The car came with the dead motor, but it wasn't installed in the car. I sold that for parts pretty quickly and got started on removing all of the rotary-related stuff. The stock 6-speed transmission is not compatible with the Mazda piston engine so I removed that. The engine bay was impressively clean already. The ABS unit is on the opposite side from an MX-5 (the MX-5's relevance to this project will become clear shortly) and I can tell already it's going to interfere with the intake manifold on the four cylinder.
The front subframe and steering rack won't work for me. The RX-8 uses an electrically-assisted rack and it's enormous. The mounts are also set up for a rotary and would take a lot of work to adapt to a piston engine, so I don't think I'll be using it.