Photo: Screenshot from YouTube video by Smokie @ DLW Motorsports
Less than two weeks ago, a man named Deveris Willingham was invited to participate in one of Donut Media's challenges. To be specific, the man who is referred to as Smokey got the opportunity to compete against the clock, with the possibility of winning a Mazda RX-7 FC convertible.
The competition involved getting the vehicle to start within two hours of the first time he touched the car, but there was a catch. The folks at Donut Media made the challenge harder than usual by taking the engine out of the RX-7. You can see where this is going.
In plain English, the competitor had to reinstall the rotary motor back under the hood of the Japanese car, and then get it to start in less than two hours. Since it is nearly impossible to single-handedly place a motor in an engine bay, the team helped him for this specific purpose (and to prevent injuries).
Moreover, rotary engines are a bit more temperamental than conventional piston engines when vacuum lines are concerned, to say the least, and that is why the Donut Media subscriber was assisted by a known rotary motor enthusiast, Aaron Parker, close to help him with a few clues.
The competitor from Hyperdrive is an RX-7 aficionado, and the Donut team had him on-site to guide the competitor through the sea of wires and vacuum hoses.
With the risk of spoiling the episode from two weeks ago for you, he won the car. What is more interesting is that the YouTube algorithm has decided to show us his take on the whole situation. As Smokey noted, he had seen all the previous videos in the competition, and he felt that it was the most difficult so far.
Having watched them ourselves, it looked like it was, too, but we think that Donut Media had the inspiration of having someone on-site to help with the process, otherwise the winner might not have succeeded in getting the prize. As we underlined above, installing an engine in a vehicle is no easy feat.
About a decade ago, I witnessed a competition between professional mechanics, and all they had to do to win a car was to diagnose it, and then get it started. Sounded simple, but it took the competitors almost four hours. It was supposed to take some time, but doing an engine swap in less than half the time, we have to raise our hats for the winner of this one.
The winner made a video to showcase the car starting and running correctly, and pledged to get it fully operational soon, while keeping it mostly stock for the foreseeable future. You can watch both videos below and then feel free to share your thoughts on the contest in the comments section. Do you think you could have pulled this off?
Sebastian's love for cars began at a young age. Little did he know that a career would emerge from this passion (and that it would not, sadly, involve being a professional racecar driver). In over fourteen years, he got behind the wheel of several hundred vehicles and in the offices of the most important car publications in his homeland. Full profile
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