i've come to a point where i realize it will be a long time until i'm in the position to even start working on my car so i think i'm going to sell it seeing as how much the price of first gen's have gone up since i last bought one.

a little insight on the car... i'm going to forget a lot....

it's a 1983 GS (roll up windows, sunroof) with 84,000 miles (might be 81 i forget), Dave Kent widebody kit, BBS 3 piece wheels, bigger sway bars, full racing beat suspension, 13b street-ported motor with racing beat lightweight low compression rotors, lightweight flywheel, racing beat oil pump and more.... cartech turbo system with dual webber downdraft blow through carb setup. Turbo was rebuilt about a thousand miles ago with ball bearing center section.

now to the random stuff i am going to try and remember it has.... HKS ignition (like a MSD box... never seen one of these before), racing beat limited slip diff (no idea what the gear ratio is but the car is setup for road racing and has been clocked at 175 at Lime Rock), racing beat roll bar, recaro racing seats, momo shift **** and boot, momo steering wheel, VDO gauges, racing beat engine torque brace, racing beat strut bar.... basically everything racing beat ever offered for a first gen is in this car.


the good: car is in overall really good shape and has lots of goodies. the car had a 4 page article in Turbo Mag (see below), it has been stored indoors.

the bad: i bought the car in 2001 when i was in my early 20's. when i left long island after buying it the turbo went out 19 miles into the drive home back to south Florida. i had it shipped back to Florida and took the turbo to Majestic turbo in tampa where the owner talked me into a dual ball bearing water cooled center section, upgraded wheels etc. i knew nothing about turbo cars when i bought this car... i had no idea that ball bearing turbo's needed less oil pressure. after installing the turbo i drove the car about 1,000 miles over a little over a year. right from the get go the car would smoke at times at idle. i thought it was a rotor oil seal so i pulled the engine. a couple days later the windshield got busted out while it was in my garage and i moved the car to storage and haven't touched it since.

i've found myself in a nasty custody battle that has been going on for a couple years so far and won't be able to afford to work on the car anytime in the near future and in the mean time i'm still paying storage on the car for it to sit so i'm thinking about selling it or trading it for something i can use and enjoy. if the car isn't worth me selling i'll keep it as a second project for my son and i or i'll sell my Jeep and make this my daily driver ( i don't drive much).

here's some pictures.... non of which show it's current condition.... picture the car with a busted windshield, no motor or trans installed, the chrome on the rims is bubbled and corroding, and the seats have some of the material starting to come unglued.











when i first looked at the car .... about a year before i bought it.



a couple photos of when i was driving it:




what it looked like right before i put it in the garage and took the motor out.... bad photoshop job trying to take my shed out of the background.



that pretty much sums it up. i know i forgot a lot of mods etc. i have a idea of what i'd like to get out of the car the way it sits so i'd like to see what you guys that have kept current with RX-7 prices think i could sell the car for in it's current condition and what i could sell it for if i put the motor back in and got it running, possibly tuned etc but left the rest alone.

thanks everyone in advance.


Edit: oh and please notice that the turbo mag article shows a 12a motor with a single carb cartech turbo setup in the car, Mike changed that to a 13b with the same 12a side housings and 70's 13b rotor housings with lightweight low compression racing beat rotors and the dual carbbed cartech turbo system.

 

sounds like a empty shell with a busted windsheild, id say 1500-2000 as it sits. or put 3000 into it and have a nice 8000-10000 rare 1st gen. it's only worth what you can convince someone to pay. i could tell you its worth 5000, but you'll certainly never to get that for it.

 

motor and trans would come with the car... so it'd be a complete car that needs to be put back together.

 

Unless you find and spend the additional money to get the car back to it's former glory, it's only an unfinished project to someone else. You may have to bite the bullit on this one and recoupe whatever you can, Like LastPhase said, "it's only worth what you can convince someone to pay"

 

The sad truth is, no two people's 'vision' of a project is ever the same. Makes it real hard to find someone willing to pay premium dollars to pick up somebody else's project midstream.

It's very hard to find people willing to even pay the total material costs of a completed & well-running modification project - - with rare exception, mods always cost more to do than they bring in sellable value, especially when done by hobbyists rather than professionals. A half-completed project that has to be hauled somewhere for completion is a much harder sell.

Add to those normal challenges the fact that this car's been sitting un-run and un-assembled for a dozen years, doing nothing but decaying (wheel chrome, upholstery, windshield as you mentioned - - but also seals, tires, all the other myriad things that go bad if left static too long) in a wet-climate state like Florida, and the picture becomes even less appealing.

I hope you can find someone willing to pay acceptable coin & put this car back to rights, or that your situation turns around and you can do it yourself, but reality is that selling half-achieved projects is just about always a losing proposition, even without accumulated decay.

Good luck.

 

is your car the car in the article or a look alike?

 

yeah its got some nice parts, but it kind of sounds like its in boxes, and just needs a complete restoration?

 

That is my car in the article long before I ever owned it.

Yeah I disassembled the car and it needs to be put back together... most likely with a oil restrictor in the feed line for the turbo. I'm sure it will need the tank, pump and carbs cleaned as well. I drained the carbs when I took them off but I'm sure they are still nasty. The has been stored indoors so the weatherstrips etc are still in great shape.

Oh yeah the car has a racing beat oil cooler with braided lines and both metal and glass sunroofs, hks boost controller.

If all out fails someone traded a nice jeep in at my dealership that needs some work but not much in parts so I might finish up my current project daily driver jeep and sell that for a sweet profit and dump all that cash into the rx-7 and at least get it back up and running and then try to decide from there what to do.

 

Would be a beautiful car all assembled. But being unfinished and a lot of work for anyone to pick up, let alone finish, it isn't worth too much. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to take a FL trip to get the car for the right price but you'll have to hold out to get "the right price" that you're looking for.