micah

Well, I've been at this too long to not have a build-up thread. I'll post the stuff I've already done breifly and with pictures... if you have questions, let me know. I'll be posting updates as I go.

I used to be in this rotary scene back in 1999/2000... I remember Aaron Cake being new to the site.. I think he was doing the first turboed NA thread back then. Good times... good times... Anyways.. I had some hardships in life that forced me to sell my hobbies.. cars included. So, I got out of the RX7 world for what I thought was for good. Recently, I had the opportunity to get another one! I wanted to do it right since hell or high water I won't be selling it ever. I'll live out of the thing if I have to.

Thus begins my rebirth into the rotary scene.

Bought this car with rebuild in mind. Its a 1991 NA with 155k miles and owned by somebody who knew a little about RX-7's and ran slight premix and MMO since 1995 or something. However, now knowing how much work it would be, I would have gotten a car with no chipped/missing paint. Mazda UC White Crystal can bite me.


Damn near perfect interior (after I got to it):


Engine ran great, but had hot starting issues and not super awesome compression @ 155k miles. From the power and feel of the engine, I figured it was more than rebuildable:


Pulled that bitch out (check out my goofy-***):


I gave all of the parts a good clean-down, luckily, it had been cared for pretty well. carbon came off with little scrubbing and were well in spec with no wallowed out apex seal slots (no more than FSM allows anyways).



Bought me some new housings and painted everything with 1200deg spray paint. We'll see how it holds up.


Decided on black manifolds for a bit different look. Hopefully, it'll spice things up a smidge.



Here it is all pieced together (no internals) before I put it away to be assembled at a later date:

^^ Yes.. I know.. I painted the plastic fan. I did it for giggles.. I won't be running it. Probably go e-fan.

Here are the ports I will be running. haven't cut them yet, but thats the plan.


Put engine work on hold to finish the rest of the project.

I started ripping the paint off down to the metal, I don't want ANY of that crappy white crystal left on this thing. Not because its a shitty color, but because it was a shitty mixture. I also started building a paint booth in my driveway. Working with this dust and the prospect of painting in the future made me realize how nice it would be.



Finally got the paintbooth done and prepped the engine bay (hot water heater + pressure washer = engine bay clean enough to eat off of). Finally sprayed some primer/paint in it and here's what I got:


Here's the car in the paint booth. Its kinda ghetto, but it works great!


Because i didn't want overspray on my exterior when I need to do the interior, I decided to do the interior first. Stripped everything out... started in on the sound deadening:


That stuff is made from 25% tar, and 75% pure evil:


Finally got it all out... DRY ICE FTW!:


Interior primered:


Interior painted:


Primered some interior pieces after prepping them... using house of kolor direct-to-metal primer/surfacer.. Great stuff, but sprays like playdough.. gotta have a 1.8mm tip!


Finally, after about 3 different iterations of sanding and re-primering, I got pieces covered in primer sealer and then in color...


They will be de-nubbed, wet-sanded lightly, re-coated, wet-sanded again with 1000 or 1500, then clear will be applied.



I think everything is going quite well so far.... Its expensive, but it will leave me with a good daily driver car to start my re-entry back into the rotary world.

Stay tuned for updates!

cloudx189

iTrader: (3)

Loving the car

clokker

iTrader: (2)

Looks beautiful.
Now your exterior will be as impossible to keep clean as the interior.

micah

Dirty is the new clean... Duh.

I just picked up a set of emblems for the rear. I was really sick of the black emblems on black car thing, so I went to the dealership.

I'll be taking the 7 from the CX-7 emblem, and the RX- from the RX-8 logo to make a new-styled RX-7 logo. I also got the new-style "MAZDA" one. I'll take pics when they arrive.

Here are the part numbers for reference.

EG21-51-721A "CX-7" : 28.45
EG21-51-710 "MAZDA" from CX-7 : 16.70
F151-51-721A "RX-8" : 21.45

Total: 66.60.

88rxn/a

iTrader: (6)

and you hoped your paint job was as good as mine!!!
dumbass, its 10X's better than mine already!!!

phoenix7

sweeeeeeeeeet! Black FTW! all the other colors are for suckahs!

NO BADGES!!!!!!!!!!!!! How else are you going to confuse all the lil ricer dumbasses???

RockLobster

iTrader: (7)

How did you get your engine (long block) parts so clean? What solvent or chem did you use? Bath?

Very, VERY nice work.

imloggedin

youre my hero

novarx7

Ghetto paint booth? Brother - you havent seen a ghetto paint booth, lol... I'll have to find some pics from back in the day when my buddy and his dad painted his '85 626!

Very good progress though - if I have to complain, I would argue about the paint choice on the engine block... did you paint it all together or did you take it apart first? All one solid color looks funny...

RB_eater

iTrader: (1)

It doesn't look funny, that engine is hot!

13bturbofc

iTrader: (4)

looks ******* awesome!! must be nice to have all that spare time to do all that nice work

cloudx189

iTrader: (3)

Be agressive... black on black. Can't wait to see those emblems

ivegonemad

very very nice interior, so how much dry ice did you use to remove the sound deading??

welcome back to the rotary!!

micah

Thats why I'm doing it.. because tards like you hate it. j/k Yeah, I painted them all together. No reason masking everything when it masks itself. I dig the color, when its in the black engine bay, it'll look way good. Like a diamond in a jewelry box. <--was that gay?

Maybe you missed the "I've been at this too long to not have a build-up thread" part. All of this work was done over the last 7mo or so.. I am just now getting to posting it.

micah

Thanks! It took about 40lbs total on a hot summer day. Would probably take a more skilled person 20lbs. Worth its weight in gold though when it comes to removing that tar. You can hear it cracking and breaking up just having the ice all smashed up into a powder on it. Pretty much does the work for you. On the hot summer day though, you had to move fast and get the stuff out of the car or the heat of the metal would re-tar it to the surface.

micah

I used a wire wheel and lots of pain.

Then kerosene and paint. Most of what you see isn't metal, its just aluminum colored 1200deg ceramic impregnated paint.

Project88Turbo

iTrader: (22)

Very impressive! Can't wait to see more of it! Glad to see someone put so much effort, time, and passion into their 7.

Vince

Jager

iTrader: (10)

Amazing car!

novarx7

I was referring more to the fact that it isnt broken up - its just one big color... it would have been nice to see it mixed w/ black and aluminum, etc...

Anywho, good luck with the build...

scrip7

iTrader: (6)

Excellent job on everything Micah. And props to you for using good creativity on the Mazda emblems.

sharingan 19

iTrader: (16)

Great job, beautiful work. I may be inspired to build an N/A now.

Keep bumping it since subscriptions don't seem to work now.

meimei

You're my new hero (after Stephen Hawking), and I would like to have your children.

Thank you and have a nice day.

micah

Well, I got a couple new things today.... A bumper from Wanked_FC on the forum here, and a headlight-washer reservoir/assy from a 10ae (or canadian model, not sure).. I plan on relocating my windshield washer reservoir to the drivers side to make room for air-intake stuff... so I'm using the headlight washer res..


Here's my old bumper (white) and my new bumper (black). It will get repainted like everything else, but looks damn nice the way it is! I would like to say Wanked_FC is a great seller! He packaged that bumper the way EVERYBODY here should learn to package! I told him he should make a "How to package a bumper for shipping" thread. Hehe.


More tomorrow I'm sure.

clokker

iTrader: (2)

OK, Micah...you started off with a bang (over two hundred views in one day).

Your mission now is to keep the pics to posts ratio lower than say, one to five.

A difficult job I know, but we have faith in you.

micah

Yeah yeah yeah....


Okay, got my emblems today.. I think they look pretty sexy! The "MAZDA" one looks exactly the same as the stock one, only its chromed. Might even have the same mounting holes.. we'll see when I get home. The RX-8 and CX-7 are adhesive stickers.. I went through the dealership with a tape measure and when I did, the emblems appeared the same size (one inch tall), but having them side by side... the CX-7 logo is slightly larger than the RX-8 one. So, the 7 looks a little large next to the RX-, but I think it looks bad ***...
::First gen had large swift lettering and a larger 7::Second gen had blocky lettering, and a normal sized 7.

This one is a combination of both. Swift lettering, larger 7, but more uniform in size than the first gen's small X look.

Here it is:

I think it looks great and will really look great against the black car.