It’s been nearly one year since David Mazzei first put his monstrous five-rotor supercar on a dynamometer to see just how well it would work, if at all. That initial run, and a follow-up a few months later, were quite successful, and the car is already well on its way to a possible 1,500 horsepower. It’s not there yet, though, and the latest video update is all about how to find the final bits of power, and also to make sure that nothing comes up that could destroy the car before it’s ready. Don’t worry, it also includes plenty of dyno pulls to hear that sonorous engine.
The Turbo Wasn’t Big Enough
When we last left Mazzei and his MF5 Superlite, he had completed a fair bit of tuning to get the car running fairly well and close to the 1,500-horsepower goal. In fact, the final pull resulted in 1,120 horsepower at the wheels, along with 806 pound-feet of torque. Goal aside, that’s still an astonishing amount of power, and again, as you’ll hear in the video, it’s coming from an engine that sounds like the V10 from a 2000s-era Formula 1 car. However, that’s not the goal, and Mazzei explained that the issue was that power was dropping off at the top end before the 9,000-rpm redline. So the first move to improve that leads to this new video: a bigger turbocharger.
Mazzei Formula
The custom G57 turbo atop the five rotors was already massive with a 106-mm compressor wheel, but to try to improve top end power, Mazzei went bigger, bringing it up to 119 mm, or more than 4 and a half inches. For these new tuning sessions, Mazzei wasn’t really going for absolute maximum power, but he showed optimism with some of the runs. The bigger turbo was producing more power with less pressure than the old one, and farther into the rev band.
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That’s not the only weak point Mazzei’s starting to look at, though. Coming soon to the project will be newly designed intake plumbing in the quest for more ponies. Mazzei explains that redesigning those parts may free up some extra power and solve an issue with the rotors at each end of the engine getting hotter than the middle ones. He also runs across a potentially catastrophic oil leak when moving the car from the dyno back to his garage. The fix involves some aviation-grade thinking. We don’t want to spoil it all, though, since it’s worth watching the video for yourself for the amazing sounds and Mazzei’s clear explanations.
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The Other Details Of The Car
The basis of Mazzei’s car is a Superlite SL-C, which is technically a kit car. However, it’s a kit car designed specifically for racing. It uses an aluminum monococque chassis, aluminum suspension, and fiberglass body panels, and it weighs around 2,400 pounds, roughly equivalent to a Mazda Miata. Of course this is a Miata that’s mid-engine and, in Mazzei’s case, features a 1,000-hp engine. Mazzei also paired the engine with a Hollinger MXT six-speed sequential manual dogbox transmission. In the update video, Mazzei explains that he was also doing some tuning of the engine to get the shifting right. We can’t wait to see what comes next for this monster.
