Rob Dahm’s Quad Rotor RX7

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It’s no secret that popular Youtuber, Rob Dahm loves a chat. Especially when the topic of choice is his home-built, all-wheel-drive, turbo quad-rotor RX7. Join us for this deep dive into Rob’s famous project, and find out how he did it.

This FD-series Mazda RX-7 is very special to Rob. It was his first car, bought when he was just 18 years old as a stock twin-turbo FD RX7. However, its original form didn’t last too long…

Rob caught the “modding bug” and added an array of performance and visual parts to the car. After some healthy competition and races with his brother (sibling rivalry is a real thing), Rob soon realized the traction limitations of a rear-wheel drive platform. And in an effort to harness all the power and control the spinning of tires, he decided to go for an all-wheel drive setup.

Few people have attempted all-wheel-drive with a rotary engine. There is a general feeling that Doritos lack torque, and therefore aren’t suitable for this configuration. Rob wanted to prove everyone wrong and decided to take it up a notch with a turbo quad-rotor.

One of Rob’s inspirations for the build was Ken Block’s famous all-wheel-drive Mustang, the Hoonicorn. He was fascinated by the way it handled all that power being put down with such control and ease. Rob wanted that for his RX-7 so reached out and made contact with Ian Stuart, owner of ASD who was responsible for the making of the suspension geometry for the Hoonicorn.

When he started the project he had no previous experience with building or tuning vehicles in general, and he was documenting it all on his Youtube channel. We all know the comments section on Youtube can be an unforgiving place, so when Rob started receiving feedback (both good and bad) he took it on the chin and used it as a learning experience.

“When I was building the engine for the very first time, I got a lot of positive and negative comments giving me criticism; however, both were valid and that’s what accelerated my learning to help me with the build.”

Many comments were in reference to Mazda’s most famous, LeMans winning, quad-rotor.

“The 787B Mazda engine is what most people are familiar with. However, that and my four-rotor in comparison aren’t remotely similar, so unfortunately, I couldn’t just transfer parts over.”

The engine is a half-billet quadrotor with all the boosts supplied by a G55 Garrett turbo.

The transmission is a Hollinger RD6 6-speed sequential gearbox, hooked up to a strain-gauge shifter. The shifter is wired to the Nexus R5 VCU which temporarily cuts off the engine allowing Rob to engage the next gear within seconds without having to lift off the pedals with the boost pressure holding flat.

Rob installed a CAN keypad in order to control the maintenance, cooling, and “partying” settings at the touch of a button.

“With the Nexus R5 in control, I have so much data at my fingertips when using the NSP software on my laptop. I can honestly spend so many hours on there tweaking stuff to make the car run the way I want it to. It makes my life so much easier. I love it!”