I had to park my car before winter because of the rust in the wheel wells, I started to rip out the upper suspension mounts. I was planning on fixing the rust, but then the engine in my DD locked up, so I had 2 days to get the 7 back on the road. So I spent a couple hours looking at Peejay's 3-link in progress, then made my own using a 20" turnbuckle with delrin bushings It still needs a little bit of work to be perfect(new pins to fit the bushings better and lock nuts to take the play out of the adjuster), but it works great. The nicest part is since I used a turnbuckle I didn't even have to measure or anything to get the pinion angle right, it's adjustable! I'll put up some pictures tomorrow, it looks like **** right now, since there's a big nasty hole in the back of the car, but once I put the new pins in I'll weld a cover over it.

 

Hey local dude, love to see those pics, did you need to weld in brackets....

 

Yeah, I cut out the floor, welded a bracket to the top of the diff case, welded a 1/4" to the crossbrace right behind the seats for support, and welded the bracket to the plate. I'll see if I can get some pics now, but I don't know if they'll come out at all, my camera sucks in the dark.

 

I'm getting all my parts together to do a major rear end upgrade, will need to weld the brackets also.

PM sent

 

Here's some really bad pictures of it, my only camera is my cell phone and it won't take a decent picture when it's dark.

 

i cant really tell whats going on there, but im very interested, i may have to do a custom suspension setup, seen as how my car is rusting out as well.

 

cool matt, glad you got the 12a turbo beast running again!!!.. another boosted nikki back on the road!!! i would leave the hole in the back of the car.... you could dump out the moldy old stinky cheese while your boosting down the road!!! LOL

 

The first picture is the 1/4" plate welded to the car with the bracket welded to it, the second picture is the bracket welded to the top of the rear end.


It's having some boosting problems right now, but it'll be getting tuned soon so I can run up to 16psi. I'll probably keep it around 12psi on the street since 8psi is enough to give me traction problems .

 

traction problems at 8psi?? man, that's depressing. I'm running 10 psi with a similar setup, and I'm barely chirping second, there's a problem here(and it's not my clutch). I mean it's quick and all, but my car isn't as fast as it should be

I like the fab work on your car. I've been keepin up with the progress on your car for quite some time.

 

that sucks.. what setup do you have? maybe its something simple thats robbing your power potential...

 

I'm not trying to threadjack and go into my problems. I've bought some parts from you in the past to get this setup together, and now that it is complete, it sounds like I just need to talk to you for a few to figure out what the hell is wrong. Mind if I get a good number and time to reach you at this week? (my setup is: 12a SP, turbonetics hybrid s4 turbo, oer 45 mm carb, rotaryshack carb hat, locked dizzy, large spearco intercooler. I feel like I should be able to lay down some rubber with that!) Sorry coldy13, i'm desperate to get this thing working right.

 

I don't care. That setup should be a lot faster, should be able to lay down rubber into 3rd at least, or all the way through 5th if you don't have the best tires. My tires are 205-60-13 BF goodrench comp t/a with maybe 1/16" tread left and at 5psi I can spin 'em in 3rd. The ceramic 6puck helps though

 

call me.. 818-693-1031 anytime

 

Hey you looney bastage!

You need some *triangulation* on that thing! Not just side to side but fore-aft! No wonder you're flexing that thing frontways and backways, you're hanging the load way out on the end of a stick basically.

Note that you don'te necessarily have to have big huge bars running every which way... double skinning of certain areas can do the same job less obtrusively. Curved things help stiffen and strengthen things up too. Ever try to bend a curved piece of sheetmetal perpendicular to the curve?

Take a look at the way the double skinning (.125" over 22-gauge, a little overkill) was done in the first attachment for example. The top plate extends quite a bit beyond the top flat section and curves down slightly. Then look at the rear-facing plate - it's one big compound there. The top welds across a curved section, the bottom welds across a *heavily* curved section (the driveshaft tunnel itself!) and the plate *itself* is curved! In order for any of that to flex, not only would it have to bend round-sectioned metal but it would actually have to stretch significant areas as well. Not gonna happen!

Then look at the second image (which if it comes out right should be 3link06crop) - the way the actual bracket attaches to the crossmember. Again, it's not just a simple weld flat to a plate, there is a little lip that extends downwards, under tension in accelerative loading.

So we have a short fat bracket that is trying to pull up on a short vertical section of sheetmetal on the front end, and pressing down on some double-skinned complex curves on the other end.

What you DON'T see in the pics, is the additional chunk of plate capping the front end of that bracket, further tying the two sides together as well as bracing them to the crossmember still further.

I'm further considering making a "taco" gusset to go from it to the floor, now that I'm no longer using the center console/armrest. Why? I like overkill, and while the mount doesn't visibly move, it does "pong" the bins cover sometimes on hard acceleration...!

 

Totaly
Tubular
Thread

 

OMG someone else on the forums goes to my school and i didnt know it WTF. I start later this year. I think I may have seen your car when I went for orintation(sp)

 

You might have, depending when you went to orientation. My car has been parked in columbus all winter until now though. I started october '04, still have about a year left. UNO is a good school, but you'll find out quick that Lima is a **** hole.

There's a couple more RX-7's around here too. I know one kid with a nice TII, new engine, hybrid stock TII turbo w/ 60-1 compressor. And there's a teacher here with a bridgeport 12a with a racing beat holley.

 

thats great! ill make sure i never go there.. LOL
matt, your crazy!

 

He isnt kidding about Lima being a **** hole. I stayed a week up there for some reason cant remember what now and it was the ******* pits.