DPeanut

Saving this tarnished example of a 1993 LHD FD from an ill-fated LS swap, join me as I spiral into the despair of rotary resurrection and ownership. Can't be worse than owning an 80's two stroke street bike... can it? There ave been few cars that have 'done' it for me, but the styling of the FD does it for me, and this came up at the right time, and for a very good price. Checking the vehicle history, it looks to have changed hands 7 times in the past 5 years while not incurring much if any mileage. Speaking with the last owner, he was dead set on doing a LS swap because of an electrical issue that could not be chased down (no ****, see pics). This gives me hope, as it 'died' running. I ran a complete history report and it seems to have stayed in Canada its whole life, catching fire mid 1996 in Quebec to the tune of a free repair and many more KM put on in the next 5 years.

Nice Miata


No rebuilt title, rust damage or signs of major hidden damage so far


Fairly stock engine bay, save for the HAI filters, BOV and fucked wiring


Some previous owner spent a few dollars on decent coil overs, full stainless down pipe and exhaust, AWS delete and a stereo I only got the head unit to.
My first Fart Can! - 90mm CR500 piston for reference.


The body is in really clean shape next to the rear bumper having cracked paint, the area in the picture and some peeling clear coat that is an apparent issue for early FDs. The discoloration looks like something sat against it for a while and transferred. I tried a bit of wet sanding and it cleaned up really well! I can see a lot of the detailing thread in my future!


A rotary thread wouldn't be complete with boost in apex seals out previous owner fuckery, now would it?



Carbon fiber wrap, chainsaw oil premix and a bag of who knows what. Awesome.

Uhh.... Why was this in the box of extra bits?


Thats kind of reassuring.

I bought this with the assumption that the engine was in need of a rebuild / completely dicked, but doing a compression test yielded between 97 and 103 between all faces on both rotors, not bad from what I an tell on an engine that looks stock. Those are cold numbers though. I'm not 100% up to speed on specific tests for a rotary beyond a compression test, but a coolant test showed that my AST cap began leaking at .5 bar, where it is rated for .9. Blocking off the AST to thermostat housing line let me pressurize the cooling system to 15 PSI and have it sit happily there for 20 minutes. The overflow tank had some nasty crap on the dipstick though.


The buggiest issue I can see now is electrical due to PO fuckery and corrosion - every connector seems to have some corrosion or issue, to the point someone replaced the fuse panel in the kick panel. The simplest way around this may be replacing the engine and body harness with known good ones to rule out poor / inconsistent connections, rather than chasing a bad connection at some junction block behind the heater box in the middle of nowhere.

Zepticon

iTrader: (1)

As a car with electrical gremlins already, starting out with a less than optimal harness is not optimal
I would get a new stock one for everything except engine, where there are several high grade aftermarket options with Aftermarket ECU support (Haltech for instance)

The user C. Ludwig works for www.lms-efi.com and should be able to help you out here.