Mazda rx3 build

with some fantastic commitment by the team at the bodyshop she was given a new coat of black.

Same, definitely going to follow this one. that paint tho... love a fresh coat will be nice to see this on the road.

wow thats some shine on there!.....

very good...looking forward to more progress...whats next?

JP

It's going restomod rather that original restoration.

The paintwork was a while back so have a lot of progress to add. 

Engine wise the original Normally aspirated 10A rotary would have been producing around 100hp, there were lots of options using engines from the later turboII and twin turbo rx7's but I opted for the rare 12A turbo rotary engine which was only fitted to a weird looking JDM cosmo in the early 80's and a few JDM Rx7s of a similar era.

really compact and simple, no intercooler and 160hp out of the box,  with a few tweaks can easily give 200hp

I bought the engine and stripped her down, a full refresh of the internals, combined with some attention with my newly acquired blast cabinet

took it from 


to

Gearbox was from the same year cosmo, taking it from the original 4 speed to a later spec 5 speed, to get the gear lever in the right position I had to carry out a fairly well documented shortening of the selector mechanism.




then some work modifying the tunnel mounts and engine subframe then building a new gearbox mounting frame (and hacking through the nerves in my left index finger in the process)

she went in, with a bit of an offset as the turbo downpipe is fairly snug to the steering box

Excellent. Friend of mine has two down Dorset way and another friend has one in Bristol.

Since fitting the engine it was a lots of long evenings

sourced an aluminium rad for an early RX7 which needed some serious modification to pipework and brackets to fit.


New brake and fuel lines throughout, modified the entire loom to suit a stand alone ECU initially was a second hand microtech which turned out to be dead and then replaced with a new link G4+ATOM from badobsessionmotorsport. I also moved a lot of the wiring in the engine bay and hid most of the wiring behind the wings, relocated the battery to the boot to clean up the engine bay and get some additional weight over the back end, I also managed to get hold of a rare limited slip diff that bolts straight in 



Added a fuel injection pump and filter etc and rising rate pressure regulator. There is so little room underneath for exhaust boxes I was really limited on what was feasible to fit in the space, it was a complete pain in the ar$e


Suspension wise I stripped the front combined shocks and stub axles and sent them to GAZ to supply and fit a pair of bespoke coilovers, they were also able to template from the original top mounts and build a pair of adjustable top mounts.


I also designed and had made some spacers to allow the wishbones to operate at their designed angle with lowered axle positions.

Ahhh, Chris "Sensetuning", yeah? Hiya mate Tell 'em about the wheels I looooooove those wheels

I was hoping to get the post up to date..... 

Exterior wise I got offered a fairly battered later nosecone, which I took the plunge with, lots of expensive grilles and light surrounds from Australia, combined with window and door seals etc.

Rear lights were tired, some painstaking removal of old paint and plenty of time with multisol helped revive them.



New rear shoes and cylinders and a tidy up of the front brakes, new clutch master and slave

Replaced all the water hoses



Glass refitted and she was starting to take shape.

Finally after many painful hours of struggling to get her running, sussed the lack of shielding of the crank angle sensor wiring was the cause and she ran!