haha, yeah - I've had only 1 person ask if I was in a rotary club and I said, yes - I am! But not the one you think!

 

Hibernation time for the RX7 - cleaned up the garage and said goodbye for the winter. Before this, did a quick modification and added glass LED headlights from only944.com. Really affordable even though marketed for a Porsche.

 

same thing here.. I hate MN more and more

 

Doing the annual underbody/wheel well inspection/prime/paint/undercoating. Took 2 hours just to get the car on blocks under the differential. But hey, no car payments on a cool daily beater...!

Nice living in Alabama, we get a little snow and everything just shuts down. No salty roads!!

 

Upon reading this, just ordered a set. Surprisingly inexpensive. Thanks for the info!

 

No problem! I came across them when looking for something affordable and fairly stock looking.

 

Changed my battery.
So long story short. I had a battery too small for my car and got the right one per mazda .
This was causing my misfires and hesitation at 1700-2k

 

I wrapped the lower half of the car in avery dennison metallic black. It looks a bit brown/greyish in the light - pretty sweet. I haven't done the front bumper, but that'll be done Sunday.

1st time wrapping ANYTHING and man, it is NOT easy. But we got better as we went along. good from far, far from good but I'm happy to say I know more about it.

I also added an 6.35mm spacer to the rear - same will be coming for the front soon.

 

respect!

 

Thanks

 

Wipers froze during the Sunday morning drive, good thing it was just a light drizzle. Pushing them back down popped something back in place so they're working again.
I should probably still open up the cowl and look around, noticed a while ago the sweep isn't as wide as it used to be but I don't drive it in the rain that much.

I also have the most first world problem of wanting to do a track day before the end of the year.
What's stopping me from signing up is I'm not quite used to the brake upgrade I did over the summer, particularly modulating the pedal while heel & toeing.
I don't know if I need to get used to it or the double diaphragm booster was the wrong way to go.

 

Hey man, I'm in Austin too. We should get together one day. Have you joined the Austin 7's club on FB?

 

Sure, I'm in that group.

 

Found my wiper issue, the linkage bushing is out. The JB Weld repair I did in 2007 must have popped some time ago. Thankfully it's still available new from the dealer and I found the best price on ebay.
Also another running repair I did around that time was to tape over the crumbled wiper motor connector. I bought a 4 pin connector while shopping a for another job with this in mind. The old connector was so decayed tools weren't needed to pull the pins out.

 

ouside of cosmetics, the intake is done.

 

Drove her 320 miles to Sevenstock last weekend. j9fd3s helped me over Monterey Car Week to lock my dizzy and we suspect my dizzy was off a tooth before. The car was OK up to 6K,
but started to fall flat on its face after that. "Needs tuning", he said.

So after climbing the Grapevine and being underwhelmed by the power I wasn't making, I decided some fiddling of jets was in order. Today changed out the idle jet for a 70 (was a 75), so it doesn't smell like gas so much.
Should get better gas mileage now (17mpg was my best for the trip). Also fiddled with the main jets and settled on a 235. The 6K breakup was gone and it revs up to 8K+ with no issue. Took her out
for a spirited drive DAYUMMM....she hauls @ss now! I had a stupid grin on my face for the next 2 hours after that. I'm in love with this car all over again.

fm

 

I love that car. I really need to track down one of the early-style IMSA body kits.

 

With the big stuff out of the way, I've been working on getting the less important features to work.

I took the CPU back out to figure out why the door/ ignition lock cylinder courtesy lights don't light up with a door handle pull and the ignition key/ headlight reminder buzzer doesn't work.

Using a continuity tester, I found the circuit traces were damaged on the pcb for the 2 circuits that detects the door handle pull and the door open switch. I'm not great at soldering, but by soldering a wire to 2 solder points separated by the broken trace on both circuits, both features now work as they should.

 

How did you know what to test? There are nearly a hundred different components on that board - I know, I just redid mine and there were 94 parts I could source and 3-4 I couldn't.

 

This brings up a curious subject. I have a couple of spare CPUs and was playing with them trying to wire in a new buzzer that is external and has a flashing LED. I could only get it to work once power was applied the first time. It would beep/light up once and then quit. Measuring voltage, I think the buzzer only works on 5VDC. I bought a step up 5VDC to 12VDC but could never get it to work. I would love to redesign the entire CPU with modern components.

On a side note, I did replace the door cylinder light with a grain of rice LED.

 

From the wiring diagram I knew it had to be an issue with either the N pin circuit (Key reminder switch) or O pin circuit (door open switch) for the key reminder buzzer issue.

For the lock cylinder lights issue it was either an issue with the E pin circuit (bulbs path to ground) or the T (also referred to as B) pin circuit (handle pull switch), or the J (ground) pin. I followed the circuit traces to their various soldered components and found they had lost continuity after a visible mark in the board.




Not sure about the cpu buzzer voltage but it only has 2 functions, the seat belt buzzer and the key reminder buzzer. The other buzzer functions are handled by the buzzer in the instrument cluster, such as low coolant/ low oil, headlights on with door open, my cluster buzzer seems to be dead.

 

I've been trying to get the rear wiper to work, it never would move since I got the car but would draw enough power to dim the lights or blow it's fuse.

I took the motor out, re-greased it, cleaned the commutator,and found one of the ball bearings had fallen out of place, the other was missing, so I used a 5/32 steel ball from Home Depot. Discovered the wire for the wiper parking function broke internally so I soldered on a new wire. The motor would then occasionally work fine one minute then stop working the next, it took alot of adjustment of the set screw and lock nut that pushes on the armature shaft in order to keep it working reliably.

I found the Strong Arm hatch strut I had put on had a shorter gas cylinder than the original, so the electrical plate wasn't pressing tightly against the pronged fitting, which was loose from accidentally snapping the plastic when I transferred it before. My solution was to slip on one of the upper bushings from the old rear suspension shock, to keep the connection tight and it all works fine now.






The battery unexpectedly died a few months shy of 3 years, luckily got a new one under warranty. To try to eke out some more life, I reupholstered and put on the battery insulation blanket off my old 2000 Mustang that got cooked being parked next to a big house fire, the battery was pretty close to the fire and made it through.

 

It's that time of year again however, it will give me something to look forward to in the Spring.

 

everytime you post I see your avatar and think its my car hahah

 

First track day in years. I was very rusty, but got with it after several laps.