An Exhaust for the Rotary Miata

Update by Ed Higginbotham to the Mazda Rotary Miata project car
Jul 25, 2016

Now that the Rotary Miata had a complete driveline, we focused on the next item on our to-do list: fitting the exhaust. This was a little trickier than modifying an existing MX-5 exhaust. On a stock first-generation Mazda MX-5, the exhaust starts on the driver’s side of the engine, however, the exhaust sits on the passenger’s side of our 13B rotary power plant.

We were able to reuse the middle section of the exhaust from the Jenson-Healey donor car, but the a new custom exhaust would have to be bent from the rear axle to the back of the car, as our new differential support sat directly in the exhaust’s path. For that task we dropped the car off with our friends at Marty’s Muffler in Ormond Beach, Florida, where they bent an exhaust like a work of art to fit the car perfectly. After adding a muffler at the end, the exhaust was done.

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Comments

dean1484 GRM+ Memberand MegaDork
9/19/16 7:46 p.m.

Ohhhh I wish I had a chance to make a suggestion with respect to a muffler choice.

On my 85 gsl I removed the stock muffler and put an Anza duel tipped "muffler". Similar to those used on older Italian supper cars. It was perfect. At idle and up to about 3.5k rpm it had that British roadster sound. Perfect for around town. As you went above 3.5k it started to transition to that sound only a rotary can make. By 4k you were full on rotary and it went on to redline like this. Mind you it was not that nasty high pitched make your ears bleed sound. But a lower tone that was just spectacular.

I will go see if my google fu can find me the unit I used and post it up.

dean1484 GRM+ Memberand MegaDork
9/19/16 7:50 p.m.

It was very similar to this unit.

It has a strait through glass pack type muffler in each tip.

And I think they just look cool.

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