Now I'm wondering if maybe you were sold a stolen/salvaged/mis-labeled car. It sounds like they used another vin number to complete the sale, so God only knows the true history of the car. You might be in for some legal hassles if you want to get this corrected. Personally, I'd just drive it as is...

 

the red car is a 84/85, unless someone swaped the gauges from one.

 

hhahahaha all very interesting but there is no VIN on my dash its been taken out, and the VIN # in the door jam and the firewall does not have a build date, and like i said the registration says its a 81, but now i believe thats wrong, hahaha

 

There is a vin# stamped in the firewall on the passenger side. There should be an aluminum tag next to it. The tag will have the vin# and a 2 digit paint code. One of the letters in the vin is a year code, iirc, don't remember which one.

Somewhere there is a vin decode chart, but I can't seem to locate it.

 

10th digit of the vin is the letter that represents the year the car was made.

A=80
B=81
C=82
D=83
E=84
F=85

 

ok, well its a 81 with alot of swaped parts i guess

 

the white one is a gsl without leather seats??

 

yupp lol

 

The 84/85 GSLs had both leather and velour interiors as options, so the white one with the red cloth seats is correct for an 84 GSL. Also the cloth seats in the red one could be correct for an 84/85 GSL, which I'm still betting it is. I can't believe anyone would swap that many 84/85 parts into an 81 or if it is even possible, given the very different interiors found in these two models.

Still there is something funny about that red car, the door panels look like they are from a GS. The GS door panels often have ruffles in the vinyl at the top, like in your pictures, and it looks to me like there is a hole in the passenger side panel where a door crank used to be. The mirrors are painted red, but these are usually black. And those seats look pretty good, but they don't look quite right for a GSL.

Maybe Kentetsu is right, you've got a chop shot special assembled from various vehicles of questionable origin?

Ray

 

i wonder if mine is the only rx-7 like this, hahaha

 

and i found out a few days ago that my gas filter is up front between the air filter and oil filter, any linked year to this

 

No. I have mine hooked up the same way only because I wanted to keep an eye on the filter after I got the car to make sure no **** was going through it. Just need some fuel line and it'll get put in the original position. You don't want it there too long as the heat coming off the motor may start to vaporize the gas and cause vapor lock

 

The filter will not vapor lock, that is a fuel pump issue. If a vapor bubble were to develope in the filter, it would simply be pushed through the fuel line when the pump kicks on. At most it would cause a burp in the carb. I have mounted in bay filters on several cars and have never had a problem with them. You definitely do need a pre-pump filter though, It protects the pump from tank debris, particularly chunks of rust, which can easily chew up a pump.

There are 4 screen filters in the carb stock, but no inline filters, oem, in the engine bay.

 

If the car has the original wheels it can tell you when it was manufactured and you can guess that its the same year as the car.

 

the vin character on the engine bay vin # or door jam will decode this mystery

 

ive decoded it a this morning only to figure out that it is a 81 but. . . this car has alot of "out of place" parts on it, from what everyones telling me. so really the mystery is not yet solved hahaha

 

It may have been that a previous owner had several RX7s (like most of us) and assembled one good working car from parts or from the junkyard. I wouldn't want to be doing that dash exchange though.

 

oooooo, cool

 

When you decoded, did you use the vin# stamped on the firewall? That is the only one that can't be changed easily.

If it is an 81, and eveything works, someone put a lot of work into changing the dash.

 

yupp i checked every vin # they all turn out to be a 81, so i guess im lucky in buying this car with a younger dash in it