Still retains all three stock mounting tabs from the original bracketry inside the sheet metal behind what is seen. Won't be difficult at all to fine tune the focal points of each side

 

I ordered wheel bearing retainers, input shaft seal, output shaft seal, transmission bell housing shim and shifter return spring from RockAuto and Jim Ellis Mazda today. It's moving along at least!

 

that is actually really nice.

 

Thanks! I'm really pleased with how the interior is turning out.

This evening I figured out what was wrong with my fuel door and rear hatch release. It turns out that I read the fuse box wrong because someone in the past replaced just about all of my fuses with ones with the wrong amperage. I had pulled the only 20 amp fuse in the bunch only to find it was intact. Today I revisited it and realized I pulled the one next to the actual location of the opener fuses. That location contained an incorrect 15 amp fuse. Pulled it and, sure enough, a blown fuse. I reposition all of the fuses so they were in the right spots and now everything works.

I got started de-looming the dash/audio harness in order to remove the section I don't need.

fm

 

Sounds great Fungus!
I will be able to hear that thing in Watsonville I bet : )

 

A couple of days ago, I went to work on the interior wiring harness. I started out with this:



And ended up with this:



The best part is that the lights, flashers, hatch and fuel door poppers all work!

I want to get this thing ready for auto-x at the end of the month, so I'm going to work on a temporary solution to a dash. I'll build a center console in acrylic and mount the existing switches. Later, I'll pull that and build the dash properly.

fm

 

Last year I built a gauge holder out of 1/2" acrylic for the 84-85 center console. It turned out nice. Better than plexiglass.

 

jeff, i think you mean to say lexan? i thought plexiglass is acrylic whereas lexan is polycarbonate.

 

So not really what I did today, but in the last week or so.
We put new StopTech slotted rotors, and new hawk racing pads all the way around. We did a PS pump delete because she needed a diet, and well, the pump killed itself and had to go. We did stainless steel braided brake lines. A new Bosch 044 fuel pump, rear wiper delete, fixed the highbeam switch, and a few of the marker lights.

She goes in for provincial inspection tomorrow, and with any luck I can daily here again tomorrow afternoon!

"Please Rotary Gods, just a little bitta good luck?"

 

Maybe. It cuts easier and doesn't smell as bad as plexiglass when you work with it. It seemed like acrylic to me where as what I know to be plexiglass was less fun to work with.

 

Thanks Phalanx! Yeah, you sure will. Hopefully I'll get this thing back together again and go for a joy ride soon.

fm

 

i am jealous of your license plate

 

This evening I swapped the street wheels for the track wheels, checked out why my tranny is leaving puddles of gear oil on the floor, and re-checked the O2 sensor. Track wheels are on now. Put the car on level stands and opened the fill plug and a fair amount of gear oil came out. So yeah, overfilled. Hopefully it'll stop dumping tranny fluid on my garage floor.

The O2 sensor wasn't screwed in all the way. Looks like it's been leaking from there. Took it off, put anti-seize on it, and put it back on, but got it completely seated. Will crank her up tomorrow and see if she idles any better.

fm

 

Final prep for tomorrow's SCCA auto-x event in Marina, CA. Installed lexan console with switches for gas and hatch releases, dimmer, and combo switch for hazards and headlight flip up. Also re-installed cabin mirror as well as door mirrors.





lexan center console in my FB RX-7.

fm

 

FM, you really need to quit posting racecar status first gen pics because it's causing severe desires of mine to build a full race build first gen...

Just kidding, please keep posting them up - I know I appreciate them!

 

didn't do anything but patted April on the corner above the tail light ... May on the other hand was giving the wife **** when she stopped on the way home .... something about being 111 degree temps appear to make May unhappy ... but then wifey is unhappy

 

Noticed an oil leak when I came back from auto-x on Sunday. Put a cup under it and collected some oil. Then took it out about an hour later. Came back this evening to find a fair amount of oil on the ground. Not happy. Jacked it up and found the culprit...the 3 bolts on the oil lever sender unit were only on hand tight. DOH! Fixed that. I defy it to leak now.

As stated before, I ran SCCA auto-x in Marina on Sunday. Will post a vid tomorrow.

fm

 

Last Sunday, I participated in my first SCCA autocross event since I swapped in the 13Bpp. This is my last (and best) run of 43.442. I'm very pleased considering this is the first time I ran the car with 100+ more bhp than I'm accustomed to, had no power brakes (which turned out to be a good thing), and I was deathly afraid I was going to break something. The "fast" cars were going 41-something. A handful of cars dipped in to the high 30s. With some more seat time....watch out.

fm

 

i'm kind of excited, with fresh tires, some tweaking and more seat time, that thing is going to be right up there.

 

Finally fabbed up my turbo manifold, jus need to finish welding it out.
Thought about some ceramic coating, now onto mounting the intercooler and piping, then boost prep the yaw nikki

 

Nice! ^

 

Whats the likelihood of the turbo rattling against the shock tower? Looks like slim clearance.

 

It is close, you cant see from that angle the a/c hose is in between the turbo and shock tower, worse case scenario if its too tight ill do some grinding and reweld or go with solid motor mounts.

 

Today I pulled her out of the garage so I could spray my roll bar. Pulled her back in a couple of hours later and noticed 2 leaks. One was an oil leak coming from the oil cooler AN fitting. I'll deal with that later. The other I'm not sure about. While looking at it under the car, I noticed the cause of my crazy idle. I found out the hard way that hardware store plumbing gaskets are no good for the heat of a rotary. The intake gasket on the front rotor had completely melted and was sagging underneath impotently. It was letting gobs of air in from underneath the manifold...something I couldn't see before because of the heat shield. And now it makes sense why the idle went south all of a sudden...the engine probably got hot enough that the gasket called it quits while we were trying to tune it.

So I pulled the intake manifold off (literally 3 minutes...and one of those was spent looking for my socket extension). Both gaskets were completely melted garbage. I cleaned up the mess the gaskets left and dug around and found proper paper gaskets, cut them and put everything back together. Now the car idles like a peripheral port should. brap brap brap @ 1000 rpm. I can even get it down to 800 rpm and she goes brap...brap...brap..


Took her out for a quick spin (disturbing the whole neighborhood) and she drove great.

fm

 

dude there is no way a peripheral port can idle at 800rpm! at least that is what facebook tells me.