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I took a break from the body work as I got a little discouraged. I always suspected that I'm not a body man, but that last experience solidified that for me. I went to Sevenstock in November (my first!) and got renewed motivation to make the the car that I've always wanted. I was really disappointed that my "it car" wasn't there...the green/white Daytona IMSA SA. But there were plenty of great cars to check out and I vowed to keep plugging away at the car. Next year. Yes, NEXT year I'd be back to Sevenstock with my car.
I knew the body was going to take something i was going to have to be patient for...money. So I turned my attention to something I else I could work on...the carb. Up until now, the car was bone stock, with the exception of the RB street port exhaust. I had that Weber 45 DCOE sitting on a shelf for months now, so I talked j9fd3s into coming out and helping pull the Nikki off and put on the Weber. It was at this time that I found out that the Weber I had came with a highly desirable Lake Cities shorty intake. Rather than wrap around like other intakes. This thing jutted straight toward the passenger shock tower. For a long time, I thought I had an incomplete intake manifold, but j9fd3s figured it out right away. Awesome!
So he came out at the end of January and we did the carb swap. He partially disassembled the carb and cleaned it up while I removed the Nikki from the engine. We got it on and fired it up. It took a bit of coaxing, but it finally caught and started running. The idle was really high...like 1500 RPM or so. We couldn't not get it to go down any further. We let it warm up and took it for a spin. It was a lot better than the stock Nikki. More torque than I expected. It revved quickly and freely up to redline. It was loud as the velocity stacks were only an inch away from the passenger shock tower. My butt dyno approved. Except for the idle, I was pretty happy.
Oh, and she treated me to a healthy fireball every time I shut her off:
After j9fd3s left, I tried starting her from cold and she would not start. It took me a little while to figure out that I could only get her to start from cold when I blocked off the velocity stacks. So I had a new ritual to start the car. It was kind of funny, in a Keystone cops kind of way. I'd tape off the velocity stacks, go crank the engine until it started and wheezed like it was ready to die. I quickly jumped out of the seat, ran around to the passenger side and pulled the now gas-soaked tape off.
I put up with this ritual for a couple of months...even through an autocross event. I know, ridiculous, isn't it? Speaking of auto-x, I did very well after the carb swap. Finished right in the middle of the pack, which was a far cry from where I was when I first started with this car.
I noticed, however, that the throttle would stick once the car warmed up. I would have to address this, and maybe deal with the high idle as well.
I spent the next couple of weeks of nights researching various forums, trying to figure out why the idle was so high. I found no leaks around the intake manifold, yet there had to be a leak somewhere, since closing off the velocity stacks would cause it to develop enough vacuum to get it started. It was maddening.
I found some sites and a few forum posts which talked about leaks around the throttle shaft causing a high idle and hard starting. Something about the leather gaskets being worn. This seemed like a good place to look, but I'd never stripped a carb before, and was nervous about doing so. I managed find an excellent series of videos on how to assemble a 45 DCOE on Youtube. I screwed up my courage and pulled the Weber off and started to take it completely apart.
I found a couple of problems. The reason for my throttle sticking was a sticky accelerator pump. I modified the pump retainer and managed to fix that issue. Then I took the bell crank off and found this:
Not only were there no leather seals on the throttle shaft bearings, the grease was mostly gone. Those things were letting tons of air into the carb. So I bought new sealed bearings from Pierce Manifolds (we were on a first name basis by now) and reassembled the carb. Got everything back together again and fired it up. Voila! 1000 RPM idle!
I tweaked the throttle cable a bit and managed to get it to idle at 800 RPM all day long. And even better: no more hard starts. Crank for about 5 seconds, feathering the throttle and it starts. Hold the idle for about 30 seconds or so and it would stay running.
fm
Last edited by Fungus Mungus; 07-31-15 at 01:35 AM.
In early 2014, I decided that the 16" TE-37s, although looked good, weren't helping me much in auto-x. With the power I was making (or more accurately, wasn't making), I needed a smaller wheel to help me along. I decided to search for a good 13" alloy wheel. After several weeks of searching, I finally found a set of 13x8 SSR MKIIIs. They were in sad shape, but I bought them and sent them to a place up in the East Bay area that refurbished wheels.
2 months later, I had these waiting for me at the mail room at work:
I still needed tires, which would have to wait on as I paid dearly for the resto of these wheels.
While those wheels were being restored, I managed to find a really cheap set of 14x7 alloys. They weren't very light, but they were cheap and felt like they would do nicely for a set of "street" wheels. I had a few extra eBay bucks left over, so I used them to buy a set of Nitto NT01s. I polished them up and put them on the car. They had a little bit of a "Dukes of Hazzard" look, as j9fd3s put it. But I liked them. I later found out that these were Cylcone wheels and were standard muscle car wheels from the 70s.
And they look a lot like the wheels on '81 RX-7 that won 24 hours of Spa (though they're not the same):
I sold the Volk TE-37s shortly after that. My intention was to put slicks on the SSRs and keep the "Dukes of Hazzards" for street wheels.
fm
Last edited by Fungus Mungus; 07-31-15 at 01:55 AM.
While I was figuring out my wheels, I did some more thinking and decided to abandon the idea of building a stock 13B GSL-SE engine. The call of the bridge port siren got me and I knew that I couldn't have anything else other than a ported engine. So, I sold my GSL-SE engine and started working on getting a good candidate for rebuilding. My goal was to do a 4-port 13B bridge port. j9fd3s even supplied me with the appropriate Weber manifold I would need to run a 48IDA (which I had sold months ago...DOH!)
So I picked up a couple of dead 13Bs (a T2 and an NA S4) from a guy named Mr. Mazda in Campbell. I pulled them apart and managed to get 2 pairs of rotors. A friend of mine had a need for the T2 rotors, so I sold them to him. I kept the NA rotors for myself and cleaned them up. The housings were "eh...". The irons had stepping and really weren't in good enough shape to use. So all I had to show for my purchase was a set of rotors (albeit in good condition once cleaned up). The engines ended up being free after I sold the useable parts from both engines, so that was a plus.
Then, while at work, for some reason, I decided to search for "13B peripheral port" (in Japanese). I did this search a lot but almost never found anything. But there I was , 2pm at my desk, staring at a pair of 13B peripheral port housings for the equivalent of $250. They looked good in the pics, but pics can lie. I carefully read the description and the seller said they were good, useable housings. I figure for another $120 to ship these, this would be a no-brainer. I clicked BUY and waited 2-1/2 months for them to arrive. When they showed up, I was bracing myself for some deal-breaker wear, but this is what I got:
I couldn't believe it...for less than the cost of apex seals, I got a set of beautiful 13PP housings. Again, j9fd3s came through for me with a set of side housings from a 12A that were in great nic. He even filled them for me with Devon. He agreed to help me put this engine together once I had all the other bits I needed (new apex seals, side seals, oil rings, etc.)
While I was mulling over powerplant and wheel options, I decided that the side moldings needed to go, so I spent a couple of evenings with a heat gun, razor blade, and solvent and removed the moldings. It looked ugly at first:
Then after a little cleanup:
I then decided to see how the IMSA stripes would look on the car. So I went out and bought red and orange electrical tape and went crazy. This is what I came up with:
Even without the fender flares and rear spoiler, I loved where this was headed. I knew that this is what I had to have.
fm
Last edited by Fungus Mungus; 08-08-15 at 11:14 PM.
I would have loved to go with a full wide-body kit, I knew that this wasn't going to happen with my budget. Fender flares, however, would be in my budget. So over the next month, I started the flare mockup process. Armed with cardboard, scissors and tape, I started to "fabricate" test flares for the car. Here is what I came up with:
So I picked up a set of ZG flares. After receiving them, it was painfully apparent to me that the ZG flares weren't going to be a perfect match and were going to take work to get them to look right. The contour just didn't fit the RX-7's wheel well that well. I talked to Pat, a friend of mine who's a paint guy. He thought he could make them work, so I decided to let a pro have a go. So I handed the car over to Pat and Josh for the next 4 months for the next phase.
Unfortunately, it turned out that both Josh and Pat felt that the ZG flares were just going to take a lot of work and they would never look 100%. Thus, I was tasked with finding suitable flares for the first gen. This was documented in this thread, but I'll summarize it here.
I managed to find a set of generic flares on eBay that were sold as Miata flares. I asked what the distance between the inner sides of the flares were. The seller responded, "26 inches". That would be ideal, according to my calculations, so I took a chance and bought them for $120 or so. It took about 2 weeks, but I finally got them and rushed them over to Josh and Pat's shop.
THAT was exactly what I was hoping for! They fit better than I could have imagined...I was doing the happy dance!
A few days later, they put on the side moldings did a little fitting:
Very promising indeed!
About a month later, the car gets stripped and the flares installed:
Then the paint got scuffed:
And the car sat like that for a couple of months. I was going nuts, but they got backed up, one man got hurt, so it was a one-man shop for awhile.
Progress finally started to be made on the car again a couple of months later (August 2014). The rear hatch got the bondo patch fixed the right way. This is when I confirmed that the rear of the car got hit. They did some spot welds to get the patch panel on before and then glopped on filler to smooth it out. The fact that the seam wasn't completely welded resulted rear panel flexing and causing the bondo to crack. Josh removed the crap bondo job and welded it up nice and proper.
Then primer coat:
Then the magic starts to really happen...base coat and stripes:
Finally, the clear:
By now, it's September of 2014...a month before Sevenstock 17. Only to find out that they decided to hold the weekend before Thanksgiving....a no-go for me as well as my two other friends. Soooo bummed.
fm
Last edited by Fungus Mungus; 08-08-15 at 11:51 PM.
i know, I know. Work is a bit out of hand this year. Haven't run since last years West Nat's. Fungus gave me a head's up he'd be there and knew you'd be there with Tommy. Was able to watch live on my laptop. Nice to see the Rx's do well.
Back to this car. Nice to see such a clean first gen. I can't wait to see it in person. Hopefully not as mythical as your PP! Be cool to see both yours and his at the track someday.
I was wondering if we would see more of the progress. I think video of that motor is in order. Did you have the car out at Laguna last week?
Car looks awesome.
Thanks Kurt. Video will be coming soon...sit tight. I did not take the car to Laguna...was there cheering Tommy on. It's mainly for auto-x, but it will see occasional track days, and maybe an actual race. But that'll be way in the future.
Now that the car was painted and looking good, I decided that it was time to get the parts lying on my garage floor assembled into a proper 13B peripheral port engine. I had joined Mazdaspeed Motorsports Development about 6 months prior, so I had access to discounted parts. I bought everything I thought I would need to build a fresh 13B engine. Apex seals, oil rings, water seal kit, corner plug springs and plugs, etc. I did it a la carte, which was a mistake. More on this later.
In the meantime, j9fd3s graciously donated a beautiful set of 12A irons for my build. In addition, he made a couple of trips to Monterey, helping me build the engine. He arrived on a weekend in December and he got to work measuring clearances on the rotors. Everything looks good. He had filled the ports on the irons with Devcon already, so we were ready to assemble the engine.
The brand-new oil rings and seals were problematic. I apparently had forgotten to order new seals to go with my rings, so we ended up using old seals that looked usable. They did not want to go back into the rotors (which is no surprise), but we managed to get them in and we assembled the engine. Once we got the whole engine assembled, we tried turning it over. It was tight. Too tight. We immediately suspected that something was amiss with the oil control rings. We decided to call it a weekend and come back to it.
I decided to order the new oil seals from Mazda Comp and about a month later, j9fd3s came back and we disassembled the engine again. We pulled the oil rings and fit them with the new seals. They still didn't want to fit. We got the old rings and put the new seals in. They fit perfectly. We noticed that the new rings had a step in the side of the ring, which we suspect was causing some binding. We went with the old rings and put everything back together. Then we turned it over by hand:
The engine sat like this for a couple of months as I was missing one critical thing: an intake manifold that would work with my setup. These housings were designed for the MFR intake manifold, which is now unobtanium.
Last edited by Fungus Mungus; 09-10-15 at 01:27 AM.
I put out feelers for an MFR intake manifold with no success. Big surprise. So j9fd3s started working designing some flanges in Solidworks.
He sent the completed file to me and I had a friend of mine with a 3D printer print them out for me. I test fit the flanges on my engine and they fit like a charm. Now I needed to get the pipes to connect the two flanges and get the flanges machined in aluminum.
I ordered some U-bends with a 43mm inside diameter and j9fd3s had his machinist make the flanges in aluminum from the same Solidworks file that we used to print the test flanges.
He then came over and we mocked it together on the engine. We then took measurements and transferred them to a piece of wood and bolted the flanges onto the board in the correct places. Then we took them to my friend's sculpture studio and tacked them together. It was ugly. The next day, I took the piece to a guy that does really good work and he welded it all together and media blasted the manifold. Here's how it came out:
Now that I had an intake manifold, we were ready to start the swap.
fm
Last edited by Fungus Mungus; 09-09-15 at 06:33 PM.
07-31-15, 01:17 AM
