Hey all,
I bought this car last year and trailered it up to Massacusetts from Georgia. I lost contact with the original owner whos email doesn’t seem to work anymore. If he’s reading this then pm me. Anyway, long story short I’ve finally got her back up and running. It’s been a big learning curve for me as I had no experience with rotarys or rx7s but some advice from this forum and some purchases from rock auto have finally come good.
I’m so happy to be finally driving this car - it sticks to the road like glue and I love the pick up in fourth gear as I run past 80. Also got my first speeding ticket - the cop was so excited to see the rx7: he used to have one.

I know this is nothing to be too proud of, but here’s a list of things that were done in the last six months in no particular order;
- Smoke check for vac leaks​​​​​​ (a few)
- Replaced various rubber hoses
- Rebuilt carb, adjusted float levels, replaced seats and needles, unstuck secondaries
- Changed fuel filter, plugs, leads, engine oil
- Replaced broken clutch slave and master
- Adjusted ignition timing
- Replaced belts
- Fixed loose starter ignition wire

The carb was by far the biggest pain - setting the floats and finding a combination of needle/seat that worked (from three different rebuild kits) was trying. I remember once getting the carb back on, taking her down the road and then setting the idle only to realise that I’d forgot the spring in the accel pump. Anyway. I’ve had a tone of fun getting this thing working again and want to thank everyone here whos advice in these posts made it possible.

I saw the car last year here in the forum classifieds (https://www.rx7club.com/se-rx-7-foru...-sale-1113337/ ). I immediately fell for the car when I saw the ad and looked up the location in GA ... It was only twenty mins drive from where my college best friend had just moved with his family. I took it as a sign (excuse) to fly down to GA, meet up with my friend and spend some time with his family, buy the car and U-Haul it back to MA. My wife came with me and was a great sport about the whole thing, even when we parked a 40ft truck and trailer in downtown Atlanta

All of the real work, including the great body work and interior was done by the former owner, Barron, as you can see from the original classified ad. There’s also a built page on the forum for this car here: https://www.rx7club.com/build-thread...imited-983706/

The story went that he, Barron, owned the car when in school and later sold it to a friend. Then one day, years later, he happened to randomly see the car again on the street and bought it back! The build thread shows what he did after that point until I bought it last year.

I might post some more pics if anyone’s interested. I’ll also surely be back on here if and when things need fixing ...

Hey Tommy, I didn’t think about Plasticine - that’s a great idea and easy to implement too. Thanks!

Yes, Barron added the IMSA front bumper, or at least kept it on from the previous owner. There were also louvers and side skirts but Barron, and I, think the car looks better without those. I still have those trip parts but I’m pretty happy with how she looks

I was working on her this weekend, finally got a GoPro (with flashlight) into the engine bay and filmed the vacuum secondaries linkage under wot. It actually was doing really well - all I noticed was some play in the linking arm so I adjusted it a little to take up the slack, added new washers and pins and now the throttle response and secondary transition is smoother, yay!

Quick update, in case anyone’s googling rx7 high rpm belt squeal :

I was getting wicked belt squeal at 5k+ rpms from the airpump/fan belt. I’d replaced all the belts but to no avail. Then it dawned on me that the fan clutch, while not totally stuck on, might be binding too much and spinning too fast at those high rpms (too much air resistance for the poor belts to take). It seemed I was getting more fan noise than most cars I’ve driven. I bought a replacement fan clutch and voila, squeal free!

Now I have to attend to a bad wheel bearing, or something of the sort. Ahh the list.