Dave and I are working on a few new products that will be available for the 2nd generation RX-7. Check them out on our company website here.
- Carl
Category Archives: RX-7
FC RX-7 Time Attack/ST build progress – March 2012
With the wheels on it is finally starting to feel like a real car! Still completely in love with multi-piece BBS RS wheels. 20lbs at 17″x11.5″!
One of the finished diff mount bushings, however the cross slide on my lathe wasn`t tight enough so the finish isn`t as good as I`d like.
Diff cleaned up, and painted with some high-temp black, looks a little nicer than the cast grey steel with surface rust.
Bushings slot right in nicely. Will make the diff move around less under torque.
The diff is actually out of a JDM RX-7 TII and has the 4.10 rear ratio and the clutch pack type limited slip differential.
With that done I started the re-assembly of the rear suspension and drivetrain.
Can`t wait to get it back in the car!
I also picked up a TII driveshaft that was custom made out of aluminum. Only shaves off 4-5lbs at the most, but when that weight is rotating weight, every bit helps.
- Carl
FC RX-7 Time Attack/ST build progress – March 2012
A few months passed, and a bit more work done. Have the entire underside and engine bay painted finally which means some of the assembly can be done.
Managed to get most of the front suspension installed in place and a wheel and tire to see what fitment would be like… wide!
The tires are just temporary/shakedown tires, from the 2011 Rolex 24, used for a single heat cycle and sold to me for fraction of the price.
Throughout the whole process my good friend Dave Halabourda has been helping me. He installed the Pettit Racing coilovers which are double adjustable and look fantastic.
These coilovers were developed by Pettit for thier own race cars, and have ultra-stiff springs, relying less on the anti-roll bars for body control. 15kg/mm in the front, 12kg/mm in the rear.
- Carl
FC RX-7 Time Attack/ST build progress – January 2012
Never as much progress as you’d like, but you just have to take what you can get. Had some time to hang out in the shop at make some rear differential bushings for the FC. Making them out of UHMW which isn’t as hard as Delrin so will get some flexibility.
And finally got rid of the rest of the red paint! So tired of seeing the salmon coloured RX-7 in the garage every time I went in, now its a nice shade of epoxy primer gray.
Still a fair bit of bodywork to be done, but at least it’s a step closer.
- Carl
BBS Wheels for the RX-7 are here and built!
I had a tough time picking wheels for this car, couldn’t find anything that was as wide as I wanted, especially in the price range I was looking for. Enkei RPF01′s have always been a good choice, but at 17? they only come in a 10? width so I had to find another solution. I looked at CCW’s and Kinesis custom wheels, as rad as they are they’re just a bit spendy for me right now. I found a place called VR Wheels down in Cali who import used wheels from Japan, they sell a lot of awesome JDM wheels and have a good selection of classic BBS RS’s.
I found a set of RS’s that were in decent shape and with a good offset for my application, but too narrow at 8.5?. Luckily VR Wheels also sells replacement lips of all sizes for RS’s, so along with the set of wheels, I picked up a set of 3.5? lips which together with my wheels would make an 11.5? width, not to mention a bad ass polished stepped lip.
First step to re-building the wheels was to take them apart, which was a lot trickier than I anticipated. The 3 pieces of the wheel are bolted together, as well as sealed with a high-temperature silicone sealant. I managed to pull off the hardware with my trusty electric impact gun, and a closed end wrench without much difficulty but pulling the pieces apart wasn’t as easy. I threw each wheel (which barely fit) into our kitchen oven at around 300 degrees for a few minutes each, then hit it a few times on the lip with a rubber mallet to break them free!
Once I got them apart I took a fine wire wheel mounted to an pnuematic die grinder to them which worked pretty well and didn’t take too much time.
Since the bolts had the hi-temp RTV silicone and loctite, and years of brake dust baked on, I soaked them in some part cleaner and threw them in the dishwasher. Thank god for kitchen appliances!
First shot of the wheel mocked up here, did I mention I LOVE polished lips on wheels? This was the first wheel I baked to perfection, notice the nice golden colour? A result of keeping the wheel in the oven just a touch too long, the clear coat itself changed colour.
11.5? wheel from bead to bead… can’t wait to see these on the FC with some 295′s or 315′s installed!
I took the wheel centers and painted them with some metallic silver wheel paint, turned out pretty good for a rattle can!
Putting them back together meant I needed to clean the barrels. Once discovery I made years ago was how well oven cleaner works for stripping grease and stains from parts. I let them soak for about an hour in the oven cleaner and then scrubbed them down lightly with a fine scotchbrite pad. To seal them back up I ran a bead of hi-temp black RTV around the barrel and outer lip. Luckily the Permatex RTV comes in large caulking gun tubes so it was a breeze getting it right.
Once the RTV was on and the wheels were back together, I had my buddy Dave come by and give me a hand putting them back together. Putting the hardware in is much easier with 2 people, rather than trying to reach around with your own 2 hands to reach each side of each of the many bolts on all 4 wheels. Dave and I had all the wheels together in about 45 minutes, and torqued down. Just need to re-torque the wheels when I get the tires mounted and after I’ve run the car in a bit.
And the finished product! I won’t be running the stock RS center caps as they do add a bit of weight to each wheel, and I also need to make sure I have quick access to the lugs. I am trying to find a solution to put a basic center cap in there, or I made just leave them open. Let me know what you think!
- Carl
RX-7: Painting, cleaning, and not a whole lot of free time
So I’ve spent a lot of time recently cleaning, and preparing parts to go back into the car. Dave and I fitted the dashboard, and made a few necessary adjustments so that it would fit around the roll cage.
Originally the car had grey vinyl interior parts, I bought some VHT Vinyl Dye which I’ve used in the past on one of my Bimmers, and it works wonders.
You can see how nicely the dye penetrates the vinyl and becomes part of the surface, versus being a coating over top.
I also cleaned up some of the steel suspension parts and painted those with a semi-gloss black paint to help keep the car clean underneath, and prevent any surface rusting. These are ready for the new bushing installs now.
The sides of the dash needed to be cut completely off to accomodate the forward bars of the roll cage. I will fabricate some aluminum or other lightweight brackets to keep the dash secure.
Spent a fair amount of time cleaning up the JDM TII transmission I plan on using initially in the car as well. Once that was cleaned up, I rebuilt the shifting mechanism when I installed the Mazdatrix short shifter.
The Mazdatrix short shifter is quite notchy from the get-go, and in a race car you want to be able to shift as quickly as possible so I came up with my own hack-tackular solution.
An aluminum extension on the shifter rod brings the length of the shift throws back to stock, but brings the shift knob to the same height as my hands will be on the steering wheel. This allows me to reach over to the shift knob quicker than I could if it were in the stock position. The round plastic shift knob is courtesy of my old FFR Cobra.
- Carl
RX-7: More stripping, no, not that kind
Dis-mantling and preparation of parts continues on the RX-7 project.
Sleepy time for the RX-7. The car gets put under for its major, long-term surgery.
S4/88 13b with 400,000 kms on it! I’m surprised it looks as good as it does. This engine won’t be seeing action anytime soon, but might be a good place to scavenge for parts if I need them.
Garage is starting to look pretty disorganized. A 1 car space is tough to work with when doing this amount of work, but to be honest, it’s much better than having no space at all!
Engine bay sans engine, sort of sad looking to be honest. What’s interesting is how damn light the stock NA transmission it. Must weigh less than 50lbs, I was easily able to remove it on my own with just my hands once it was unbolted.
Check out the sound deadening, not looking forward to stripping that off the body.
Pulled off the badges on the rear, I plan on filling the holes as well as the third brakelight and hatch keyhole.
There is a LOT of work ahead of me. Starting to wish I had used the ’90 RX-7 shell and re-built the roof.
That’s all for now, will update again soon as the tear-down continues.
- Carl
RX-7: Another car to join the family, temporarily
A true car guy’s home isn’t complete without the wreck of a vehicle sitting up on jackstands in front of it!
Luckily my fiancee was out of town for the week, so nobody, at least in my household, minded too much having the car sitting out front for a few days!
I picked up this car from a friend of mine, it was a 1990 GXL with only 80,000kms on it. This car would provide the basis for my engine, suspension, as well as other miscellaneous parts such as the S5 spec taillights.
I called up a few local rotary guys from BC Rotary to help tear the car apart, offering free parts in exchange for the help. Within a couple of hours, we/they had basically the entire car stripped within a couple of hours, including pulling the engine out of the ’88 red 7.
Front subframe from the ’90 car, comes with 5 lug hubs versus the 4 lug hubs on the ’88. This car also came with power steering, and an 18:1 steering rack, versus a 20:1 manual rack in the ’88. I will de-power this rack for a quick ratio true manual rack.
The beginning of the end of my free time!
The seats and carpet in this car were pretty moldy and smelly. And just check out how damaged the paint is! Good thing I am going to re-paint this car.
- Carl
RX-7: The new project begins
After I sold the FFR, I was anxious to start my new project, a full fledged race car. Not legal for the street, no compromises what so ever.
I started my search for a non-sunroof coupe, as it was mostly the shell I was after. I soon found this car that had been stored on top of this shipping crate for years.
Blown engine but otherwise complete and in ok shape. $200 and another $60 for a flatbed tow home and it was mine!
The owner, well actually owners father owned a crane truck company so getting it off was a pretty simple task.
Once it was back on solid ground we found a few interesting things had made this car thier home.
Interesting, being a hive of bees. Hopefully that’s the last time they make thier home in there, as I wouldn’t want a swarm of bees flying around me when I’m driving it.
For $200 I even got a couple of free Winnie The Pooh seat covers!
And this super masculine ladybug sticker on the windshield, score!
- Carl