I just bought my first RX7. I found the car in the paper and picked it up for a measely $500. The car sat around a little, but the owner took care of it and started it once a month or so to keep the apex seals moist. It's a 1985 GSL with 130000 miles on her. She runs great and the interior is in great shape for an 85. The car is pretty much stock, and I have a background in mechanics, so I can keep her running. I've had to do a few minor repairs over the last month, but not too much. I had to replace the tires, both ball joints and the clutch cylinders. My first move was to do a tune up and gained some performance and milage.

What I would really like to know is, how can I get a little more HP out of the stock motor without spending too much $$. It doesn't seem to have much power when I try to pass. If I'm doing 50, and drop it into 3rd, it seems to take a while to get some speed out of her. I am more confident about passing with my 6 cyl suv, I thought these roteries were supposed to be fast.

 

Hey, and welcome to the forum. Check out the faq page at the top of this forum, it'll help you out. www.racingbeat.com and www.mazdatrix.com are great sites for performance upgrades like bolt ons and a lot of other stuff. Headers will really help a lot for our cars/rotaries. A rotary will get quicker by streetporting, bridgeporting, and conversions like t2 motor swaps and if you want put a 20b in there. Oh ya, post some pics of your ride when you can.

 

Welcome to the forum. These rotaries can be fast, and you also have to take into consideration the age of the car. For its time frame it was pretty quick. If you want more speed, like twinkletoes said, there is porting, motor swaps, and if you want to use the same engine you can always turbo it. Everything will have to be custom done if you decide to go that route though.

 

Start off simple: For power, do the exhaust, especially if it has 25 year old clogged cats on it. Just make sure you keep it street legal if you have emmissions on it (in some places it doesn't matter for old cars.) On the fuel injected cars, simply freeing up the exhaust and tweaking the air intake nets quite a bit of power, I don't know too much about the carbed variations and how that translates. But most people when they get the carbed cars need to rebuild/replace/tweak the carb.

But like someone above said, the car really isn't built for speed, at least in stock trim. What it IS built for, is HANDLING. Replace that suspension. It doesn't even need to be something really expensive, throw on some new struts and springs and you will have an entirely new car.

Oh yeah, don't forget the tune-up if you havne't already done that. The most power I ever freed up in one of my RX-7s was when I actually replaced the spark plugs.

 

FIRST THINGS FIRST, before you start to mod this thing make sure your secondarys are opening. I did alot of work to mine and wondered why it never got faster and the secondarys were not opening. without them opening you car will always be really slow.

 

In the FAQs at the top of the forum is a link to a thread tittled 'Bringing your RX7 back to life'. Go through everything in the thread, bring the performance back to oem, then you can start modding for more hp. If the engine is in good condition, exhaust and carb work can give you a net hp gain of 40% over stock, without opening up the engine for porting.

Welcome to the Darkside.

 

Why do we always say that????????

I prefer to think of it as an "Enlightenment", rather than the dark side.......................

 

[QUOTE=Rogue_Wulff]Why do we always say that????????

Thats what i was going to say.

 

Let's see how I can explain that.

Going to a 1st gen, as opposed to the newer ones, tends to be a step back in time. The newest gas powered device I have bought that came with a carb is my weedeater. That's the easy part of the explaination.

The harder part is the obsession that these cars become. The amount of time, money, parts, tools, energy we we put into our cars becomes an addiction. How many members can say they don't get a bit depressed when thier car is down or they haven't been able to drive it for a while? We all get some sort of an adrenaline rush when we're driving our 7s and are in a Dark mood when we can't.

With all of the advancements that have been made in automotive technology, we make a concious (sp) choice to take a step back in time to what a true sports car was meant to be. The Dark Side, in some ways, could be construed as more of the Dark Ages of motoring.

Besides, it sounds cool and probably has most of the newbies scratching thier heads wondering, 'Wtf have I gotten myself into'. lol

 

We say that because the rotary is the begotton stepchild that only rotorheads now how to work on and understand, once you own a rotary you'll keep owning one, like a disease but a happy one LOL

 

yeah its kinda like herpes... uhhh anyway everytime you say "welcome to the darkside" trochoid i wanna go paint my car black and tint the windows and do somthing like kill some mustangs but unfortunitly i ran outta spray paint a while back after doing the underside of my hood.... I know what its like bein sucked into the addiction to rotarys..my buddy got a 2nd gen and after realizing how small yet powerful they can be i wanted one...and i got my 85 gsl-se and now im dumping all my money in her..

 

Thanks for all of your advice. After my Jimmy (95) and my Ford (02) (sold it to buy the Jimmy), it's nice to get back to the originals and the simplicity of carburation and no computer controls. I can see myself spending lots of time and $$ working on this one. I love it already. But after owning an older Harley for many years, I'm used to working on something non-stop.

I did do a tune up, the first thing I did when I got it home. I did get a boost in hp after I did that (the old plugs were toast). And I'll get some pics up soon.

 

post pics of the plugs too. I always like seeing roasted plugs

 

^^Lol^^

 

that sums up my situation to the letter...

but Mr T. you forgot to remind everyone of one thing,
lube ur apex seals! stay away from pistons! and i pitty tha foo who dont!

 

You're right, I forgot the lube part, which infers the pre-mixed rotary smell. And some of the pre-mixes smell pretty good.

For those of you who choose to address me in a more formal manner, not that I care, my ego really isn't that big, I prefer Prof, T. lol With nearly 200 hours of higher education, I should be called something, politely, and Doc has already been taken and well earned by it's user. Odd thing is, I was nicknamed Professor in Jr. Hi.

 

Ask and ye shall receive. Here are some pics of what a $500 RX-7 looks like. Sorry whitey, I tossed the plugs after I had a good laugh with my dad.

 

And one more.

 

Yes!!

Ray

 

dude thats awsome, I got my 85 gsl for 1400$ and its only about half as nice

 

The seats are still in nice condition, I have the covers on to keep them that way.

 

Put a header and an exhaust (racing beat) if you don't have emission testing. It will make a HUGE difference.