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Last year, I had to make the difficult but ultimately in my best interest decision to sell my FD to pay for school. While my 2013 Mazdaspeed 3 is fun to drive, it's just not the same as an RX-7. I found this car for sale on fb marketplace in Arizona, though I noticed the owner had it up for sale here as well, (if you're reading this, thanks!) Based on what I can gather, he found it from another person that had purchased it after it had been sitting inside an enclosed trailer for fifteen+ years after the owner had passed away.
The car runs, but has hot start issues and low compression on the rear rotor, so a rebuild is in order. The last time a title was issued was 1997 if memory serves, around its 10th birthday.
Looking at the pictures, I decided I had to buy it. It wasn't an S5, and it has the maroon interior, but one in this shape doesn't come along often anymore, I bought my first RX-7 (and second car overall in my life) at the age of 15 for about 2,500, and S4 GXL. Prices have went up considerably since then, and I knew if I didn't buy this, I'd be kicking myself. It looked like I was too late, a deposit had already been placed, and I had lost all hope of getting this car. I told the seller to let me know if it fell through, and I was serious with cash in hand.
By some miracle, the deal did fall through, and the buyer was unable to get transportation arranged, so I paid for the car in full and arranged shipping myself.
Having never shipped a car before (I've always flown in and drove them back) this was a bit of a new process for me, and I learned a ton of what NOT to do, as opposed to what to do. (I'll go into detail on the next post about my experiences in the world of auto transport.) The car was picked up last night in Arizona, and it should be in my area for delivery by Wednesday, at which point I can begin to see what I'm working with and start the process to prep the car for removing the engine to begin the rebuild. I haven't seen many white S4 TII's with maroon interior, and I've reached out to MNAO currently to see what the production numbers were, they are currently investigating.
In the meantime, while it's on its way to me in a nice, enclosed carrier, pictures:
Wow!!!! That car is in incredible condition!!! I would rebuild it and keep it all original! What a treasure to find!
Thank you thank you!
That's my plan. The only real mods I plan on doing are a racing beat full exhaust, and maybe an adaptronic or (if i can find one) an Rtek, just for simplicity sake. The seller doesn't know if the AC works. All of the parts are there, but the compressor doesnt kick on when the ac is turned on. He checked the lines, and the refrigerant is gone. Based on the entire condition of the car, I'm guessing it was evacuated before storage. It hasn't even been retrofitted to R134a.
Wednesday (if the carrier arrives on time) is a bit of a ways away, so, in the meantime, I figured I'd post about just how much I learned in terms of shipping a car across the continent. I'm by no means claiming that I am an expert, I am just claiming what I learned. This is from the civilian side of things, as I'm sure you enlisted/officer guys have it quite a bit better lol. The whole process was interesting to say the least. Hopefully this can help people from making the same mistakes I do, or at least being aware of what may happen.
I looked online, starting with a basic google search. Usually where anyone starts, right? I found tons of companies offering car shipping services, etc. More than I could count. Now, how does one separate the good from the bad, or, at this point, how do I even determine the good from the bad? I looked and noticed one company, uship, was part of the network ebay uses and recommends for their transactions for cars on their auctions. With this information, I figured, okay, if it's used frequently enough by ebay users, then it can't be entirely bad.
So I go to uship, create an account, make an "ad" on the marketplace there for the car. Origin location, destination, dates available for pickup and delivery, and year/make/model, as well as what type of transport. I didn't put my phone number in because I didn't want to be dogged day and night by quotes. If they want my business, they can find themselves in my inbox.
Within a few hours I found about seven emails of "bids" from companies. Uship will advertise that. Companies will "bid" for your business. Though don't think its going to be very competitive. At least in my case, it wasn't. Bids started at 1,300 and ended at 1,276, with about seven companies total placing them. The company also charges a "service fee" on top, and then if you want additional insurance (I went with it because better safe than sorry) that is also on top.
So the way uship works is, when you find that company you want by looking at the available bids, you look at their terms and conditions, in some cases, you pay up front, and you get a uship "code" this code is basically cash and how the transporter gets paid. You give this code to them on delivery, and they get their money. So, I looked at the reviews of these companies, and the one that had the most reviews, and the highest rating, is a company called Montway. I booked with them.
The next day I get an email from Montway saying a carrier has been dispatched to pickup my car, and the transportation companies name and drivers number was on the webpage. Notice at this point, I've dealt with three companies. Uship, Montway, and now the actual carrier.
The way this process works is, You deal with Brokers (uship, montway, pretty much every company out there will be a "Broker") who throw your shipment out there and see what carrier will pick it up. The brokers usually don't own any trucks, they don't work in the industry like the drivers do, they simply just provide a medium through which drivers can find jobs, and they take a hefty cut out of it in the process. They have no control over who will pick up your shipment, all they do is list it in their network, as long as the driver has legally met the requirements by the DOT to operate, its fair game in their eyes, but I digress, back to my story:
I look at the carriers name, and I google it with the phrase DOT. The results return the companies DOT number, so I go to the DOT website and pull a report (which is free.) Turns out the company has one truck and one driver. Great, so a one person operation. I go back to uship and look at their reviews, theres one posted review, thats a cancellation. My stress level starts to climb a bit at this point. I text the driver and ask him when he estimates to be in the area, he mentions he can be there within an hour. I think, oh nice, that's quick. So I message the seller and they meet up, he drops off the car.
I get a text message half an hour later from the trucker, he's saying the car wont start. I asked him what he did, since the seller literally had a video of it running at drop off for insurance purposes. He said (in really broken, hard to understand text) it just shut off. So I call the seller and ask him to venture back down to the drop off point and see what can be done. I get a call an hour later, the seller had to take the car back to his house. He mentioned the driver didn't know how to drive a manual transmission, and kept stalling it out, and drained the battery by trying to crank it.
How can you work in this industry and not know how to drive a manual transmission...seriously. The language barrier I can work around, but not knowing how to drive a manual transmission..really?
I call Montway (the broker) and complain about the whole situation, they end up telling me they placed it on "high priority" (with these brokers you can't believe anything they say most times from the sound of things) and that they noted the driver has to know how to drive a manual transmission. The order gets re dispatched to another carrier the next day. I text the driver and explain the whole situation, not wanting a repeat of what happened with the first carrier, and this guy informs me he has an enclosed trailer, and he can drive a manual transmission just fine. Unfortunately, he wouldn't be there for three days. Mildly upset by that, but not being able to do anything about the situation, I figure a free upgrade to an enclosed trailer is enough to sate me.
The driver arrives on the day he quoted, the seller has to go down there and help him get it loaded, but the car loads easily and it is now on its way to me. Three days to go!
So, basically, what I learned is, you will 99% of the time deal with a broker, they have no trucks most of the time, they know nothing about the industry like the drivers do, they will quote you times that are probably unrealistic (though montway did say the times aren't guaranteed) and they have no control of who picks up your order, they just toss it out there. They exist as a middle man and take a cut. Out of the 1,400 I paid for shipping, I'm sure the driver probably got about 800 bucks, if that, though I could be wrong.
If I were able to do this again, I would have went right to a transporter, problem with that is, you never know their schedules, or where they happen to be, so that can be difficult, as they are constantly running their routes. It's also difficult to find a transporter, many brokers pass themselves off to the point you may think they are a transporter. So in terms of a convenience factor, yeah, a broker makes it "easy" to deal with, but you'd probably save money if you went straight to a transporter.
sounds like you would have been better off getting a U-haul dolley and picking it up yourself. It would have at least resulted in less headache.
For the A/C, I would recommend doing the R-152 charging procedure that gets posted on here every now and then. It's a good write up, and describes how to do each step. From what I have found, it works better than the R-134 conversion. R-152 runs at approximately the same pressures as the original R12 give or take 5% or so. R-134 runs at about 150-200% of the working pressures of R12. This additional pressure creates additional heat that must be dumped out at the condenser. If you notice, R-134 condensers are much larger to account for this. Cooler internal system temps = cooler oil temps = longer equipment life. Check out that thread. It's definitely worth the read.
congratulations on the car. you're very much right about them not showing up in this condition very often. happy for you that you were able to get this beauty. i've traditionally not been a huge fan of white cars, but the truth is, lately i've had a total change of heart. i'm saying that only to say, i think it car looks incredible!
i, too, look forward to seeing you rebuild it and enjoy it the way it should be enjoyed. i will be following our progress.
finally, i, personally, want to thank you or posting your experience with transporting the car. your insights are very much appreciated. it is something i have always been curious about, and you've shed some serious light on the subject.
sounds like you would have been better off getting a U-haul dolley and picking it up yourself. It would have at least resulted in less headache.
For the A/C, I would recommend doing the R-152 charging procedure that gets posted on here every now and then. It's a good write up, and describes how to do each step. From what I have found, it works better than the R-134 conversion. R-152 runs at approximately the same pressures as the original R12 give or take 5% or so. R-134 runs at about 150-200% of the working pressures of R12. This additional pressure creates additional heat that must be dumped out at the condenser. If you notice, R-134 condensers are much larger to account for this. Cooler internal system temps = cooler oil temps = longer equipment life. Check out that thread. It's definitely worth the read.
I considered just renting a uhaul and traveling out there myself, but to rent a truck one way it was 2,000+ dollars, so it actually ended up being cheaper to ship. My Mazdaspeed 3 wouldn't have towed that (nor would I have trusted it to) so my only option realistically was shipping it, this second driver has been really good with communication though, so I guess it depends on luck of the draw with these brokers.
I was actually debating on what route to take with the A/C. R134 is definitely out of the question, and I'm not installing a larger parallel flow condenser, either. I was debating on just refilling the system with R12, or doing the R-152 conversion.
congratulations on the car. you're very much right about them not showing up in this condition very often. happy for you that you were able to get this beauty. i've traditionally not been a huge fan of white cars, but the truth is, lately i've had a total change of heart. i'm saying that only to say, i think it car looks incredible!
i, too, look forward to seeing you rebuild it and enjoy it the way it should be enjoyed. i will be following our progress.
finally, i, personally, want to thank you or posting your experience with transporting the car. your insights are very much appreciated. it is something i have always been curious about, and you've shed some serious light on the subject.
I appreciate it. I've been the same with white cars, they haven't been my favorite, but I think I can learn to appreciate, just because of how clean it is. I haven't seen it in person yet, but I definitely believe it was in storage for 15+ years in a trailer based on how it looks. I've been pricing out the rebuild parts and preparing for the inevitable hit to my bank account, so work should start on it within a week or two of arrival.
As far as the auto transport story goes, I figured it would probably help some members here on the fence about shipping a car that have never done it before. I never thought I was going to get scammed or that I'd never see the car, but I do think these brokers charge high rates and take a significant cut from the transporter. My biggest complaint is you don't know who is going to pickup that order. That first guy couldn't even drive a manual, second guy is great so far. He answers texts when he can, lets me know any questions about location, etc. Communication with the driver once they get dispatched is key. The process is a whole lot easier to talk to the driver directly than going through the broker.
Edit: I figured I'd add this as well, what may frustrate most people, and the drivers, too, is that people probably have this preconceived method in their head of how the auto transport business works, like FedEx, or UPS. In my experience, its the complete opposite. It's a very dynamic industry, Every trucker is on the road always going from point a to b, be it east to west, north to south, etc. All of them are their own company. Some transporters own multiple rigs and trailers, some are one man operations. This isn't like buying next day air service on a package and slapping a tracking number on it with signature confirmation. UPS/FedEx have millions invested into their infrastructure networks. Auto transporters have the american highway system, and everything that can get in their way. Mechanical failures, weather, traffic, accidents, etc. They will get your order there, they want to get paid, but don't expect this to be like shipping a package. Just my experience thus far.
Update! Car is supposed to be delivered today, waiting to go meet up with the driver. It's a cold, rainy, wet day here in NC, though. Luckily there's the garage (that needs some cleaning out done to it.) The title and manuals, etc arrived here yesterday from the seller. I've seen this stuff before, but I thought it was neat to see the paperwork packet, etc. It's always awesome when people save these things!
Weather forecast was not the best this morning, poured rain all morning and afternoon. The transporter called me and mentioned he was close, and I met him to pick the car up. For all intents and purposes, she looks really good. I'm definitely happy with her and the previous owners kept it stored indoors based on just how great it is physically.
Theres some minor things to address, it needs a new ebrake cable, brake pedal adjusted, I have to also figure out why the fuel pump is wired to full voltage when the key is switched to on. I looked under the drivers dash and the main large relay (black on top, yellow on bottom) definitely has wires spliced out of it, I'm thinking the relay possibly went bad and then they just didn't bother fixing it properly. I'll get to that soon. The shifter bushings also need replacement badly.
Here are some minor picture updates: The weather has been too cold for my liking to do much work right now, and I need to order parts/tools. The car has a few dealer installed decals, including the IMSA/GTU champion sticker.
What an incredible car!! I'm very glad the car arrived safely and the paperwork you got with the car is incredible! Did the original window sticker (Monroney Label) come with the paperwork or with the car? Really excited to see the car's restoration!
What an incredible car!! I'm very glad the car arrived safely and the paperwork you got with the car is incredible! Did the original window sticker (Monroney Label) come with the paperwork or with the car? Really excited to see the car's restoration!
I wish the original window sticker did. I actually found the original owners name on the warranty card, and through some Google-Fu and Facebook, found who I thought was the original owner. He owns his own company, so I texted him at his contact information, and confirmed he was the original owner. He mentioned to me he bought it new from the showroom floor and sold it in 1990. The current title I have in the previous owners name mentions before he bought it, the last title was issued in 1997. So there's about a seven year gap of an owner there. I know from 1997 until October of 2020 it had the same owner, and for fifteen of those years it was in an enclosed trailer.
The first owner did mention to me he never drove it in winter (it's a Minnesota car) and the pictures show it. He mentioned he has a picture of him with the car floating around somewhere he is going to try to send me if he can find it from when the car was new.
I really wish I could have found the original window sticker, but that seems to be the rarest thing that follows the car. In other news, I've ordered an OEM key from MazdaMotorsports so I don't have to use that infamous spare blank everyone knows far too well, as well as the wiper relay from digikey to fix the infamous wiper switch issues we all love to hate.
A search of the glovebox turned up some cassette tapes (which I tried, and the radio works perfectly, power antenna as well.) I also found a sealed, unopened condom, probably from an 80's gas station. I thought it was a book of matches at first.
Shifter bushings and adjusting the brake pedal, and ebrake cable are the next minor things. At some point I want to find a sohn adapter for the S4 mechanical omp, but I can't seem to find one, apparently they don't sell them anymore. The S4 sub zero start assist bottle is still intact on the car, that would make a perfect reservoir for some two stroke.
Great buy! I was 2nd in line behind you to buy it 🙂. I am glad it’s in good hands at least and isn’t getting swapped. Looking forward to seeing updates along the way.
Great buy! I was 2nd in line behind you to buy it 🙂. I am glad it’s in good hands at least and isn’t getting swapped. Looking forward to seeing updates along the way.
No swap is happening with this car. The only mods it's probably going to see under me (not counting reliability and maintenance) are a racing beat full exhaust (it only has a single on there now that looks like it was part of an exhaust repair job) and possibly an Rtek if I can find one just to support the fuel demand from the RB exhaust.
I've already ordered all the parts for the rebuild, but due to the holidays, I've got about nine days ish until everything arrives. Waiting sucks, but what can you do? I'm also waiting on replacement ebrake cables as well as the full shifter bushing kit with boots, that shifter needs them badly.
I really need to take a look at why the fuel pump opening relay has some wires spliced into it though, I'm guessing the relay went bad/got stuck and they just didn't want to bother with buying a new one. The car runs fine for being at 40psi on the rear rotor, but that will definitely change once the parts arrive. The rear rotor housing is on back order, but according to Mazda Motorsports they are on the way from japan, so It should be sent out at the beginning of January.
Edit: I forgot how low the FC sits, since I had to sell my FD to pay for school last year, I've been using my Mazdaspeed 3 as my daily. The FC sits so much lower, I love it.
There are a lot of nice details on that car. Its great tonsee that it was so well cared for by the original owner! It would be cool to see the picture of him with the car if he finds it. You have a great restoration plan laid out for the car!
There are a lot of nice details on that car. Its great tonsee that it was so well cared for by the original owner! It would be cool to see the picture of him with the car if he finds it. You have a great restoration plan laid out for the car!
Thanks man, I appreciate it. Part of why I feel I got such a good buy with this car was the story and all the history I've been able to uncover with it. I was kind of geeking out to be honest when I found the original owner, he was so glad to see a picture of the car he hadn't seen in 30 years. He mentioned that it looks just the way it did the day he sold it. I really hope he does find that picture.
As far as the restoration goes, yeah, 100% OEM is my plan. Unfortunatly, MNAO got back to me, and after investigating, they don't have production numbers on specifics like the color/interior combo due to the age, so that is somewhat of a bummer, but at least they tried. That is one thing I love about Mazda, they really do what they can for customers, and they always have for me.
I've been away from the car for a few weeks now, I'm itching to get back to it and start my vlog of the restore/project, but I'm still waiting on the majority of my parts from Mazda Motorsports, the holidays have things slowed down in terms of arrival. I should have most of the parts by the fifth, and if what Mazda Motorsports was telling me is true, the rear rotor housing will be arriving stateside from the container ship like I mentioned the first week of January I believe is what they mentioned. I anticipate that means by mid January the engine will be getting rebuilt.
I want to attempt it myself, but I think I might default to Rotorsports racing for this (just due to the risk factor involved, plus I don't have the best work area, I believe I'm definitely intellectually capable of doing it, and mechanically, but I don't want to ruin thousands of dollars in parts by a mistake.) Pettit has done all my engine work in the past with my previous cars, but FL is a bit far away now that I don't live there.
Well, I hadn't seen the car in a few weeks, and I needed to pickup the tools to start the job. With holiday break leaving little to do on my schedule, I decided to finally order the tools. I did a price comparison at Harbor Freight and Northern Tool (I've only been to a Northern Tool once before this, to pickup the flywheel socket years ago when I manual swapped a previous FC) and to my surprise, Northern Tool actually had the better deal on everything.
The issue, however, was stock. One location didn't have the engine hoist, but had everything else, while the other location, obviously only had the engine hoist for the most part. I looked at picking up the engine hoist at Harbor Freight but the two ton (note for you guys that don't know this, the Harbor Freight 1 ton is too short to reach the engine, you can make it work but I'm not comfortable with it, I tried in the past) engine hoist was not available anywhere near me or the car. So, Northern Tool it is. Luck would have it, the only Northern Tool that carried the engine hoist was about 75 miles away, in the opposite direction of where the car is.
I grab the tools at one location (the majority, anyway) and then the next night I place the order for the engine hoist. That afternoon, my co-pilot and I (at her insistence) set out in the Mazdaspeed 3 for the very out of the way Northern Tool to get the engine hoist. Once we arrived, she did some tetris with the existing tools we had picked up from the previous Northern Tool, and we went inside to pickup the hoist, and they were nice enough to help us load it.
Sidenote: I'm very pleasantly surprised and happy with my Mazdaspeed 3. I absolutely hate front wheel drive, but I love the practicality it offers (though this is arguably the only time I've used it for this.)
With the hoist loaded, we fueled up, and then set off for our 250+ mile one way journey to the car. Stopping for some Hibachi, we then found ourselves pulling in around 8:30 at night. The 30 degree weather, while not nearly as bad as it could have been, didn't make the garage a pleasant place to be, so we unloaded everything from the Speed 3 and placed it on shelves, with the exception of the engine hoist, which imho was too heavy to trust to the shelving for an extended period of time.
To keep the battery charged, I started up the FC, throwing it into gear to stop the AWS we all love to hate, and let it warm up. Idle is a bit high at 1,500, but with low compression on the rear rotor, I'm honestly not surprised. I did notice, though, that the coolant temp gauge moved maybe a mm or two, or maybe It didn't move at all and I'm just seeing things. The sensor is connected on the rear iron, same place as my FD was, but it's just not sending a signal, possibly it's bad, I replaced the one in my FD when I still owned it and it worked like a charm afterwards. Need to order one, note to self.
While I was there I sorted through the packages that had come from Mazda Motorsports. Some O rings, copper O rings, two gaskets, and the side and corner seals are in, everything else should be arriving today or next week due to the holiday. Most of the stuff wasn't set to arrive until after the new year, so I'm pleasantly surprised it got here earlier, especially with coming from across the entire country.
Still no word on the two backordered parts (rear rotor housing and EGR gasket) but I'm going to default to what I was told by Mazda Motorsports, that it's on the way here from Japan, it's on the container ship, and should be in stock to ship out by the first week of January. Those should be the last parts received. Once they get here, I'll start prepping to pull the engine and prepping for rebuild.
In the meantime, pictures if you are curious:
Fold the seats right down, and the Speed 3 can comfortably accommodate four jack stands, a floor jack, misc adapters, two 16 quart drain pans, and the engine hoist. We still had room to recline the seats back if we wanted to as well. Not bad if I say so myself. Tools unloaded in the cold garage. Side seals and corner seals from Mazda, I'm eagerly awaiting the delivery of the remaining parts.
As far as the restoration goes, yeah, 100% OEM is my plan. Unfortunatly, MNAO got back to me, and after investigating, they don't have production numbers on specifics like the color/interior combo due to the age, so that is somewhat of a bummer, but at least they tried. That is one thing I love about Mazda, they really do what they can for customers, and they always have for me..
the problem is the way they have the data, and not that they don't have it. the parts catalog actually knows the colors for every vin, however we can only go by vin, and that takes forever.
just remember when you go to pull the engine there is no need to remove the hood, it opens far enough to get the engine out. saves you the trouble of getting it lined up later
the problem is the way they have the data, and not that they don't have it. the parts catalog actually knows the colors for every vin, however we can only go by vin, and that takes forever.
just remember when you go to pull the engine there is no need to remove the hood, it opens far enough to get the engine out. saves you the trouble of getting it lined up later
I provided MNAO my vin, it took them almost a week before they got back to me, so I had assumed they were looking into it diligently, I mean, I have no reason not to assume that. If you would like to take a crack at it, I'd be more than willing to PM you my VIN.
As far as the engine removal goes, I appreciate that tip, I've removed engines from FC's a few times, but I've always removed the hood just out of practice. Perhaps this time I'll follow your advice and leave it on and save the trouble of attempting to get it lined up on reinstall. Thanks for that piece of advice, I appreciate it!
I provided MNAO my vin, it took them almost a week before they got back to me, so I had assumed they were looking into it diligently, I mean, I have no reason not to assume that. If you would like to take a crack at it, I'd be more than willing to PM you my VIN
the trouble isn't your vin, but all the other white with red T2's, and we don't have a way to find those except by going one by one, and from 1986-1988 Mazda made more than 50,000 Rx7's, so it would take a really long time (4.5 years!)
More parts arrived today, The front rotor housing, and most of the seals and gaskets. All I'm waiting on at this point aside from the backordered rear rotor housing, are the oil control rings, the shifter bushing replacements, and ebrake cables for the rear.
Well, its been an (almost) wild month. In that time period, more parts have arrived, and I've since pulled the engine. Something about looking at the car like that though is depressing in a way, I can't wait to get the new engine back inside it. Pulling the engine wasn't anything difficult, as I've done it before, though S4's have a few more plugs on the harness to fish through the firewall, and the sub zero start assist tank got in the way. The S5 rear rotor housing never got off back order, so I ended up having to bite the bullet and order an FD housing. Bryan at rotor sports ended up having a brand new S5 TII housing that he blocked off, so I ended up trading him that one to avoid having to worry about machining the hole out for the coolant flow.
The car has a custom pieced together single exit exhaust with an unnamed downpipe, which honestly probably provided the biggest issue of the whole swap, I couldn't just drop the exhaust in segments, I had to drop it all at once, as it was just one solid piece. That downpipe had a bung for the secondary O2 sensor positioned so closely to the nut, it was almost impossible to get off, I was about half an hour away from getting a sawzall and cutting the downpipe off, but it eventually relented.
This is the first job I've ever done with an electric impact wrench, and I have to say, I can't believe I ever pulled engines with just hand tools. Night and day difference. I love that Mikita, 700+ ft lbs of tightening with a brushless motor, its still showing a full charge.
The only real casualties worth noting were I forgot to disconnect the wiper fluid line when removing the hood, and two of the plastic clips broke. Some of the hoses were stuck on there so bad they are going to need to be replaced, as I had to cut them to get them off (fuel lines especially, but those are an easy replacement, and wouldn't hurt to do anyway.) I could also use some new tension clamps that aren't old/rusted as well.
School starting back up has put a damper on what I can do for now. I will say that with a bit of creative effort, we were able to fit the long block into the back of my Mazdaspeed 3 and make the 4 1/2 hour drive to Rotorsports to drop the engine off. I'm glad Bryan came highly recommended here, he gives me a similar vibe I get from Cam at Pettit, stand up guy.
Cleaning up the garage was a decent amount of effort, given the fact that the transmission fluid leaked on the floor. Still trying to get rid of that smell. I was surprised that the car had a lightweight flywheel on it, though. For being as completely stock and untouched as it was. Given that I did this in the dead of winter in a non insulated garage, it went okay minus a few hiccups. The three space heaters I bought from wal mart did a great job of keeping the garage warm, it stayed about 72~ degrees the whole time. In the next week or so I need to make a trip back out to the car and do some de greasing/cleaning while the engine is out. If you managed to get this far, here's the car as it sits now: Always depressing seeing a car like this..but at least its only temporary. The amount of wheel gap with no engine always gets me.
Got my results back from the engine teardown today. Damage was about what I suspected, low compression on the rear rotor due to chipped seals. That housing took a beating, but the rear rotor itself is actually in reusable shape. What I wasn't expecting, however, was the bowing in and cracking of the center iron. That was an expense I hadn't budgeted for, but it happens I suppose.
12-12-20, 10:14 PM
