Mazda FD RX-7 — Dylan Woolhouse (Pro)
With a fresh chassis in his hands — one that is far, far lighter and more nimble than the C35 he previously campaigned — Dylan Woolhouse quickly went about finding some serious lock. There was no Wisefab kit available for the FD chassis at the time, so he contacted Darryl from EFI & Turbo to construct the whole lot. The kit they developed consists of a custom steel plate A arms, and knuckle combo, which is spherical rose-jointed throughout.
“I suppose it’s the most New Zealand-ized version you can get [that’s] close to Wisefab,” Dylan told us.
The kit allows for roughly 70 degrees of lock and utilizes a depowered factory rack with an electric column fitted — no pump, no fluid.
“RX-7s naturally have bugger-all lock — you end up going in and struggling to hold it against the walls … with this you’ve always got enough to play with. We wanted to be as competitive as possible with this car.”
It was a big step up from Dylan’s previous car, which housed a fairly basic set-up, making use of cut and welded knuckles that had been done at home. This car makes use of Tein Super Drift coilovers — a main selling point of the rolling body, Dylan tells us — although he would like to swap the 12kg front springs for heavier units to compensate for the LS. “Going from a rotary to LS is a bit different in weight distribution, and we’re noticing a bit of sway that needs to be looked at.”
The rear uses Townsend Brothers Racing (TBR) arms, and the sway bars were removed to chase some grip. An unfortunate contact with the wall at this round bent one of the top arms up front, but one of the local teams offered to straighten it out at their workshop and he was quickly back out on track to put in some seat time.
“We’ve had lots of silly issues so far that have restricted seat time. The car feels so much faster than what I’m used to, so it’s good to get in the car and get used to it.” Once he gets a better feel for the set-up, they will begin to look at putting more grip into it.