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Now that the engine had an intake manifold that was going to work, we were ready to swap the 12A out for the new 13B. I sourced the rest of the parts I would need...an RB front mount, gaskets, and such. There was no off-the-shelf IM gasket, so I got o-rings from the hardware store.
A day or so before j9fd3s came to help me with the swap, I decided to do a proper compression test (using a factory Mazda compression tester) on my existing 12A while it was in the car:
Front rotor:
WOW. Just wow...
Rear rotor:
The battery was getting weaker on the rear rotor test, as evidenced by the RPM. Adjusting for lower RPM, the rear rotor is squarely in the 8s. I started feeling that it was a shame to pull this perfectly good engine. But in the name of horsepower, it had to go.
I then pulled the radiator, which ended up being a fairly quick, uninvolved job. I left the hood on as we decided that we would drop the engine from under the car rather than pluck it out the top. This would save me renting a hoist and a truck to get the hoist here. Plus I wasn't sure my tiny garage was going to have room for all that gear.
A couple of days later, j9fd3s came over and we got started by putting the front cover back on. We opted to use the 12A front cover so I could keep the original OMP. The housings weren't tapped for OMP jets, so I decided to keep things simple.
Once the front cover was on, we started unhooking and unbolting everything. We started at about 10:30 am. The car was up on jack stands at one of the highest settings. We had to unhook the steering linkage to allow the engine to move back and down. We used my crappy Delco floor jack and a Mazda aluminum scissor jack to support the engine as we pushed it back and lowered it at the same time. By noon, the engine was on the floor.
We took a well-deserved lunch at a local Cajun restaurant and came back to work. We removed the tranny from the 12A. While j9fd3s went to work transferring the peripherals from the 12A to the 13B that could be transferred, I pulled apart the transmission so that I could retrofit the speedo gear in. Unfortunately, I'd apparently misplaced the football-shaped bearing that keeps the gear in place, so I went to Orchard Hardware and managed to find some bearings that were close to the same size. It worked like a charm. I got the transmission back together, then we put it on the engine. It was late, so we called it a night and had a few beers.
The next day, we started putting in the 13B. It was a little tricky to get onto the jack and balanced well enough to get it jacked up so that it could be mounted, but with j9fd3s standing inside the engine compartment ready to guide the engine in place, we managed to get the engine jacked up and positioned correctly and the bolted into place.
We then hooked the exhaust back up, connected the GSL-SE oil cooler (but didn't mount it as I didn't have mounts), and put the bespoke intake manifold and Weber 48 IDA carb on:
The engine was in place, but I still had a fair amount of work to do...mount the oil cooler, install the water pump housing, install all the coolant plumbing, hook up all the wiring, and figure out the carb linkage and get that hooked up.
So close, yet so far.
fm
Last edited by Fungus Mungus; 09-11-15 at 01:24 AM.
With the engine in place, I had a lot of work to do. Over the next 2 weeks, I started putting it all together.
First up was putting in the oil cooler. This seemingly simple installation was complicated by the fact that my used GSL-SE oil cooler didn't have the original mounts. After doing a little searching online, I figured out how to make a set of mounts out of metal strapping from the hardware store. After some work on the drill press and my bench vise, this is what I had:
It was bitch to get the lines back on the oil cooler...they were really tight. Something that wasn't a good thing. More on that later.
Next, the water pump and housing had to go back on. I was going to go with an S4 aluminum housing that I'd modded awhile ago for my 12A, but I didn't like the reman water pump, so I stuck with the old housing and water pump, which were in fine condition. Got that on, along with the fan and radiator. Hooked the coolant lines back up. I got a new hose from Auto Zone and trimmed it down to fit. It was tight, but it worked. Bottom hose was fine.
What was next? Ah, yes, the carburetor needed a linkage. After some thought, I figured out that my old Weber 45 DCOE linkage could be adapted for use on the 48 IDA (which was mounted backwards of the standard USDM Weber). Why was it mounted backwards? Because the fiberglass airbox I'd picked up was set up for a RHD car and the carbs are mounted backwards. So when I had my IM made, I had it done so it would bolt up that way. Genius right? Well, it seemed like it was at the time. More on this later.
I got the linkage knocked together, but the throttle was really weak and floppy. I ended up scavenging a throttle spring off of an SA that was at the local yard and I used that as a helper spring. That did the trick. The throttle was nice and snappy and closed shut as it should.
Next was the wiring, which was pretty simple by now. With no emissions to deal with, all I had to do was hook up the various temp sensors, oil pressure sender, alternator, and a few other senders and I was good to go (j9fd3s had already hooked up the starter and such). The wiring was ugly, but it should work.
I then filled the transmission with gear oil. Or tried to. What a pain the @ss...trying to pump a bottle of gear oil that's thicker than molasses in January into a tranny is no fun. After my hand cramped up and my bottle was only 1/4 empty, I decided more drastic measures were in order. Unfortunately, I didn't really have a good way to gravity feed the gear oil in. None of my hoses were right size, but that didn't stop me from trying. Big mistake. I had more gear oil on the floor than I did in the tranny by the end of the night. Disgusted and oily, I threw in the towel and got a beer and called it a night.
The next day, I picked up proper-sized tubing and funnel and managed to gravity feed the rest of the gear oil in. I then filled the engine with oil and installed a new Mazda filter.
Then I filled the radiator. About halfway through filling, I heard a sound that sounded like about 50 old guys taking a leak at the troughs at the Raider's game. WTF?!!! It was then I realized I hadn't hooked up the heater return hoses. OMG what a freakin' mess that was. It was midnight and all I had to show for my work was a green lagoon on my garage floor and no way to clean it up yet. Ugh.
The next day, I pushed the car out of the garage, cleaned up the mess, pulled it back in and figured out a way to hook up heater return hoses. Since I wasn't using the beehive anymore, my heater return hose setup had to be rethought. After cutting and splicing hoses, I had something that worked. Ugly as hell and with more failure points than I would have liked, but it would hold.
Finally, I put the shifter back on. Now the car was ready to start. I would do so in the next couple of days.
fm
Last edited by Fungus Mungus; 09-22-15 at 10:45 AM.
So I had to know if this thing was going to run, so on a Thursday night, I called one of my friends over to video. With video rolling, I cranked her over. She cranked slowly at first. Then picked up a little speed. But she wasn't catching. I felt like I was trying to wake a sleeping rhino that just wasn't having it.
My battery was spent and my battery wires were hot, so I stopped and we shrugged and called it a night. That was very discouraging.
I did some research that evening and realized I'd done one of the oldest bonehead tricks in the book. I had the plug wires swapped. DOH!!!! I put them back, but it was much too late to start this thing now. Plus my battery was toast...it would have to wait until the next evening.
My buddy came back that evening. With the wires in the right place, I gave it another go. After a about 10 seconds of cranking and working the gas pedal, she caught and sputtered. Tried it again, and then I managed to get here to run for about 30 seconds before letting her die. I was satisfied. She ran like crap with all the assembly lube in there. But she ran.
The next day, I started her up and managed to get her to run and keep her running. I had to raise the idle pretty high, but she ran kind of... smooth. Weird. Never saw that coming:
Now that the car ran, I needed to get this thing tuned. j9fd3s came over with a bunch of Weber jets and we went to work. We found a combo that seemed to work. It wasn't perfect...it kind of stumbled at 2500-3000 rpm, which is common unless you modify the air jet. It still ran kind of smooth though. We took her out for a run around the block:
But then, just as we were about to do more tuning with a wideband, it started idling like CRAP. We couldn't figure it out. Seemed like one rotor wasn't getting enough gas. We checked for blockage in the jets. Checked for leaks around the carb but we weren't seeing it. We called it a day as it was getting late.
Over the next couple of days, I was annoyed by some leaks. First, there was a leak that left thick gooey stuff on the floor. I suspected this was gear oil, so I checked the transmission oil level. Sure enough it was overfilled. I drained some out and that leak disappeared. Yay.
There were a couple of oil leaks as well. One I traced down to the oil level sensor being on only hand tight. Ouch. OK, that was an easy fix.
But I still had an oil leak. Small but annoying. I finally traced it down to the upper oil cooler hose. I probably cracked a bung muscling that thing back on (I didn't know how fragile the bungs were). Damn...
So I took the rad and oil cooler out, went around to a couple of shops until I found a place that would attempt a repair. I got it back and put it back in. Still had a leak. Damn.
Luckily, I found a member was selling an oil cooler with AN fittings welded on. I secured the oil cooler and installed it when it arrived. It came with the hoses as well, so I used his as mine were suspicious. Buttoned it up and started her up...no oil leaks.
But there still was something...I couldn't figure it out. Below the intake manifold. WTH could this be? I jacked the passenger side of the car up and ran the car, looking under the car after having removed the RB heat shield. That's when I saw the problem that had been causing my crappy idle. The hardware store gaskets I had used for the intake manifold had perished. Melted into goo. No wonder it idled so poorly. And leaked. What a mess.
I pulled the intake manifold off (a 10 minute task on a peripheral port). Cleaned the garbage off the mating surfaces and cut up an SA intake manifold gasket and used that to seal the IM to the block. Started her up. She idled like a proper peripheral port. I was amused to see that she was idling at 600 rpm. Yes. 600.
After amusing myself with the low idle for a day (and upsetting a lot of Facebook know-it-alls on the First Gen RX-7 group who insisted that there's no way a PP would idle at 600 rpm), I raised the idle to 1800:
One of the things that bugged me about my car now that it was painted was the maroon interior. Don't get me wrong...maroon can look good in a white car...even better in a silver car. But it wasn't a good match for the exterior now that it was painted white, red and orange.
I had thought this over on and off over the last year and I came to the conclusion that I'd rather strip the interior than spend months gathering together a complete black interior. The car wasn't going to be a daily driver anyway, so I figured why not? I'd done this with my old EG Civic and really loved how it turned out.
The seats, door panels, headliner, rear panels, storage bins, storage bin frames, and carpets came out without much fuss. There was the front carpet that still had to come out. And that wasn't coming out unless I took out the dash.
I was dreading this. I hate taking out dashes. You always end up struggling in vain to get that mammoth piece of interior out, only to find out there was some hidden thing you hadn't unhooked. In the meantime, you've made a mess of things. You're left with broken tabs, scratches on interior panels, and scraped up hands.
I looked up how to remove the dash online only to find some seriously over-complicated write-ups. The one in particular I found (the most complete) had you taking off the plastic parts off the frame. It was like disassembling a model boat inside the bottle. There had to be a better way. I wanted to take the whole dash out in one piece, not in bits and pieces.
Luckily, I confirmed with j9fd3s that the dash, indeed, would come out in one piece. That's how Mazda put them in, so they had to come out that way. There were only 11 or so bolts holding it in place. He even pointed them out to me.
So I went to work. I found all the bolts and got them out. I unhooked all the wiring. I pulled and I pulled, but that damn thing would not come out. It was caught on something, but I couldn't figure out what. And then I realized I'd not unhooked the manual heater cable control. DOH! Once that was unhooked, the dash came out quite easily.
This really is best done with 2 people, but I got it done myself in about 2 hours. Much better time than I expected. I did manage to crack one of the lower dash bits (a replaceable bit, I'm pretty sure). But everything else was intact. Here's what I had by the end of the evening:
Yes, it looked like a theft recovery. But the dash was out, I could remove the carpet, and then start cleaning up things.
I removed the carpet and considered my next step...the heater core. Keep it or not? After going back and forth on this for a couple of days, I decided to remove it. It would get more plumbing out of the engine bay and clean up the inside of the car as well. I don't expect I'll be racing in weather anyway, and if I do, I'll keep a spray bottle of dawn with me. So, after removing the heater core, blower, and AC bits:
I also considered whether I wanted to completely remove the sound deadening or not. I did this in my Civic...several nights in the garage with dry ice and a chisel. Not fun. I decided to do it for the rear hatch area as the spare tire well had the letters from the spare permanently embossed in the sound deadening. A bag of dry ice and 2 nights later, I started rolling on the primer:
Yes, I said rolled on. I had no desire to inhale rattle can vapors in the confines of my little garage. I talked to j9fd3s as well as the person that did the paint and they both suggested this.
After cleaning up the rest of the interior, I primered the front seat area:
Once that was dry, I rolled on the Rustoleum white paint. I fogged the areas I couldn't get to easily. Thankfully, that wasn't too much.
The paint was looking pretty good, but I still had work to do on cleaning up that mess of wiring. My next installment.
fm
Last edited by Fungus Mungus; 10-02-15 at 12:18 AM.
The car was looking pretty good with the interior stripped and painted, but I had some issues to resolve:
Figure out how I was going to install the speedo cluster
Figure out how I was going to install the gas door release, hatch release, the dimmer, and hazards
Figure out how I was going to clean up the unused wires inside the car
Figure out how I was going to clean up the unused wires from the non-existent rats nest in the engine bay
First up was the rats nest of wiring in the interior.
I pulled it out of the car and went to work on it, unwrapping each harness and tracing down each wire, de-pinning the ones I didn't need. This took the better part of 2 hours. I started with this:
And finished with this:
Much better. I then installed it back in the car and tested it. To my shock, everything worked.
Next up was the speedo cluster. I needed to get this sorted asap as I had an autocross event soon. After some messing around, I figured out that I drill some holes on the bracket on the steering column and bolt the cluster to it. This resulted in a "floating cluster", which I thought came out well.
The next thing I needed to do was mount the switches I still needed to use somewhere. I had no dash, so I needed to make something quickly. I picked up a sheet of lexan from Orchard Hardware Supply, cut it, and bent it with block of wood and heat. It wasn't perfect, but it would do. I cut holes in it so that my switches would fit it. I opted to just keep the factory switches for now. I will get toggle switches later when I get around to doing a real dash. I just needed something to get these switches up off the floor and accessible. Here's how it turned out:
The weekend was upon me and an autocross event was happening, so I stopped there and took her out for some fun. The engine wiring cleanup would have to wait until later.
Once I'd gotten the interior wiring harness sorted out and had her out for an autocross event, I decided it was time to finally install the roll bar.
It started off life as an Autopower bolt-in cage. The previous owner cut the cage portion off, leaving just the roll bar portion. I got all the bits should I decide to make a full cage, but I'm fine with just the bar.
I gave it several coats of white paint and got to work fitting it. I had tried earlier in the year to get this thing in with the interior. It was clear at the time it was going to take two people to do it. With the interior out, installation was pretty easy. Awkward, but easy to get the bar where I needed it to be.
Once i had it in place, I drilled holes in the floor and then bolted it down. The rear rear well mounting was trickier to get lined up. I managed to get things marked, drilled and then got it bolted down. It took a couple of tries, widening holes on the bar and the wheel well, but I finally sucked it down with some long bolts.
Finally, I put on some roll bar padding.
it was then that I realized I wouldn't be able to run a passenger seat. My roll bar didn't have a harness bar for the passenger. Oh well, it can't be helped now. I may have the bar modded later. For now, I'll be going solo in the car.
I installed my Bride seat and an old (expired) Autopower harness to the harness bar and the stock seatbelt points.
Late July, early August 2015: oil cooler re-do and engine bay cleanup
With the roll bar installed, it was time to turn my attention to the rest of the messy engine bay. I had loads of unused connectors where the rats nets used to be, making for an untidy engine bay. The engine bay also needed some more scrubbing, so I started there. After removing the battery tray and the driver's side harness, I was able to really scrub and get that side cleaned up.
I pulled the passenger side harness and basically repeated what I did for the interior harness. Carefully checking the wiring diagrams in the FSM, I chased down every wire and removed those that I no longer needed. Unfortunately, I have no pictures as the phone I had taken them with met with an untimely death before I had a chance to get the pics off. But I was able to completely remove the rat's nest wiring which cleaned up the engine bay significantly.
fm
Last edited by Fungus Mungus; 11-10-15 at 04:20 PM.
The car turned out fantastic. Great seeing you again at Sevenstock last weekend. Very impressed with your final product!
Thanks RCCAZ 1. It was great seeing you again too. Your yellow FD is partially the reason I was inspired to put all this work into the car. Will see you again next year.
Ever since I was hell-bent on getting the maroon dash out, I was trying to get ideas of what kind of dash replacement I'd want. I knew I wanted it to be simple. Vital gauges and switches to turn stuff on and off, and that's pretty much it.
Several months ago, one of my friends sent me this article about Rys Millen's Group B Rally RX-7. When I saw the pics of the dash, I cursed at him. For now I knew what I wanted, and it wasn't going to be easy. Or cheap. I loved the clean, planar surface covered in toulex, gauges and toggle switches. This one was really busy...mine wouldn't be this busy. But I wanted that airplane clockpit look....Mmmmmm...
Fast forward several months later, now staring at the blank slate that is my cockpit. The floating cluster would have to give way to a dash, so I started the planning phase. I got some big pieces of paper, taped them together so they were as long as the width of my dash. Then I burnished them against the windshield inside the car so I could duplicate the curvature of the dash.
Once I got it transferred to the paper, I cut it and test fit it to the windshield:
After a little trimming, it was ready to be transferred to some foam core. I picked up some Elmer's black foam core from Michael's. This particular foam core was designed to be a tri-fold project display.
I knew I wanted the passenger side of the dash to be angled in toward the driver:
I trimmed the foam core dash top and test fit it to the car again:
Finally, I cut some more foam core for the faces of the dash, glued it all together and brought the "dash" back out to the car for another test fit:
Unfortunately, I don't have pics of this next part, so a written description will have to do. I wasn't completely happy with the angle of the dash and the length of it. I decided to cut it down to just past transmission tunnel and then add a console to connect it to the trans tunnel where the stock dash connects. I drew gauges in the correct size and placed them on the dash where I wanted them and then took the whole shebang to a shop that could bend sheet metal for me (sadly, I don't have access to bending brakes, shears, etc.)
The guy at the shop said he had aluminum left over from another project he could use and would be able to knock this out for me. I left it with him and went to work figuring out which gauges and switches I would need.
fm
Last edited by Fungus Mungus; 11-29-15 at 01:21 AM.
Sept 2015: Shopping for gauges and switches, part 1
With the dash maquette in my friend Josh's hands, I started researching which gauges to get. I narrowed down the gauge types to oil pressure, oil temp, water temp, volt, speedo, tach, and fuel level.
I was going to retrofit the factory speedo from my existing cluster into the new dash. I knew that I'd have to figure out something for the clear plastic protective cover that the speedo would no longer have.
I had picked up a Mazdaspeed 12K tach awhile ago in Japan, but I didn't like the fact that it doesn't illuminate. So I sold that and started looking for another tach. I decided on a Stack 10K tach.
The Stack tach was pricey, so I figured I'd tone it down on the other gauges and opt for the fairly conservative VDO gauges for oil pressure, oil temp, fuel, alt, and water temp gauges.
Because the RX-7 doesn't come with a factory oil temp sensor, I had to figure out how I was going to install one. Some people install one on the oil pan, but I wanted something closer to the oil pressure sender. I managed to find Racing Beat's sensor adapter plate, which is sandwiched in between the oil filter and the oil filter pedestal. This allowed me a couple of ports to put sensors on.
I got this installed, along with a sensors I was going to use with the oil pressure and temp gauges, then took all my gauges over to Josh.
Sept-Oct 2015: Shopping for gauges and switches, part 2
A word about the gauges:
When I first saw the Speedhunters article about Rhys Millen's Group B RX-7, I started scouring the 'net for those sweet-looking blue faced Mazda gauges. For those of you who don't want to go back to look at that article, here's a pic of the gauges I'm talking about:
Everywhere I looked, I came up empty-handed. I couldn't even find any info on them...that they even existed. I checked YAJ, eBay (some of the euro flavors of eBay), but I came up with zilch. I knew the car was built in Belgium, so I figured it may have been an MFR option for that country. But so far, I've not found anything that even remotely matches these gauges. Which is why I gave up, got a nice tach, and went with VDO gauges for the rest.
There is a reason I give this back story, so bear with me.
Anyway, it took Josh about 3 weeks before he got around to forming the metal for the dash. When he finally did, he got the main sheet-metal forming done quickly. He'd even started cutting the holes:
You'll notice the groupings of holes on either side of the driver's side gauge pod...those are for some Joe's Racing switch panels.
There was a problem, however. The center hole (where the tach was supposed to go) was too big. Through miscommunication, Josh was under the impression that the speedo (which is larger than the Stack tach I had) was going in the center. This was my fault as I had given him the dash mockup with paper circles pasted onto it indicating where the gauges go. They were all the same size and I hadn't marked what was what. I had forgotten to tell him that the speedo was going to the right side of the center mounted tach. Ugh...what a mess. The speedo was really not that important to me...It was the tach I really wanted to be able to see, and now it couldn't go in the center where I wanted it.
Josh suggested that I consider a bigger tach, which would look better anyway. I agreed, but wasn't thrilled about shelling out more $$ for a bigger Stack tach (which nearly double in price when you increase the size by that much).
I started looking around on Summit Racing's web site and quickly realized that there was nothing that fit the hole he cut exactly (which matched the factory speedo). Plus there was nothing that was going to fit the factory speedo exactly. I broadened my search and discovered Speedhut, makers of custom gauges.
Custom gauges. I'm going to let you guys think about that for a minute.
I started perusing options. Different color combinations. Different styles. Typefaces. Oh look...I can upload graphics. Logos...oooooohhhhhh!
So I launched Adobe Illustrator, made up a MAZDA logo, saved it and then imported it into the web site. With some experimentation, I came up with something that I liked. Really, really liked. I ordered a full comp of my newly-designed gauges (tach, GPS speedo, fuel level, volt, oil pressure, oil temp, water temp), boxed up all of my VDO gauges, and sent them back to Summit. The beauty of all of this is that the whole kit cost me only a little more than a large-sized Stack tach would have.
I waited 2 weeks, and these arrived:
I rushed them over to Josh. His jaw dropped. "These are going to be perfect", he said.
I left the gauges with Josh. By now, Sevenstock 18 was nearly on us, and I knew there was no way I was going to get that dash done before then, so I told him to work on it when he could. I wouldn't need the dash until after November 7.
I drove the car to Sevenstock 18 (700 miles round trip) and had a very good trip. Lots of compliments on the car, even from members of the Mazda crew. Bummed that I couldn't get the dash together for it, but it was OK. I would have something for next year to share.
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
You mean these rims
That are TWR rims They are 13" and because it's getting difficult to get road legal 13" tires with high speed marking, I was drawing a set of 15"
The gauges sat at Josh's place for a week while he got a few of his clients cars finished (he does ground-up restorations of $100K+ Concours cars). Around the beginning of December, I got this image in a text from Josh:
This was starting to look good! Later on the same evening, another text came in letting me know that the he finished putting the toulex on and that the top portion of the dash was done and I should come get it and test fit it to the car.
The next day, I went over there and was really bowled over at the work Josh had done. The toulex was on the dash. The lower console wasn't done yet, but that wasn't needed to test fit it. With the toulex on, it looked...awesome...there just wasn't another word for it.
I took it home and later that evening, popped the dash in place and marked off where the holes to mount it were going to need to be put. Here's what it looked like during test fitting. Keep in mind, there is no lower console on yet (really needed to add stability to the dash) and the passenger side extension is on.
I took the dash out and ran it back over to Josh the next day with marks on it for where the holes go. Within 2 days, he'd finished up the lower console and attached it. He also made the end cap and removed the extension from the dash. I'm normally going to run the car with the short dash, but I'll add the extension later if I need more real estate for other stuff.
Between the time that Josh started fabricating the dash and when I had it in my hands to install, I installed a new passenger side LCA as my ball joint had gone bad. It's a real mystery to me why it's bad, as this LCA was purchased new from Atkins right around the time I bought the car. I have put on MAYBE 200 miles on the car since that time. Go figure. Anyway, the car feels a lot better with good ball joints.
Now that I had my dash back and my car was again safe to drive, I started the massive dash wiring project. That will be our next installment.
Mid-late December 2015: Wiring Gauges and Ignition
Now that I had received the completed dash from Josh, it was time to wire the gauges. i think I mentioned before that wiring isn't my favorite thing. i fear it until I start getting into it, studying the wiring diagrams carefully, and using my multimeter to test the wires as a reality-check. It also helps to get the proper tools to terminate wiring, something I hadn't had until I started this task. With the self-study done and the termination gear acquired, it wasn't that bad.
My first task was to get the gauges wired together. This was actually a lot easier than I had imagined. Because I had purchased a kit from Speedhut, they included an 8-gauge wiring harness which made wiring them together child's play. Just plug the black plugs into the black plugs on the gauges, and plug the white plugs onto the white plugs on each gauge and bob is your uncle! All I had to deal with was attaching the inverter for the lighting and connect the rest of the gauges to illumination, ignition, and ground. Thankfully, I had a whole load of connectors on my flotsam of wiring harness from my previous wiring cleanup jobs, so I was able to put connectors on the lighting bit and the power bit of the gauges.
Next, the scary, "there's no turning back" work...cutting the ignition wires and hooking up the Joe's Racing push button start panel. Because the Mazda factory ignition setup has an ACC1 and ACC2 setting (as do most cars built after, say, 1970), and I didn't have separate ACC1 and ACC2 switches, I had to combine these two wires into one so that I could operate my wipers along with powering my gauges with my one ignition toggle switch. i wired the hot W/R wire to the terminal on the switch that's supposed to come from the battery cutoff (which I hadn't yet installed) and wired the L/BW/BY wires to the other side of the switch and tipped them with plugs. I cut the starter wire and tipped it with it's own plug, which was wired to the push button start. Finally ground was bolted to the trans tunnel where the console section of the dash would go.
With everything hooked up, and the dash balanced in place, I re-connected the negative terminal of the battery and gave it a go:
Note the gauges aren't doing anything...they did light up and power on, but I hadn't yet hooked up the signal wires. Using the wiring diagram in the FSM, I found the fuel level, oil pressure, water temp, tach, and GEN wires on the dash wiring harness and de-pinned them. My original intention was the put a P6 plug on those wires and plug them in as a unit, but I changed my mind. If i had done this, I would have to cut wires to pull an individual gauge should it need to be replaced or serviced. So instead, I decided to go with bullet connectors. So I picked up a bunch of bullet connectors.
Orders from Speedhut and Summit Racing came in yesterday. One was a water temp sensor, which I'll be replacing the factory one with. From what I've read, the thread pitch on the factory is 1/8"BSPT, which is one thread off of 1/8"NPT. I've also read that in practical terms, the 1/8"NPT works fine as it locks before the disparity becomes an issue. I'm hoping that it works out that way in real life.
The Summit Racing package contained various lengths of battery cable and a 2 lb Battery Tender LiON battery. My plan is to do what they did with the Mazda factory Daytona SA22C...relocate the battery to where the sub-zero start would be (and isn't for CA cars). Not only will it be impossibly light compared to the factory battery, it will be closer to the center of the car. While I could go with moving it to the inside of the car, I didn't see the need to since the thing weighs about as much as a malnourished kitten. Plus, if Mazda felt like the sub-zero start area was a good place for a battery, I figure it'll work out for me too.
So as it stands as of this writing, I need to connect the signals for all of my gauges, route the dash wiring so it's tucked away nicely, replace the water temp and oil pressure sender, and do a battery relocation and install the battery cutoff switch.
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Last edited by Fungus Mungus; 12-22-15 at 11:50 PM.
09-11-15, 01:20 AM
