luckyseven
Posted a lot
Owning sneering dismissive pedantry since 1970
Posts: 3,839
Club RR Member Number: 45
|
|
|
Wotcher! Been lurking around a while now trying not to drown in the years of excellent cars on this site. It's a life's work just reading all the awesome build threads here. Anyway, I finally got my life organised enough to join up properly so thought it was time I shuffled out of the shadows and introduced myself. My name's Nik, I'm a confirmed rotary addict. There, the confessions the hardest part lol. Last year I found myself having to sell my beloved Kawasaki after having been folded, spindled and mutilated once too often. That left me with my only form of transport as a '92 RX-7 S6. Since it's on a single turbo running about 430 brake and regularly hoovers its way into single figure MPG, plus in the wet its rather like Russian roulette, it wasn't the most practical daily driver. After much head-scratching trying to find a car that was fun, reliable, interesting, economical,stylish, etc, I decided that reliable and economical were fer da boids, and bought another RX-7. It seemed the only sensible choice. I managed to score a low-mileage bone stock Series 3 (the last of the first generation RX-7s). In fact, I don't think it's too much of an exageration to say it was one of the most tidy unmolested examples left, one owner from new. All too many have long since returned to the soil. They rot so fast it's like timelapse film, and the achilles heel of the Rex, that wonderful rotary meant many went a bit wrong, got parked up pending repairs that never happened, and now they proliferate eBay advertised as "projects" with mould growing out of the rubber trim and rust granules pouring from their trouser legs Anyhoo, mine looked like this; Which is lovely... but it doesn't look quite the same now. I'm sure there are plenty who think it sacreligious to carve up a pristine original car... and to a point I'd agree with that. I've modified it to my tastes (I'll continue this thread as a retrospective till I get it up to date with where I'm at now) but I've tried hard to do nothing permanent to the car. It doesn't need welding (yet) so I've been lucky enough to be able to do cosmetic and geometry changes so far, all of which can be put back stock if necessary. But who am I kidding, she's a keeper and I've no intention of getting rid. Right, I'll get on with the thread later when I've got a bit of time, just wanted to introduce myself and say hello for now. I wondered whether to do one on the '92 RX-7 as well but I'm not sure if it counts as "retro" strictly? If you guys wanna see a thread on it, I'll be happy to share. It's certainly a bit of a thing nowadays; Anyway, that's me. Hello! Thanks for having me
|
|
Last Edit: Apr 18, 2017 11:14:43 GMT by luckyseven
|
|
|
ian65
Part of things
Posts: 276
|
|
|
Welcome along Nik!
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
welcome m8 get pics up of the fd lovely cars , i had afc turbo last year loved it hated the mpg as u say i could only get 9 out it with my right foot
|
|
|
|
luckyseven
Posted a lot
Owning sneering dismissive pedantry since 1970
Posts: 3,839
Club RR Member Number: 45
|
|
|
Hey, Ian. Just spreading the rotary gospel of righteousness John, yeah, FC TIIs are sorta the forgotten RX-7. Very heavy and slightly compromised engine design in comparison to other RXs (though nowhere near as compromised as the emissions Renesis the RX-8 is blighted with) but still a cracking hoot to drive. That's the problem of course, the more it begs you to cane it, the worse the economy ;D....
|
|
|
|
ian65
Part of things
Posts: 276
|
|
|
Hey, Ian. Just spreading the rotary gospel of righteousness he's not the messiah, he's a very naughty boy!
|
|
|
|
luckyseven
Posted a lot
Owning sneering dismissive pedantry since 1970
Posts: 3,839
Club RR Member Number: 45
|
|
|
That's the nicest anyone's been to me all week Right, here we go then. I apologise in advance for this being a rather mild mod thread rather than a weapons-grade fabrication of a new car from a few flakes of rust upwards. It's my fault, I'll buy a more fally-aparty car next time, promise ;D The brief history of the car is that some old boy part-exchanged his first RX-7 (a Series 1) for this new in 1985. According to the inestimable David Nock, Keeper of the Records of all UK RX-7s, this is one of the last first generation (or FB) RX-7s Mazda made for the UK market. Anyway, the old fella had his mate maintain the car. Since he was a Rolls-Royce technician, he clearly lavished a suitably high standard of care on the car, and the ol fella was the school of gentleman motorist who kept every receipt for every wiper blade, oil change and sump washer. There are traces of waxoyl everywhere, and the Rex was clearly garaged throughout its life. As tends to happen to us all, apparently, the ol fella croaked and the Rex stayed in the posession of his wife. She couldn't really drive it because of the lack of power steering and suchlike, and it became the cliche of a car that was driven once a month. She used to take it out to her regular hair appoitments, believe it or not. Eventually she got too old and frail even for that, and she gave the poor car a couple of parking whacks, NSF and OSR just for symmetry, lost her bottle and decided to sell it on. Some total shyster tried to prise it off her for an insultingly low amount so he could sell it on for an immediate profit, but the unofficial UK RX-7 mafia swung into action to prevent this. Eventually, it was rescued by a fellow enthusiast who sold it on to J (no, not the one from Men In Black), the guy who works on my FD Rex a year or so later having found the lack of PAS too much of a struggle for his arthritis. Lol, we're an aging population, y'know. This is where I come in. As I mentioned in the OP, I'd been forced into selling my bike having been mutilated by an attack pensioner in an assault Clio, and I mentioned to J that I was thinking of an FB as a daily driver, and asked what he reckoned. He gave me a wink, showed me this one hidden away in a corner of the workshop, and it was love at first sight. Here's why; Tender Blue (as in Elvis sort of tender, I think, not as in the big thing full of coal behind a locomotive sort of tender). My second-favourite colour for a First Gen, after the Gold-bronze Series 2 colour. That was the first memory I have of RX-7s, I used to walk past a gold one on the way to school. It was owned by the head mechanic of the local Citroen garage, not sure what that said about his faith in his product? I used to think it looked like a Star Trek ship, so sleek and futuristic it seemed. Well, it was like 1981 You can see the old dear's war wound on the NSF corner in this pic ^^. Bless her, she gave it a good long innings Fair to say the interior is... ahhh... of it's time. To be fair, there were some pretty putrid colourways for upholstery at Mazda at the time, the tartan interiors from the S1 being especially ummm... memorable Huge gargantuan bus steering wheel to overcome the worst excesses of non-PAS and recirculating ball steering setup. It sorta works, but like the gear gaiter and some other trim items, seems to be made from either zombie-flesh leather or the same weird stuff they used to make Sinclair Spectrum keyboards from Genuine mileage from new. Groovy Engine bay looks like it's never been used. Rust and corrosion are only ever a rainstorm away on 70s/80s Mazdas, and its a testament to the old geezer's regime that this one's survived so tidily. The Blue Box of God This is the only major deviation from stock, a bespoke one-off exhaust knocked up by the Rolls tech. It's all stainless bends with a central stainless resonator and rear baffled box. He kept it looking stock... until you park it next to a stocker and realise how much bigger bore/better sounding/better made it is. It also meant most of the emissions nonsense had been disabled, and the Thermal Reactor long gone. This was a cheap sorta catalyser thing Mazda saw fit to blight its cars with for a while. It's about the size and weight of an oven-ready turkey hanging off the side of the engine, hateful things. The car even still had its original factory touch-up paint can, although the paint has turned into something like The Blob inside, and lurks in its can giving off fumes noxious enough to strip your lung lining and ream out your eyeballs
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
hi bud that is fooking lovely the colour is that good i think ive just found the colour for my fiesta really need another wankel in my life realy do miss my fc heres a wee pic of it for all the rotary heads get a thread up for the fd looks an animal john
|
|
|
|
luckyseven
Posted a lot
Owning sneering dismissive pedantry since 1970
Posts: 3,839
Club RR Member Number: 45
|
|
|
That's a nice example, John. Looks like a late model too judging by the plate and the JDM-spec rear lights. I'll do a thread on the FD when I'm up to date on this one, mate. It's like a six-year story that one, so it may take a while lol Right, first things first. Like, who the hell has cassettes any more? Not me, and since the radio appeared to be kaput (the electric aerial certainly was) the first minor mod was to swap the stereo out. To my surprise, the tiny and original Clarion speakers were actually really good, certainly better than the brand new and very expensive JBL/Sony ones I'd recently upgraded the FD with. Go figure, maybe the armageddon exhaust on that might have something to do with it. Anyway, I gotta have my chooons. I go to my shift work any time of the day or night, and without music it'd be unthinkable plodding along the frozen bypass at 3 a.m. Oooh, look how modern I am. Actually, it was the cheapest MP3-compatible head unit I could find that didn't look horrifically out of place. I was gratified to find a use for my rotary JDM y0 drink holder that had been on a shelf in the garage for years, since I finally acknowledged it was a physical impossibility to wedge it into the tiny cockpit of an FD I now have a secure place for my endless life-saving Relentless/Rockstar/Monster/etc addiction on the move. Right, enough messing around. My main priority was to get under the car and start covering it in rust preventative/curative My weapon of choice is ACF 50, which the US Navy originally comissioned to keep their warplanes operational on carrier duty. I figure if it works for them, ought to be good enough for me. It's a sort of magic rust convertor/preventer/surface protective gloop that either sprays or wipes on. Fortunately, the underside was pretty soild. There were a few dogy bits, mostly the complicated corners where the wings turn under to the sills. These are a perrenial RX-7 problem area. Mine aren't bad yet, but they'll only get worse. Sooner or later, I'm gonna have to get medieval on them. Still, this is the front arch after cleaning and treating; Sound inside, too, though you can see the tin worm starting to take hold in the bottom left of this next pic. Another classic rust-trap on FBs is the radius arm mounting fishplate shown here in front of the rear hubs; These were the only bits of mine that had started to "go" and I had J weld them up as part of the purchase price of getting the car from him. Here's the same arch after cleaning and treating the surface rust; For the tech minded amongst you (so most of y'all, then ;D) and anyone not familiar with early RX-7s, as you can see from those pics, the rear is a live rear axle with a Watts linkage setup to stop wayward antics, the front are more-or-less MacPherson struts. Disc brakes all round, though S1s had drum rear and S2 had smaller discs. S1 and S2 have a different stud pattern to the S3, too, 4x110 versus 4x114.3. Neither of which are madly useful, to be fair. Still, having driven a few Yank tanks in my time, the rear axle is nowhere near as intrusive as those sort of setups. Most of the time you forget it's live at all, which is the best compliment you can pay, I guess. With that said, though the handling on the FB was great, the steering was terrible. It was like driving through a Hollywood back-projection, sawing away on the wheel just to keep in a straight line. One of the eagle-eyed RX-7 FB club members pointed out one contributing factor may well be that the tyres had ceased production at least 15 years ago ... I've got an FD in the garage if I need insanely accurate handling, but there's no reason to let this car be any worse than it has to be. Daily driver or not, I could tell there was a decent chassis in there somewhere and it became a priority to let it free...
|
|
|
|
luckyseven
Posted a lot
Owning sneering dismissive pedantry since 1970
Posts: 3,839
Club RR Member Number: 45
|
|
|
So while I started the slow accumulation of suspension and wheels, I amused my self with a bit of light cosmetic titivation. Nothing severe, but for a start the front numberplate had to die. It was a blashemy against style and decency and was seemingly held on by some B&Q brackets that were rusty, horrid, and weighed a ton. While I was prettifying the front end, I took the opportunity to de-fried-eggify the front light units. Which is to say, I took them apart and heat gun/dremelled the orange inserts out so I could put in LED sidelight and inidicator bulbs instead. It's a small thing, but they were the only bit of orange apart from the side repeaters on the whole car (rear lights are smoked) and they irritated me every time I looked at it. I guess the relative merits and aesthtics of sticky number plates are open to discussion, but for me it's a whole world better off this way. I guess the old Bill may disagree too, but I've had one on my FD for years without any problems, so well worth the risk, methinks. So; wheels then. It seemed the easiest and most obvious change to sort the steering would be to change the wheels. The bushes had all checked out as good, not perfect, but certainly good enough for now. Changing the wheels to a less effete offset seemed the quickest way to try a wider track, and of course if I could reduce the unsprung weight in the process so much the better. I sat watching eBay like a hawk, waiting for raer 4x114.3 PCD wheels. Fortunately, some fella with a Corolla was selling off a set of three Sharak (not a spelling mistake). Since I rather like the miss-matched axles look I snapped them up. The had a rather manly +10ET offset, which is clearly ludicrous compared to the stock +40ET. They went on the rear perfectly, though there was no way they were going on the front without hacking the arches up. Which I'm not willing to do. Well, not until they start to rot Proper mad tyte JDM y0 goodness. So we were 50% of the way there. Strangely, the same guy was selling a pair of my dream wheels a few months later. Guess he had a load of miss-matched pairs and oddments. I guess the 'Scort and Mini brigade will see these as shamless Minilite Compo clones, but hey, imitation is the sincerest flattery and all that. Mmmmm, Watanabes God knows what offset they are, somewhere round about +25 or so judging where they sit between wheels I know the specs of. So I now had s et of hopelessly miss-matched a scabby wheels of 14" diameter but random tyres sizes. If you squinted you could sort of see the potential... ...but from a distance and in the cold light of sobriety even I had moments of "what the hell am I doing!?"
|
|
|
|
luckyseven
Posted a lot
Owning sneering dismissive pedantry since 1970
Posts: 3,839
Club RR Member Number: 45
|
|
|
Right, photobucket issues now hopefully sorted, I'll continue. Not that anyone seems that bothered hahaha, 260 views and two comments, you guys must really hate rotaries I remember the last time I picked a set of wheels up in the FD, only to find you can't actually fit four wheels with tyres inside one Doh! It was a pleasant surprise to find, therefore, that my choice of practical everyday transport will happily accomodate five spare wheels with tyres... ...so off they went to Wicked Wheels in Guildford for a refurb. I'd been faffing around with Photoshop trying to find a colour combo that'd work and putting the result out to vote onthe rotary forums. General consensus was for dark grey with a polished rim, and much as I like the idea of shiny bits,on an everyday winter hack it's a nightmare. The lacquer never sticks to polished alloy and you've got the choice of polishing them every other day or having white fur under the lacquer. Neither of which really appealed, to be honest. So, I finally wimped out and went for anthracite all over. To be specific, a black basecoat with a blow-over of Bentley Storm Grey Oh yes, that's how posh I are ;D I hope you'll agree the right choice to make. The dude at Wicked Wheels is a splendid old British artisan of the really grumpy sucking-through-teeth mould, but he's sound as they come and did an excellent job of the wheels Of course, it was only when I got them back and put tyres on that I realised I'd completely neglected the concept of centre caps. The bearing caps stick out miles on the Rex and looked rubbish, so I had to find a solution. A trio of old Wolfrace caps from eBay solved the problem on the front ...sort of. They looked like they'd been run over a few times and the fitment ....well, it needed a bit of work, it's fair to say. I did a bit of panel beating on them and at least got them back in round again ... and to be fair, a few dents and stuff doesn't worry me. It makes them look used, and after all, it's a 28-year-old car. Perfect doesn't suit it. So, after spending ages trying to match the unique paint combination of the wheels with rattle cans (how I wished at this point I'd sorted the caps and given them to the refurbisher beforehand. Lesson learned there) they came out OK The final step was a bit of lacquer and some specially-commissioned old skool Mazda logo decals. I got my mate Pete at Purple Panda graphics to make these up. He's a top bloke, has done several one-off stickers for me and others in the rotary world, and if you need decals you could do a lot worse than check his site out www.thestickersite.co.uk/ drop him an email and say I sent you. Shameless plug over lol. turned out alright then. The rears were a bit easier, I just got some flat plastic caps (though the only things using such a massive centre bore are Mercs and errr... caravans ) and some Exile (Exile Rotorsport, top old skool rotary forum) decals from Pete; So that was the wheels crossed of the list then
|
|
|
|
|
luckyseven
Posted a lot
Owning sneering dismissive pedantry since 1970
Posts: 3,839
Club RR Member Number: 45
|
|
|
Although, out of scientific curiosity, I felt motivated to weigh the wheels before bolting them on. As you know, unsprung weight is what you want to be losing to make a real difference to the dynamics of any vehicle, ie anything not supported by the suspension; the wheels, tyres, brakes, half the strut, etc. Losing weight from these components is roughly the same as losing three times that from the sprung weight. So, the stock wheels came in at with tyres, which isn't a drastic amount to be fair. The Sharaks on the rear were well, disappointingly near to stock in actual fact, though oddly they felt a lot lighter to move around. Maybe that was just my subconscious wanting them to be. The Watanabes showed the advantage of a proper forged motorsport wheel over a cast fashion one though; That's rather more like it I replaced all the stupidly heavy wheelnuts and lockers with internal-drive allen head hollow steel nuts as well, which saved another kilo per corner, believe it or not. As an irritatingly ubiquitous advert states, every little helps
|
|
|
|
luckyseven
Posted a lot
Owning sneering dismissive pedantry since 1970
Posts: 3,839
Club RR Member Number: 45
|
|
|
While I was faffing about with the wheels, I had plenty of other bits to get on with. I did some maths (hey, laugh all you want, the last time I did maths was when I fluked a Grade 3 CSE ) and worked out that to get a set of lowering springs from the USA was cheaper than it was to buy the exact same set from the UK distributor. Racing Beat are one of the oldest rotary tuners in the world, and their products have a reputation for good-as-OE quality. I was reluctant to start cutting springs, partly cos I feel it's always a slightly traveller solution, partly cos after 28 years the steel is likely to have lost a good percentage of its original elasticity anyway and partly because if there's an uprated aftermarket solution available, why not exploit it. Racing Beat were helpful as you like, all I had to do was wait while they FedExed the springs from their Anaheim CA depot. Worth the wait. Made in Japan, oddly. So they've gone from Japan to California and then to Darkest Sussex. 80% the way round the planet and never even been fitted to a car yet. Funny ol world innit Clealry if I was going to replace the springs, the shocks were going to need doing as well. They were certainly pretty baggy and tired after their near three-decades of work. Since this was as much about bringing the handling back as lowering and style, the shocks were just as important. Since I'm not independantly wealthy or anything and have annoying children to fund, it took a few months to get all the components together. In the meantime, I turned my attention to stuff I could do for free. The rear spoiler was the most obvious thing that needed changing. Frankly, it's foul. It doesn't match any of the lines of the car, it's badly dated in style, it's made out of that weird foam rubbery stuff like old Capris and RS2000s used to use, so you could wring a gallon of black cruddy water out of it every time it rained... it was just hateful. It had to die; See? Horrid. I set about removing it with due trepidation. The thing that worried me most was the state of the fixings, especially since like most Mazdas, it had a humongously excessive number of them. The ones inside the tailgate were actually in quite good state of repair; though I was just in time, corrosion was just starting to set in here. The ones actually on the underside of the spoiler itself were a different matter and mostly needed breaking or severe beasting to get apart but I overcame and finally the horrible thing lay vanquished on the floor like a huge rubber moustache Like, HOW many bloody fixings!? Thankyou, Mazda It now became apparent that in worrying about the state of the fasteners, I'd missed the true problem. Once the rear deck was exposed, it was painfully obvious though; That's 28 years worth of accumlated cack, that is You could have planted potatoes in it. Rather bizarrely, Mazda decided to put big sticky discs of paint protection film around each bolt-hole. I wish they'd done the whole strip because all it meant was the paint under the film was in A-1 condition and everywhere else it was utterly mutilated. The sponge rubber underside of the spoiler had basically held moisture right against the paint for years, with the inevitable bloom and contamination as a result Grrrrr! I spent a good amount of time and elbow grease trying to cut the paint back, and even borrowed an orbital mop from a tame mechanic next door, but nothing was ever going to bring this back from the brink; And that was annoying. I'd half hoped that I'd be able to run with no spoiler at all because I think these cars really suit the bare-arsed look. As with everything on it, my ethos was that I didn't want to make any permanent alterations to such a pristine car, so I didn't want to weld the holes and re-paint because apart from the cost, it would mean the original spoiler couldn't be put back on should anyone ever be odd enough to want to. I had been planning on just filling the holes with pretty bolts or something, but it was clear this would not now be an option. Dang
|
|
|
|
luckyseven
Posted a lot
Owning sneering dismissive pedantry since 1970
Posts: 3,839
Club RR Member Number: 45
|
|
|
So now I started a quest for a suitable spoiler. Basically I wanted somethign that'd suit, and would be big enough to hide the worst of the paint damage without overwhelming the back end of the car. What I had in mind was the sort of little duck-tail spoilers on American muscle cars. Y'know, the little flip-up jobs like on early 70s Firebirds and so on. At one point I thought I'd never find anything suitable and was contemplating making one up myself or blowing stupid money on a Rocket Bunny Nissan one and carving it up. Then a flash of inspiration fell from the blue. What looks like a Yank muscle car, but shrunk onto a Japanese scale? A 240Z of course. And they had an option of a duck-tail spoiler. Winner! Without bothering with any trivial pointless stuff like research or measurements, I bid one off eBay (well, I did research it a bit... I looked at Google Images for at least half an hour and thought "yeah, that'll do). Boom! One used and sorely abused Datsun 240Z spoiler. The first thing that endeared em to it was that it only had six mountings to hold the entire thing on (less than half the number of the original Mazda one). The second was that it fit like it was made for the car, looked exactly as I wanted and just generally reeked of awesome. The downside was it looked like it had been run over by the same Scania as the Wolfrace centre caps ...but we all like a challenge and part of the appeal of modding cars for me is doing it on a budget, getting parts from random and obscure sources and giving them a new lease of life in weird ways. So I set to sanding back the matt paint and trying to fix the cracks and blemishes .Annoyingly, the cracks were concentrated on the mounting points, which is I suppose where you'd expect them to be really. Clearly that meant I had to repair them with some strength rather than just sand them flat and move on This one wasn't so bad. Most of the work was in sanding the spoiler smooth. I dunno whether it was styling motif back in the time, or if Datsun just couldn't be bothered to make their moulds smooth, but the plastic had a weird texture to it, almost a brushed look, almost leather look with a deep grain. Sanding it smooth took ages. For the actual repair I used thin a fibreglass layer to hold some ally mesh in, and covered it with Sikaflex for some give as well as strength. Maybe a bit overkill but I figure if it breaks again it won't be in the original failure The double mount and NS end of the spoiler was more of a worry. I dunno if it had been dropped or what, but the more I sanded and investigated the worse it became, especially the all-important mounting webs Still persistance and layer after layer of repairs finally got it back to something approaching its original shape and a gallon of bonding gunge with acres of mesh reinforcing meant I could expect it to not fall apart under wind pressure the first time the flux capacitor kicked in By the time I finally felt brave enough to try a layer of primer, I was beginning to wish I'd dropped 200 quid on the Rocket Bunny one and saved myself hours from my life But hey, that would have been too easy, yeah? Eventually I got there. It wasn't perfect, but it was good enough All that was needed now was the bottle test of bashing a few new holes through the otherwise perfect bodywork of the car
|
|
|
|
longman
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 506
Club RR Member Number: 3
|
|
|
top work dude , looks great
|
|
Paul 98 500 SL 86 911 Carrera/sold 23 Octavia Phev
|
|
luckyseven
Posted a lot
Owning sneering dismissive pedantry since 1970
Posts: 3,839
Club RR Member Number: 45
|
|
|
Before I could get to the stage of spraying it up and gluing it to the car, however, I got co-opted into using the car for a magazine photoshoot ;D CAR magazine were planning an article on the generations of the RX-7 now that Mazda have finally dropped the R3 RX-8 from their range, a sort of retrospective commemorating the excellence of the rotary engine and its packaging. Hey, you can mock and trot out the old unreliability and fuel economy stuff, but it's the only new form of power unit developed for more than a century after all It deserves respect for that alone. But don't take my word for it, I'm biased as hell lol Anyway, a mate through the FD forum got hold of me cos the mag had put out a request for original tidy cars. Obviously my FD was worse than useless (despite having been in like Japanese Performance and that a few times) because it's less original than Trigger's broom (eight new heads and ten new handles) but he knew I had the FB and thought it'd be suitable. I have to say, I wasn't mad keen because I had the car all disassembled and full of holes with miss-matched wheels and all sorts at the time. I tried to convince someone from the FB forum to step up, but all the guys with stock cars (and there are plenty in better condition than mine was) couldn't make it for one reason or another. So I had no choice but to bung it all back together and throw a bucket of water over it. The shoot was at the Longcross Test Track near Chobham. You'll have seen it on Wheeler Dealers and all those sorta programmes, no doubt. It's a big banked bowl with a handling track and various different set ups within. As it turned out, it was a top day out. The cars all looked fantastic, and I'd met all the owners at various shows and on forums so we all got on well, which helps when you're standing around waiting for ages. The journalist and smudger were true car guys as well (I suppose you'd have to be) and were keen to listen and learn while we spouted endless trivia about rotaries for them. Here's a few pics from the day... The journo had to have a drive in all the cars, obviously, which was interesting to get his feedback on. Clearly the FD twin turbo was fastest by some margin. He loved the FB for its old-skool charm, felt the RX-8 was compromised by its weight and electrickery and the Fc was a bit.... beige... but overall seemed to like them all for their own merits. This is mine at full honk on the circuit; I went pass with him for a few laps of the banking, too, which was excellent. I'd investigated the upper reaches of the performance before of course (on private roads, officer) but its not the same as giving it absolute Larry on a closed test track. Made the best sound of the four cars, too It was funny when he was approaching the first banked turn at around 120-ish and remembered I'd told him the brakes weren't "all that". He mumbled something about it being an idea to test them, then went a bit quiet while he scared himself silly. They did bite and haul us up eventually, but I think there was moment of "see God then back off" hahaha. It did convince me that they needed further investigation though, they were definitely the weak link on the car. The beauty shots lol It's rare (and nice) to see a stock late-model FD that's unmolested. I'm just as guilty as many UK owners of modding them heavily, but when you see a standard one you realise again how right Mazda got it. This is a genuine junior supercar, no arguments, and 260 bhp out of the box from a 1.3 litre engine is not to be ignored FC dash with its weirdo freaky rotary controls. Hmmm, wonder why they never caught on. Except with Citroen, of course This is how these guys earn their money. It was odd following the Jag so closely, trying to match speeds and distance while suffering target fixation on the dude hanging out of the boot like a monkey on a string and it was even more tricky when we had to drive in formation, two or four cars literally a couple of feet apart while the photographer snapped away. Here I blagged a pass ride in Rod's FD So, a good day out, something I'd not done before but something I'd definitely do again. Plus, the article when it came out was excellent, really considerate to the strengths of the rotary, not too harsh about its downsides, and most importantly, it made the cars look awesome... My fifteen minutes of fame ;D
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Nice pics, although I'm missing one (or more) picture after lowering, without rear spoiler and with the new wheels...
They are very nice cars to have, very reliable and offering quite a pleasant driving experience (noise, sitting position). However, don't try to outrace a TDI on the motorway.
I have driven some miles in one, but the fuel consumption and steering feeling is putting me off. Otherwise I would adore them.
|
|
Click picture for more
|
|
luckyseven
Posted a lot
Owning sneering dismissive pedantry since 1970
Posts: 3,839
Club RR Member Number: 45
|
|
|
Once back home from the photoshoot it was apparent there were some things that needed attention before I could get back on with the cosmetics. The most pressing was a water loss problem. It was... going somewhere, had been in minor amounts ever since I'd had the car. I'd found a lot of corrosion on the union for the bottom rad hose that meant the pipe wasn't seating properly, and cleaned it up. That had seemed to solve the problem. For a while. Eventually it became clear water was still going somewhere. This was a worry. Rotaries can suffer with water seal failure quite badly. Essentially, the water seal is a gian tO-ring that goes around the circumference of the rotor housings, between the waterways and the inner rotor chamber. There are four, snadwiched between each plate and housing in the snadwich that makes up a rotary. Especially in engines that have stood for a long time, the very thin-walled alloy around the O-ring groove can corrode where water gathers at the bottom of the housing, and then the rubber seal bleeds coolant into the rotor chambers, where it's burnt off. I was really hoping it wasn't this, because that'd have mean tthe engine would need to come out for a rebuild. It seemed worryingly likely, especially after the run on the high-speed banking there had been a definite "head-gaskety" smell. Which is odd given there's neither a head nor a head gasket! Fortunately, it was diagnosed by the excellent rotary community on the FB forum as being a failed O-ring in the inlet manifold. The carb on 1st gen RX-7s is a Nikki one, a little like a min Holley four-barrel shrunk to Japanese dimensions. It has waterways in its manifold to ensure consistent running in all climates. Bit of a bizarre idea in many ways, cos you don't generally want your intake charge heating up unless you live in like Alaska, but there you go. There are a couple of O-rings that seal between the block and the inlet manifold and when these fail the gasket alone isn't man enough to resist the coolant. That's why the leak was too smal to be obvious, but also why it was getting worse as the gasket was ever-more compromised It was bit of a pain because it means stripping down a fair bit of the engine ancillaries and architecture to swap a pair of O-rings, but I tried to look on it as a bonus as much as possible. As I said earlier, the exhaust was aftermarket, and whoever had swapped it hadn't completed the job of stripping out all the emissions valve nonsense that mounts on the inlet mani. Essentially, all that rubbish arrowed now performed no function at all, the same for the massiv eheavy pigiron airpump that used to circulate fresh air through the valves into the exhaust mani (supposedly to burn off leaner the emissions in the aforementioned Thermal Reactor). Since I had to strip all this down, it was a great opportunity to get rid of all the extraneous tat and fit a rather neater solution in the form of two blanking plates kindly donated by Steve (whos gold FB on coilovers and megasquirt injection is a build I can only aspire to a tiny percentage of. Hi, Steve ) So, with the acquisition of a five quid fanimold gasket from Mazda (five days from Belgium weird) and a couple of tolerant mates we for help and moral support, we set to on the darkest, rainiest day of the year . Always best to do these things under the most inapropriate of circumstances, I think ;D First off was the Blue Box of God. Several of the unions can be crimped flat once you strip the emissions valves away because they no longer go anywhere, but that would be at odds with my "no permanent alterations" ethic, so I'd have to find ways of blanking them later We pretty quickly got into the guts of it all. These engines are soooooo simple to work on, as befits a motor that only has three moving parts. The carb set-up means there's none of the Rta's Nest of plumbing and vacc lines that are the curse of later fuel-injected rotaries This is the gargantuan and completely obsolete airpump being stripped off ... and in what seemed no time at all we had the entire intake setup stripped clear. This gives you a chance to see just how tiny and compact the rotary really is Here's the culprit... this is what a 28-year old O-ring looks like after it's lost the will to live Oh yeah, that'll be why it's leaking, then Now came the tedious bit. The old gasket was utterly mullered in removal, and it had transmogrified into something tougher than the black heart of a collapsar over the years. It took HOURS of cleaning and scraping with razor blades scrapers to clear it all off, bearing in mind the faces are all alloy so you really don't want to be too rough with them. Wise man say fool stands in rain taking photos whilst mates work in nice warm under bonnet This is my main man Ada cleaning the carb and manifold up. *ahem* I was... errrrr, supervising. Yeah, that it, supervising. Actually I was hanging around smoking and enjoying watching everyone else work hahaha Took the opportunity to put some aluminised heat barrier on the crab's integral heat shield, since it sits right on top of the exhaust runners when it's all back together. Probably makes ten percent of naff all difference, but it looks nice Here's the manifold with the blanking plates on instead of the all the air bypass valve nonsense, ready to go back on and here it all is being built back up, much neater with loads more room for nice cooling airflow I went for the addition of a little breather on the one airbox union to blank it and replaced the original hoover pipe warm start intake with a nice black silicone one for neatness. The other obsolete union (where the airpump took its feed) is a lot bigger so I had to cut the pipe right down and use a turned alloy bung in it to blank that one. Also, it was found that the fuel hoses to the carb had seen better days; Gahhhh! That's one mil away from fire, right there Clearly that wasn;t acceptable so I swapped them out for some rather righteous stainless braid with alloy finishers, as well as a few other bling-up goodies like a genuine imitation MazdaSpeed oil filler and a very useful and extremely pretty double-sheave alternator pulley from DM-Motorsports www.dm-motorsport.co.uk/ because FBs have an ugly habit of breaking their belts (its the vicious fan lol) and leaving you sparkless And in the interests of proving some sort of advantage from all this work, this is the weight of the air bypass valve architecture... ..and the ridiculously heavy airpump Hurrah! Defnitely better off without all that malarkey in there, then
|
|
|
|
luckyseven
Posted a lot
Owning sneering dismissive pedantry since 1970
Posts: 3,839
Club RR Member Number: 45
|
|
|
top work dude , looks great Thankyou kindly Nice pics, although I'm missing one (or more) picture after lowering, without rear spoiler and with the new wheels... They are very nice cars to have, very reliable and offering quite a pleasant driving experience (noise, sitting position). However, don't try to outrace a TDI on the motorway. I have driven some miles in one, but the fuel consumption and steering feeling is putting me off. Otherwise I would adore them. All the pics work for me (now). I was having problems with Photobucket links and the filenames being too long thus blowing the forum's li'l mind, but seem to have got it sorted. Or so I thought. Not sure why they aren't working for you They are surprisingly reliable, given the rotary legend for unreliability. A little old 12A engine like this will go on to over 100k miles, it's only the heat from turbocharging that really screws 'em on the later models. Renesis RX-8 engines break because Mazda removed one of the oiling nozzles from the housings and then wondered why the apex seals wore out. It was noticeable that on the last R3 engine the extra oilway had reappeared. Guess they got fed up of warranty engine rebuilds... Chuckles at the TDi comment. No, torque is not what rotaries do lol. I agree it's not to everyone's taste having to drop two gears and scream the nuts off it to make progress, but that said, it's nowhere near as frustrating and gutless as a VTEC Hahhhnda for example. As to fuel economy, I think it's great but then my other transport is silly. I can get to Santa Pod from Worthing and back in the FB and still have a quarter of a £70 tank left. In the FD I can't get there and back out of a single tank of VPower. Last trip cost me £100 in fuel alone Steering, as will be shown later, can be rescued quite easily
|
|
|
|
luckyseven
Posted a lot
Owning sneering dismissive pedantry since 1970
Posts: 3,839
Club RR Member Number: 45
|
|
|
Right, now the engine was leak-free and decluttered I could go back and take up where I left off with the cosmetics. The 240Z spoiler was sprayed up and I manned up enough to drill the holes to mount it. The holes that once held the fasteners for the pointy side-pieces of the original spoiler were left exposed, sadly. To fill them in a non-permanent way I got some pretty fasteners from Pro Bolt www.pro-bolt.com/ who I've used on bikes a lot in the past. They do fasteners that are works of art as well as function in alloy, stainless and titanium. I went for alloy so I could get anodised dark colours to match the colour scheme of the car. Some rubber washers on the out and inside meant the boot shouldn't fill up with water See? No bolt and washer needs to be so lovely, but they at least look like something that's meant to be there rather than some manky old bolt. Of course, to get them tightened up meant getting a nut on the inside, and this meant some contortions that a proctologist would have been proud to pull off. I had to get in via the rear lights, the web in the wing where the fuel filler neck went, God knows what. Since I was furkling around in there I also took the chance to find out why the aerial didn't work... It's because it's some cheap aftermarket tat that had been bodged right up. The only thing holding it in was the top nut on the (broken) mast and two cable ties I never listen to the radio anyway, and genuine RX-7 ones are rarer than a moral at News of the World, so I didn't need much persuasion to sack it off out of there. This left me a big hole to bung, certainly too big for a bolt and washer. I shmelessly stole an idea I remember seeing some fella use when he deleted the rear washer on his FC RX-7... Player One ready! Well, it gives me a chuckle, especially when you see how many people can't help but press it ;D I wish I had the electronic skills to wire it up to a little sign in the window that'd light up in a Hitch-hikers Guide to the Galaxy stylee saying "Please do not press this button again" *ahem* While I was messing around with the wiring out the back, I took the chance to sack the fog light as well. Believe it or not, what looks like a £5 Halfrauds bodge job is in fact a Mazda OE item (refer to earlier pics to see how tragic it looks). I wasn't having that, so I purchased one of these... rather funky and far more delicate LED racing rainlights from Tweeks (or eBay if you prefer, lol). I like LEDs as a matter of principle, but especially when they look so much more stylish. A quick bit of bracketry out of stainless for longevity and sprayed black for unobtrusiveness (is that a word?)... ...and that was all that I needed to make the back end righteous. Of course, I wired the Player One button in so that it light up when the foglight's on. Just because I can So, with the wheels and spoiler nailed on, what we ended up with is this; With the all-important old school Mazda Rotary Engine decal from Pete at Purple Panda, of course Here's the car enjoying a day trip out in the sun This next one should show you the three things that still really annoyed me about the aesthetics of the car, mind you...
|
|
|
|
luckyseven
Posted a lot
Owning sneering dismissive pedantry since 1970
Posts: 3,839
Club RR Member Number: 45
|
|
|
Give up? ;D Yeah, that's right; 1) the shocking ride height, 2) the horrid orange side repeaters, 3) the "cricket bat" door mirrors. They had to go. The easiest was the side repeaters. I scoured t'interweb for replacements, but even in the US and the antipodes where the rotary markets are huge there didn't seem to be anyone who did clear or smoked replacements. I became a weird side repeater anorak, eyeing up every car I passed to see if any were suitable. They weren't. Part of the problem is that Mazda used ones which screw into the wing, so that even if I could find a similar sized lens there'd be screw holes left behind; Eventually I gave up and bought the smallest round ones I could find, Fiat Seicento I think. As you can see, they nearly fitted in entirety between the screw holes; Then all that was needed was a plate to mount them on, and what shape other than a rotary shield? Out of genuine carbon fibre, naturally. A bit of dremeling later, and a gasket cut from a rubber sheet... What? Doesn't everyone have thick butyl rubber sheets in their man-shed? Weird. ;D Tiny bit of countersinking and some silver enamel for the corner seal motif and ta-da Much more better enough. I set to on the door mirrors at the same time. Got hold of some cheapy generic bullet type ones, in black obviously. Irritatingly, none of the mounts would fit in the originals, due to spacing and bolt size differences; Then all I had to do was carve my arm up like a side of meat trying to fit them through the razor-sharp door apertures... I suffers for me art, y'know. Anyway, it was well worth the effort, I think. I know it seems a lot of fuss for little minor details, but I'm a big believer in if you pay attention to the tiny things you fidn the overall look follows naturally... Speaking of which, Marc from the FB forum flogged me a Series 2 steering wheel at a great price, so I bunged that on to replace the weird zombie-flesh slabby S3 one Now, the ride height...
|
|
|
|
|