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I managed to get a set from a supplier here in Alberta, North Country Tire. They had one set available so I had to jump on it a month ago and wait patiently for the set to arrive.
As far as I know the only raised white lettering 13" tire currently being produced is the B/F Goodrich Radial T/A. They can be had in 205/60 R13. If you want your FB to look like it just rolled off the showroom floor RWL tires are what you need. https://www.tires-online.net/bf-good...3-86s--1675516
When you ask for 13in BFGs with RWL the tire places all laugh at you until they pull up their online finder and see them available. Some will even flat out say you can't get em. I had one say that I said I bet you can and he went online and found em.They are not cheap but not like buying restoration rubber from Coker tire expensive either. The tires are all season and are NOT summer performance in any way. They will disappont when pushed hard but man they look the parf.
Put my dad's first Rx7, on the lift to take the exhaust (racing beat) and a few other things off. After sitting for 20+ years the rust has really set in. Super sad to see the very car that go us into these amazing machines in such a sorry state. It will see the road again, one day...
On a slightly less depressing but also disappointing note, I tried to to turn over the 79"s 12a, even after soaking for months in ATF and other solvents it still won't budge.
When you ask for 13in BFGs with RWL the tire places all laugh at you until they pull up their online finder and see them available. Some will even flat out say you can't get em. I had one say that I said I bet you can and he went online and found em.They are not cheap but not like buying restoration rubber from Coker tire expensive either. The tires are all season and are NOT summer performance in any way. They will disappont when pushed hard but man they look the parf.
For a long time RWL tire weren't available. I thin BF Goodrich just started making them a couple of years ago, right after I purchased a new set of tires.
When you ask for 13in BFGs with RWL the tire places all laugh at you until they pull up their online finder and see them available. Some will even flat out say you can't get em. I had one say that I said I bet you can and he went online and found em.They are not cheap but not like buying restoration rubber from Coker tire expensive either. The tires are all season and are NOT summer performance in any way. They will disappont when pushed hard but man they look the parf.
Walked in to my local-owned Tire shop to order BFG 205s, they didn't blink an eye, just said "OK!" quoted $130 ea installed and would call me when in. Would not take a deposit. 10 days later, got the call: IN!
Got some new 205/60/14 rubber for the SE, which was far more difficult than I expected. Finally found a set of Antares summers, haven't done too much driving on them yet but at least they look solid. The previous owner had installed 195/60s which to my eye looked comically small. Glad to have things back to normal.
Today I finally got my NEW engine and rebuilt tranny back into the car. Yay me!
I had to flip the driver's side motor mount upside-down for it to fit with the 13B. Apparently you have to cut the top half of the shell to make it fit, but I just ordered some small-diameter Poly ones from Bansai Racing (will be here Monday).
Also, I found it interesting how far the engine sits towards the drivers's side. You can see it by the trans tunnel placement and the design of the engine mounting brace, but using a yard stick down the middle shows the E'shaft is several inches off center. I never noticed it when the engine bay was all dirty and original.
Last edited by Maxwedge; May 21, 2022 at 09:33 PM.
Tomorrow I can start on the new cooling system parts. I have a new Koyorad radiator and GSL-SE fmoc to fill up that empty spot.
Thanks for the compliment on the lights.
been running a Koyo on my kids GSLSE. Works really well. With the Evans coolant it hasn’t really made it too far past the second indicator on the temp gauge. I’ll be running the same setup on my turboed six port. Interesting to see how that will work.
With the Evans coolant it hasn’t really made it too far past the second indicator on the temp gauge. I’ll be running the same setup on my turboed six port. Interesting to see how that will work.
Been running Evans on my SA about 4yrs, inlc trip down from Alaska. Runs warm on the gauge on mine under any sort of load in warm weather.
Today I finally got my NEW engine and rebuilt tranny back into the car. Yay me!
I had to flip the driver's side motor mount upside-down for it to fit with the 13B. Apparently you have to cut the top half of the shell to make it fit, but I just ordered some small-diameter Poly ones from Bansai Racing (will be here Monday).
Also, I found it interesting how far the engine sits towards the drivers's side. You can see it by the trans tunnel placement and the design of the engine mounting brace, but using a yard stick down the middle shows the E'shaft is several inches off center. I never noticed it when the engine bay was all dirty and original.
You can see the offset in the engine mount bracket - 3 holes on the passenger side, only one on the driver's. The driver's side bolt bosses are a little further from center than the passenger side, but even so... RB makes a really hefty and pretty mounting bracket, though. Hadn't really looked at them closely before. That's a nice piece.
Isn't a clean engine bay nice? I went so far as to strip and paint mine it was so ugly (and I had the engine out and a bunch of changes planned anyway.
Evans Coolant has about 66% the thermal efficiency of Water + Standard Coolant in a 50/50 mix. By the time you throw in more water (70/30) and Water Wetter, it's likely 55-60% of what that setup could do. I'd avoid it.
Sure it doesn't boil, but it also doesn't cool nearly as well. I can't think of a single race team that swears by it.
These were the last decent laps on a 4 year old set of Nitto NT01s 205/50R15. Probably could have gotten more out of them if I had more than 1º of front camber. Not sure on the number of heat cycles, I took a year off in the middle there.
The Nitto NT01 is the spec tire that the New England Region SCCA Spec IT7 crew uses so I figured I could compare lap times to them. My personal best 1:59 counter clockwise and 2:01 clockwise are pretty far off the 1:54.7 track record for IT7. I'll be realistic and say I'm not sending it too deep into the braking zones and don't have years of seat time, but also, I run a full size gas tank, full interior including carpet and spare tire, window glass, power steering, front battery, etc etc, and I don't have coilovers or IMSA front lip. I'm sure a roll cage adds weight to their race-spec cars but I think they are still a good 200 maybe 300 lbs lighter. Difference between full tank and half tank beginning to fuel starve for me is around 2 seconds. Add a passenger and forget it. This course has some serious elevation change.
It's a real nerve-racking transporting your beloved supercar from shop to shop...
Final fabrication shop for a while.
Big Booty Judy with them meats and 4" Full Exhaust Time to do some cool trickery with the rear suspension, CWA400 Water Pump Mounting, and V-Mount Ducting.
2 years ago when I went to DGRR I got 300 miles on a tank which was around 25 mpg. There was a bit of traffic, it was a street port with EFI, and the wideband was showing high 15AFR most of the drive. I had originally tuned it richer but something about their air quality as I headed south, then eventually elevation changes, meant it wanted more gas. But that’s still far off from 30 mpg.
2 years ago when I went to DGRR I got 300 miles on a tank which was around 25 mpg. There was a bit of traffic, it was a street port with EFI, and the wideband was showing high 15AFR most of the drive. I had originally tuned it richer but something about their air quality as I headed south, then eventually elevation changes, meant it wanted more gas. But that’s still far off from 30 mpg.
What are you running for a setup?
Stock Nikki, regulated pressure to some figure, timing 2 degrees advanced from stock on leading, trailing advanced as far as it can go in the slots. Vacuum advance hooked up as per stock.
The interesting thing is that I have a '79 intake manifold and carb, and it ran painfully lean on the primaries. Like no power until you opened the secondaries because it was leaning out to 17:1 or more up hills. I looked at the carb books and swapped the primary air bleeds from an FB carb (20 numbers smaller?) and it cruises at 14:1ish on the primaries and is much happier there.
A lot of it is also driving style. I have a Volvo S60R and regularly get 28-32mpg highway, EPA rating is crazy bad at like 22 or something.
Driving the RX-7 this weekend because the weather is nice, I have an RX-7, and driving 4000+mi a month on 93 is getting old.
Finally got back to working on the car (my son has sports 6 days a week and that takes precedence).
First I changed-out the motor mounts for smaller poly ones from Banzai Racing. The way they mount, you can adjust the hardness by tightening the bolt through the bottom. Banzai tells you to tighten them till the the poly is fully compressed, and the only torque setting I could find for stock mounts was 40 lbft (AusRotary). I torqued them to 35 lbft and that looks good for now. Before torquing....
after...
I tightened the top nuts as tight as I could get them by hand with a combo wrench. I now have some space between the mounts and the front cover/pan. *I have a recent thread about how the stock mounts don't fit with the R.B. 13B conversion engine brace.
Next I brushed the rust off of my tranny mount and painted it with Rust-Reformer. It's plenty solid but had some ugly surface rust. Tomorrow I'll put a top coat of black on it and put it back in the car (I have a jack stand holding the tranny right now).
Before I put the radiator back in I have to paint the side supports, because they have a little surface rust too. I'm about to have dinner and then I'll sand and Rust-Reform them. I'll paint them tomorrow with the trans mount.
ALSO, I mounted the GSL-SE front mount oil cooler. I'm using an after-market braided hose set from MazdaTrix, so you have to torch the oem fittings to loosen the glue, then screw them out and replace them with the M.T. fittings. It's the same process if you use the R.B. braided lines and fittings. I was nervous since this part is $$$ and fragile, but everything worked out fine. All the S3 cars (84-85) have the brackets for this, so it bolted right in.
