More ticky-tack on beautifying the up-front spuds. Tomorrow's gonna be a polishin' day.

 

The blue car's engine is stacked and front cover is on. Oil pan tomorrow.

 

new radiator and thermostat this morning - works great

 

You are setting very high standards my friend. Please, keep it up.


I, on the other hand, seem to have cursed myself by starting this thread, since I haven't gotten hardly a damned thing done since I did so. One physical malody after another. Might have to find myself a Gypsy to sacrifice in order to lift this curse. But today or tomorrow, I roll up my sleeves and get started...






.

 

^Getting started is the hardest part. Once that momentum kicks in, get out me way!

I hope to get nearly finished today. It just needs a pick up tube and oil pan - already prepped and waiting. Then I can throw it in the car. Not bad for just starting yesterday. It's all in the prep work.

Actually something unexpected popped up yesterday. The flywheel I wanted to use is kinda worn. An old 215mm RB light steel. Someone had used it with a puck disc. I have a decent stock disc at like 8.3mm thick, so it would last a good long time on this worn flywheel.

Then I was like hmm, what about that freshly resurfaced aluminum flywheel sitting in the corner? It too had been previously used with a puck disc, but it's resurfaced now. It has the little clearances for a 225mm pressure plate, which the old light steel lacks. I've got a nasty rusty but fairly low mile 225mm Daikin pressure plate sitting here... I could paint it, or use it as-is since no one sees it. The friction surface is great, and I've test ran it in this car before; worked fine.

What to do? Wait, I know! The rotating assembly is from an R5 13B, so the rotors are heavy. The exhaust is a long primary so it should have great low end torque. The car itself is light being an S model. And I've driven it before with an aluminum flywheel with no problems. This setup will last a whole lot longer than if I had gone with the worn light steel, and it should be quite driveable.

Porting to just 74 spec should retain enough low end torque from 1800 and up, but lower RPM should be fine too, but we'll see. Exhaust porting is to GSL-SE spec, which enhances torque. Same exact porting as my REPU, actually, and a similar exhaust; my REPU feels like it has plenty of low end. Also a stock carb will have great velocity down low. Or I could throw the Camden on it but this car is getting set up for someone else so a stock carb is fine.

 

Got all the old overspray from MAACO off the fan shrod, and polished her up with "Back to Black."

Repainted a pile of pulleys, brackets, tubes, fittings, clamps, bolts... and my radiator tanks & brackets.

Stripped all the paint off the front plenum top cover, right down to bare metal... which really tempted me to put in on the 'polish it!' list, but no... it's getting returned from incorrect body color, to correct gloss black. For now.

Wirebrushed and hand-sanded the living crap outa my air pump front housing, preperatory to polishing it tomorrow. My wrists now hate me.

Stripped down the alternator for repolish, nobby style. May re-paint the coil stator some bizarre color.

Started disassembly of the ratsnest for clean and test.

Oh, and I did about three hours of yardwork.

 

Today I checked over the engine and wheels to see how everything's holding up after its first day of Autocross. Aside from vibrating the shift **** right off (One of the three screw universals) everything looks good, far as I can tell.

 

Pulled the exhaust and sold the center section and muffler. Going to redo it in the hopes of getting more POWAH!!

Degreased the hood latch and bolted it and the firewall braces back on. Did a test fit of one of the rear wheels. Results: They will look fantastic. I'll post pics as soon as the car is on the ground.

Put the rad hoses back on after some minor trimming. Also put the coolant overflow bottle back on. It's starting to look like a complete engine bay. Needs a few hours with some Simple Green and elbow grease.

 

Well this will cover my whole weekend, but I did a bit on my 79. With the recent find that my battery was not being charged while running, I tracked down the problem to a bad alternator, most likely the regulator. Its getting 12V to the excitation circuit but only putting out 5V on the check circuit (supposed to turn on the dash light and activates the voltmeter before starting). Besides that, I did put the charger on the battery and ran the engine a bit after finishing up the rats nest removal and the engine is running good without the rats nest.

Alas even with the removal of all emission equipment, the high RPM stumbling/miss are still present.

 

Finished up a lot of polishing and paintint, now in the waiting for paint to fully harden mode.

Tidbits:

 

DD looks like you polishing skills are getting even better

 

This actually happened a few days ago...but here it is any way...pulled out my front end and took delivery of new front calipers, tie rods in and out, ball joints and am waiting for bushings and shocks and struts from RE-Speed. Once all my parts get here, it will be time to paint and assemble.


By cfamilyfix at 2012-04-29

 

You've been caught!!!!!!! There is no way you would have time to do all that plus yardwork!!! You have help, obviously from none other than the Blue Man Group, your own picture proves it. (Scandle ensues!)

 

^ lol

 

Replaced PS pump with one bought at DGRR 2012 from cshaw07 (I think.. ) Curtis. Working great, and now I don't have to worry about building up muscles in my arms LOL!

 

Blue Man Group... what Smurfs grow up to be.

 

Today I looked at my RX7 Waiting on funds to finish her. at the rate of savings I should be done mid/late July now. If I can get the fuel lines finished soon I can do a test startup but still need to have driveshaft shortened and the brake hardlines ran. Other than that she still sits there

 

Waiting for engine work to be done. So in the meantime I decided to completely redo my wire harness and gauge/switch pane from scratch.

Old:


New!

 

The back of the new panel... all plug and play between the panel and relay board.

 

^^^Pretty cool looking setup there SVT, running electric Auto Meter Ultra Lite II's I see. I'm assuming you haven't driven the car with them installed yet as you just got the panel done (awesome job by the way, much cleaner looking and race car-ish than the previous setup - I also like that you left room for another gauge if necessary in the future). I'm wondering how they work at night though, I know DirectFreak speaks highly of the Ultra Lite II's over the original Ultra Lites (which I have 3 of). I would appreciate future pics of that panel lit up at night, I bet it looks pretty bad ***. Congrats and keep up the good work!

I looked at her today. She's been sitting for about 3 days because I went into the hospital last Thursday and haven't been healthy enough yet to fix the clutch pressure issue. Probably just the master or slave cylinder acting up again, joy. Hopefully I'm feeling well enough to get the gumption to fix that small issue! Off to bed for me, recouping still. May the health and wellness gods smile upon you all this mayday tomorrow!

 

Bought some brass tubing for use in fixing my fractured Hot Start Assist cable, and poked and prodded my freshly painted/clearcoated stuff to test hardness. These long-cure-time paints make me crazy - - but re-assembling early makes a mess of things if you ever disassemble later.

Got a few small inclusions in my repainted plenum top cover; the joy of painting outdoors on a windy day. Not gonna obsess over them, though, as I'm now pressing to conclusion of this revamp in this month. Tomorrow or Wednesday I'll get myself to the DMV for my one-month temp pass, so I can legally drive on the roads for break-in & test purposes.

May or may not complete reassembly this weekend, but I feel confident that I'll at least be far enough to attempt first start before the follow-on weekend.

The "What Happens in Vegas" meet comes up on the weekend of the 19th; I'm using that as my target goal. 300 miles each way, so I need to be ready-ready & clock some break-in hours before then.

 

Thanks! I'll try and take some pics tonight. I also wired the panel so that each switch and gauge's "signal" wire is a different color too. Just like factory.

 

Did this:

 

How is this color scheme?


Does it look good?


How about this? Supposed to be cast coat iron. Does it look like cast coat iron? Looks like brown gold to me. Divin?

By the way that's an N3A1 engine. Well, mostly.

Just some details.


Cleaned, painted, marked accurately. All have matching hubs. Never mix and match hubs. I'll send Karack after you if you do!

 

The silver/blue: very bright looking, almost looks icy. Looks very clean, and is surely different. Not sure if I can picture it with all the externals matched up.

The "cast coat:" Looks pretty close in color to fresh-pickled cast iron to me. You're right that it does have a little bronze overtone to it. It's bronzer than the Cast Coat Iron paint I used; what brand paint is that?

Fresly-milled cast iron is quite grey in color, but the cast stuff is all oil-quenched after it's busted out of the molds, and the mold sand is generally oiled as well. That's what gives that 'pickled' tone to it.

Also done last night; splinting up a Hot-Start Assist cable that had cracked it's sheath at the base, and had some abrasion damage where it had rubbed other parts:

Brass tubing from the hobby store, heat-shrink from the electronics supply store, and a little electrical tape.

















Good for another 30 years.