’ve got fiberglass bulkhead with some metal kind of bonded in there’s only so much you can do before you really start playing around and making your life difficult having to bond new metal into world two so it’s tight and it makes it makes changing clutch a little bit difficult but

Yeah it works and then what transmission is it it’s a quave 69 G so that’s a British made six-speed sequential yeah I’m surprised this being sealed it gets enough air through the radio yeah again we were tempted obviously to put in Vents and cut holes in this but it was

That kind of same thing I wanted to keep it looking as Corvette as possible so we ran it the first time and I think it just sucks they’re out it manages to get get there anyway so we’ve not seen a problem the temperatures don’t get hot

So yeah why cut holes and ruin the look for that it looks great it’s so cool I love this setup here yeah so htk makes all this yeah it’s a bit super lucky that they kind of do everything so yeah you can buy off the shelf this that that

And all kind of bolts together um we’ve got we had this this part was made in Ireland uh Dave Eagan had that molded but you can even buy that from hgk and the dash and everything like even like this is they’ve gone to such detail you even get the seals

Um in carbon uh and then Kevlar on the bottom so they’re mixing the Composites uh same with the door you’ve got Kevlar on the outside Carbon on the inside um and things like this you can detach the windows it’s just really nice touch for a drift company yeah um it’s kind of

Like duty-free what you’d expect in like a gt-free car um this is so cool yeah the window frame is all carbon yeah so you can just take that off two bolts we can’t out here they the regulations that you have to have a window yourself a three-quarters high so we have to run

It but yeah you can pop the roof off you can take the windows out and you’ve got your convertible um so this is um how’s lexan yeah and this is glass that’s still glass yeah yeah you can probably get a lexan version but then you start getting the scratches and it’s

Like this it’s not built to be a full-on competition car so there’s quite a lot of parts where we kind of went for aesthetic rather than going the full kind of lightweight um that we could have done it’s so cool because it has a Japanese heart but it

Also has Japanese Wheels yeah so that was again kind of like the whole theme of the kind of reverse swap is instead of taking the Japanese car American we did it the other way around so it had to be the blitz they freeze and then we’ve

Got the kind of Livery design kind of Japanese inspired as well it’s so funny to see a blitz wheel and corvette brakes yeah and the fitment was just like we had to do a little bit of massaging on the caliber um but yeah that is so close look at this cage setup

This is so neat yeah so this was we did all this in our workshop with my friend Rob who um is a welder full time and makes roll cages in his kind of spare time so it’s all fully TIG welded um all bent in-house by Rob and George

Did you have to actually expand this stuff yeah so you can see where we cut it here to make it a little bit taller because the normal setup you’ve only got the torque tube and the exhaust sit below that so that was about as high as

We could get before at the front it started hitting the Composites we cut up as much as we could and then yeah we got that in there besides the one that robbed hum did are there any other Corvettes not that I’m aware of so yeah

Rob has a C5 with the two rotor it’s a street car and this is the only rotary C6 or rotary Corvette outside of that as far as apart from there was a Corvette Corvette and Chevrolet worth making a rotary cord there’s a prototype in the museum but due to the emissions and

Things like that they cut that project but I think that was in the 60s yeah the cage work is incredible I just can’t believe how tight it is yeah it’s not a lot of space inside of this car so we had to make it as tight as we could um especially the Headroom

Um that probably it’s probably the time you spent the most time just making sure that tucked as close as possible this is so cool I love that amazing of course you’re running a hall Tech yeah yeah so that was the easiest way um with ppre they run a lot of haltech

And they can really help us going and they were really good support of this project so everything haltech running on the PDM in the back and with the PDM built here it just meant you didn’t it was as minimal as possible and that’s what we tried to do here try to keep it

As clean um as we could so simple the dash is nice too yeah yeah again that was made in Ireland um over here I love it well thanks for bringing it out yeah thank you for coming I really hope it dries up because man this thing

Is a smoke machine and it’s just such a pleasure to watch you drive [Applause] Foreign [Applause] 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 Aura is the perfect piece of art for your wall Thank you Foreign [Applause]