How Much It Cost To K Swap My RX7

[Music] rotary engines are stereotypically unreliable right so you're thinking man a k-swap and an fd just kind of makes sense it's got that japanese spirit similar power band and it's lighter but it would be so much cheaper k-series engines only cost like 500 bucks right well not exactly i've held off on making this video because i'm hesitant to share how much it costs to casewarp my fd it's not as simple as going online and buying the parts it's not like case swapping a civic a lot of these parts aren't available online which means a lot of the cost associated with this build is labor in fabrication naturally these costs are going to go down over time as companies make k-swap components but i've had enough people asking about how much the swap costs that i figure it's worth making a video about other than the initial purchase price of the car i'm going to list out all of these prices at the msrp value because used car parts prices can vary from day to day it's kind of hard to gauge how much they're worth so i'm going to keep it simple and leave it at the msrp value just keep in mind that you might be able to find these parts a little bit cheaper online as for the labor i'm going to leave that towards the end of this video because i feel like a lot of you watching this are going to attempt to do this swap yourselves i'll leave that towards last but i will say i would pay the labor on this any day of the week it's not that i'm incapable of doing this work myself you can see that in some of our build videos but andy has a lot more to offer than just turning wrenches he's done k-swaps to hundreds of vehicles which means that's going to save me a lot in potential mistakes and having to re-buy some of these parts also it's going to save me a lot of time in my own labor cost so i'd pay that labor any day of the week my first purchase was the rolling shell itself i found it on a facebook group and the car was located in alabama i paid 16 000 for the rolling shell it came with a k20 z1 engine mated to an ap1 s2000 transmission it had an exhaust exhaust manifold borg warner turbo fabricated subframe transmission bracing intercooler and all the intercooler piping i got the car home and wanted to clean up the body of the car before starting on the swap i spent 675 on paintless dent removal i then took the car to wisconsin to have the k-swap expert andy smedegard tear it down we noticed the oil pan was cracked so i put on a baffled unit2 oil pan we put the engine back together with some powder coated parts a dampened crank pulley and brand new accessories i went with a stock oem clutch and a ct pressure plate now we move on to the fuel system i put in a walboro 255 fuel pump with a fuel tank baffle we used the radium engineering fuel rail and injector dynamics 1050cc injectors all flowing through an aem ethanol sensor we used an intake manifold coolant adapter and some oem belt tensioners and brackets now we move on to some more expensive items the nervous system i went with a race grade engine harness from k-tune converted to fit an aem infiniti ecu with aem's flying lead harness and hooked up a boost controller oil pressure sensor decoded digital speedo interface aem wideband and gauge art gauge we also put in electric power steering from a 2012 volvo c30 this required a pump wiring harness and a bigger battery and that's most of the work to the engine it's not too bad honestly seems kind of reasonable it's about the price of an s2000 but we're not even close to done yet that's just the engine now it's time to move on to the drivetrain we had a custom drive shaft made by full torque to connect the s2000 transmission to the fd rear end then we had to replace the rear axles rotors and pads before we set the car down on the ground we got some really nice fortune auto 510 coilovers with all of the options these coilovers were great honestly i can't recommend them enough they're so comfortable but aggressive i could have left the stock wheels but i needed new tires anyway so i got some titan 7 r10 wheels and wrapped them with some winter tires to prepare for our winter road trip now let's get to some of the cosmetic changes of this car now obviously you don't need to do these things if you want to k-swap an fd but if you have an fd you're probably not going to want to leave it stock with mismatched fender and paint blemishes so let's get to making some of these exterior changes starting with the front bumper and wide body fenders i got this fiberglass body kit from a company that i won't name because i'm not very happy with the build quality of it and i can't recommend it to others it's a replica kit of the burnout style front bumper with feed wide body fenders i paid 1 000 too much for these i had to replace the headlight covers with some oem covers and oem style turn signals i put in a very cheap amazon radio and some nice garage alpha floor mats then i went to illusions wraps to get it all wrapped in one color i went with a really nice dragonfire red from 3m i also got a bunch of carbon fiber parts because i'm secretly a hot boy these actually turned out pretty well i got an remus style rear diffuser with the feed style side skirts i topped these off with a genuine ariamia gt3 low mount rear spoiler i then went to professional awesome to put on a budget front splitter just to protect the brittle fiberglass bumper from many curbs and that brings us to the 48 state road trip in road trip form we're at about forty thousand dollars but that also doesn't include labor if i include andy irvin artsum's labor we're at sixty one thousand nine hundred and twelve dollars now obviously it'd be pretty easy to justify removing that labor cost but let's be realistic if i didn't pay andy to do the work on this car it would have probably taken me months longer to complete i'd have tons of reliability issues once i got it running and i probably would have broken a lot of stuff along the way i can honestly say that i think andy's labor is the best bargain of the whole thing so by the time we were on the road trip i was rolling around in what cost sixty one thousand nine hundred and twelve dollars it's starting to look like case swapping isn't a smart option especially when a stock rotary rx-7 cost in the 30s i didn't do the k-swap because i thought it would be cost effective though i did it for the reliability longevity and ease of making horsepower which i think was successful [Music] how much boost is that thing making this car is making 400 wheel horsepower i did however have a few reliability hiccups on the road trip i had to replace the brake lines with some chase pace stainless steel braided lines the previous owner's intercooler pipe also cracked on me and this cost 250 to fix also after the road trip i bought another fd to swap in black interior this saved me some money because i found a good deal but full used black interiors for fds generally cost about five thousand dollars i also put in new door handles and some upgraded interior clips and trim in the passenger footwell i put in a garage alpha spirit r aluminum foot rest lastly i put in 99 spec tail lights mine came in a little well used so i'll discount the msrp price sixty nine thousand and nineteen dollars i've said it before but modifying cars doesn't make sense there's a lot of other amazing cars you can buy for 69 000 but this is a hobby and hobbies are expensive and i also have this youtube channel to recoup some of the money would i do it again if i had the chance probably while the cost of the whole car is pretty expensive the maintenance cost is where you might start to save i've had extremely minimal maintenance on this car over the 15 000 miles that i've driven it so far i've only had 609 in repairs on the road trip and i had a 65 window switch fail on me that's not too bad if i were to have the motor fail i could drop another one in for only 800 bucks there might eventually be a break-even point in the cost of this swap over keeping it rotary but that's not what i did it for i did it for the worry-free driving and for the fun of it and so far it's definitely paid off now full disclosure i didn't pay sixty nine thousand and nineteen dollars for this car after all the sponsorships and used car part prices i paid forty six thousand seven hundred and thirteen dollars that's why it's hard to make a video like this because the prices can vary quite drastically just from day to day but you know you could probably expect to pay about 50 to 60 thousand dollars for a car like this either way hope you enjoyed watching this video subscribe and we'll see in the next one [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: Gears and Gasoline

Views: 282,590

Keywords: Mazda, RX7, FD, K Swap, K20, k24, turbo, cost, how much, build, breakdown, FD3s, expensive

Id: f4ge9qmR2ZU

Length: 9min 14sec (554 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 05 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/N0Name117]

If I had one of these cars. I’d leave the rotary in it. Yeah I know it’s technically worse in most every aspect but it’s also fucking cool. The only swap I could justify is another wankel.

[u/BigCountry76]

It's definitely a cool car, buy $70k is tough to justify spending.

[u/Otakuma90]

It'll cost you your manhood, your dignity, your rep in the automotive community, your friends, your soul... Basically everything that matters.

[u/juniortifosi]

Angry Rob Dahm noises.

[u/gabbagool3]

motherfucker didn't even k swap it, he bought it with a k series already in it!

[u/Nineties]

ill never get the appeal of swaping out rotaries from rx7s and rx8s

[u/unitvectorman]

Help me understand, why are people who have never owned these cars telling others how unreliable they are? Every single problem I have had with mine was a direct result of someone messing with something and not knowing what they were doing.

Engine swaps are neat and all, but the only thing I'd ever consider putting in my car instead of a 13BREW would be a Judd 4gv v10 or something of that nature.