Nik da Greek

Working on cars took a bit of a hit for a while, since both my daughter and wife were pretty sick for a while. And of course, the weather! Despite having been in a "drought" and hosepipe ban for the last few months, we had enough rain on a couple of occasions for this to happen to my garden/house;



which resulted in us being without power, heat and water for a day or two as the vault under the house looked like the garden, and all the electrics blew up. Still, some nice firemen did eventually come out and pump it out. By the time we'd been off the power for about 24 hours



Here's one of them trying (not very hard) to look like he's working lol. Mind you, it was nearly midnght by then



I guess it seems a bit feeble compared to what the eastern seaboard of the uS just went through, but it mattered to us at the time! With all this going on, I only had time for a few bits of car stuff, such as rejuvenating bits that were tatty and rusty. For example,

My manky old battery tray, looking a bit rusty;


in actual fact, it was even more rusty than it looked, as I found out when I started to strip it down. The paint seemed to be clinging on remarkably well over a layer of rust


Anyway, a serious blitzing with a wire brush on the grinder and some wet and dry later it was ready for some of Hammerite's finest. It's hardly smooth and mirror-flat but hey, it's a battery tray. So long as it isn't actually rotting away I don't care what it looks like too much


Here's the area of the engine bay mid-way through me rust treating the worst bits. I need to get some colour-matched (or near enough) paint though cos I don't really want to mank it up with Hammerite. I swapped every bolt I could for stainless as well while I was in there, which will also make it a lot easier when it comes to strip it down properly so I can paint the rad shroud and the inside of the nosecone etc. If we ever get a summer with enough dry days to get it done


Anyway, I haven't got any pics of it going back together cos I had to do it in a hurry. Mainly because the garden was under water by then and it was raining like a scene from The Crow and I had the right hump. Also because I had to get the FD out of the garage to get the clocks reprogrammed cos I had to give the insurance a mileage for the restricted miles policy and my odometer had blown up ages ago so I had to buy a new (secondhand) set of clocks and swap them but they were in Km/H so I had to take them to get them converted so it was a really stupid time to decide to take the FB to bits and block the garage just as a flood like Genesis descended as well. In hindsight.
Follow that? Excellent.

Anyway, it wasn't all doom and gloom. Conrad helped and kept me sane. Here he is explaining why I need an idler pulley to increase the contact patch on the waterpump belt and how it would have been better if the Trust tubular manifold hadn't mounted the turbo so far forward that the old idler no longer fitted. That's me boy

Nik da Greek

So, when we finally got that mythical day when IT DIDN'T RAIN! Not once! No, really ...

Since it was dry and given the notoriously hydroscopic properties of brake fluid (is that the right word, any chemists out there in the audience? ) errrr... it soaks up moisture and degrades... it seemed a good time to sort out my leaky clutch slave cylinder.

I'd scored a spare from a forum mate so that was good. It did look slightly different, but the holes looked in the right place so hopefully that'd be all that mattered. After all, the Haynes manual says it's as straightforward as undoing two bolts and swapping the flexi-hose over, then bleeding. So what was the worst that could happen, lol?

The original did look a nasty bloody thing. It had been weeping fluid from the pushrod for ages but the weep was becoming a flood so long past time it was done.


^that, for anyone who doesn't know (no-one, then) is the clutch slave in situ. It was weird, having finally cracked the bolts off (they really didn't want to shift) it was obvious someone's had the slave off before because they were rounded and mullered. The hose fitting was untouched though, which was odd. Maybe they swapped the seal over while it was still attached or something. Don't think the engine's been to bits or owt. Dunno. Weird.

Anyway, any hopes I'd had of refurbishing the old one with a seal kit and keeping it as a spare were pretty much squashed as soon as it came off



Euwwwwww! It seems to be full of a nice grinding paste made from a mixture of brake fluid and shrapnel ground away from the inside of the bore. At least, I can't imagine where else all the metallic swarf would have come from. Bin!

You can see the two slaves are slightly different in orientation, the new one (on the right) has a more upright mount for the bleed nipple, which is also taller, and the union where the flexi-hose attatches is more protruding too. This was actually a good thing, as the recessed one on the original made it rather a PITA to get good enough purchase with a spanner to actually crack the hose fitting off



Close-up to show the point... would this prove a problem? Would it now not fit in the rather nadgery space amongst the fuel lines, loom, coolant hoses for the beehive, etc? (the Haynes is from a non-beehive motor so as usual is not a lot of help)


No. It really was a piece of proverbial. Actually as simple as undoing two bolts, swapping a hose, and bleeding the system. Like, the only thing I've done on a car, I think possibly ever, that's actually gone like it was supposed to and just worked! When we finished bleeding it Rich/Phil and me were looking at each other going "Surely it's not that easy? We must have missed something!"

Gotta love Rotornoia, I'm still just waiting for the clutch to mess its gusset the next time I'm on a long trip and leave me stranded!


Now it was time to turn attention to the bodywork...soooooo

Bought this;


wedged it into this;


sanded it like this;


turned it into this;


Gahhhhh! Looks terrible but one step back, two forward and all that. The sensible version of all the above goes like this;

There aren't many aftermarket bumpers I'm much of a fan of, but this one is top of the list. It's made by Elford, a firm in England who back in the day were licensed by Mazda to manufacture RX-7s with a turbo kit and body mods. The trubo conversion was so good Mazda still honoured the full warranty on the car, and you could get either a turn-key car or the conversion kit to turbo your own car separately. Plus, the front bumper, rear and sideskirts were available in package or separately. As I've said, the front is one of few FB bumpers I really like the look of, with it's period Cibie "Airport" front foglights and deep airdam.

However, I bought this one through the excellent FB forum Mazda RX7 Forum - 1st Generation RX7's • Index page and it was the other end of the country. A forum mate came to the rescue, offering to bring it to a show we were both attending, thus meeting half-way and saving me a roundtrip of a good few hundred miles. Unfotunately, I forgot about this and when the show came around, I'd promised a lift there and back to a friend who's RX-4 coupe wasn't ready in time. Of course, there was no way both of us and the bumper were fitting in the car on the way back, so we had to drive the best part of 200 miles with the rear glass wide open and a foot of bumper hanging out! Good job it was a lovely sunny day, but it was pretty windy and noisy!

Once fitting commenced it became clear the bumper had been hacked about at some point, and it needed quite a bit of work to make it good. Hence the sanding! Was it worth the effort? Judge for yourselves in the next post....