Group C body kit
 

Hey. I was just combing over pictures of first gens for inspiration and ive fallen in love with this Group C body kit, I just need to have one. Does anyone know where I could buy one?
https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.rx7...296f23207f.jpg

In the USA. The wing Hartman Fiberglass. Fenders, front air dam - Black Tie Motorsports. Rumor is that someone has purchased Mariah molds for 1st Gen RX7s, and will be starting to make kits again but these kit are more GTU,GTO style. Not seen any of the above kits/parts on cars in person. Trick is with Group C or wide body kits is to figured out wheel package first. Most people just use flares for other cars and make them work. Like flares for 240Z.

I had always wanted a Group C or wide body and happened to a wide body in great condition earlier this summer.

If you have the big budget you can order entire kits from Australia.

Would be great to find an original kit. Hopefully they will be reproduced.

I can confirm this rumor and give you a bit of a story to go along with it (I also have his name idk if he is on these forums) But the story goes that his family was very close with the Mariah Motorsports family for many years and when the owner died recently the business shut down but the widow thought it would be nice to see her husbands work go to someone they knew and could carry on some of the legacy in some way. Currently I am in talks with him making me an IMSA big lip spoiler and he has had the prototype mocked up and is really happy with it and could put it in production very soon. I don't know what his plans are with the other body kit pieces but I am sure if there is a market for it he would gladly make some.

I will message him and see if he knows about the RX7 club forums and if not I will suggest comes here. Its always great to have more rotary lovers here!

I for one would be interested in one of the fiberglass hoods Mariah listed. I wrote to them several times over the last year but never got a response -- didn't know the owner had passed away.

My god I hope so. The big wing is a must have for my build, i couldn’t have an fb w/o it. I’d love to keep in contact w/ you about it because I just love love love widebody fb’s

I messaged him and will try to get him over here. He is a very nice guy and races an E-Production FB and has a few Mariah Motorsports buddies that go with him to the track so he actually uses the products.

Did Mariah go under because there wasnt enough market / customers to keep the company going. Or was it just the owner's health issues?

Tell him there's money on the floor over here and he just needs to pick it up.

Alright thank you very much

He was active here before and I messaged him and will give him the link to this thread and he said he will stop over and make an appearence. He will be the best to answer any questions of the Mariah Motorsports business as he was close to the family. Look for him to stop over some time shortly!

I'm fairly interested in a CF hood but I'm scared of shipping costs.

I was commenting back and forth with the current Mariah Motorsports molds owner on Facebook a few months back. He also has an account here on RX7Club as well, would take some digging to find the thread where he was talking about the transaction though.

From the sounds of it, he is planning on continuing the legacy by making more parts for the market over the years. I remember reading somewhere that Mariah did have molds for the Group C kit at one point, as there was a build thread stating that the Group C kit was purchased from Mariah. Whether this was a typo or not, I don't know. It would be really cool to get a confirmation on that information though - so we know once and for all.

On another note, Alexis in Australia runs Fibremaz where he's talked about making reproduction Group C kits and shipping them overseas (potentially to me, as a distributor). This has been in talks for a very long time now, but nothing has been seen up to this point. He did make Kamei front air dams that were a huge hit over here in the 10-batch run he did. The coolest part about it is that the Vargas FB's that are all over YouTube and Facebook (the red and blue ones that John and Mike own personally) are both sporting these lips. I personally shipped them both to those guys, so it's pretty cool to see that come full-circle.

The original Kamei air dams weren't all that durable - being Fiberglass Reinforced Plastic (FRP) material. I had 2 over the years (on an 80LS and my 84SE) before they got so brittle, combined with the flapping of the center section, that they both failed at the outside of the intake section, cracking away the middle. The problem was that at speed, airflow under the air dam would allow the center section to flap in the breeze, which fatigued the sides until they broke completely through.

It was at that point that I decided gel-coated fiberglass was a far superior material for air dams for longevity, if not true durability; fiberglass is a lot more expensive to repair or replace, and front bumper / air dams tend to get run up on curbs if you're not super careful. The lower you go, the higher your risk.

If the Kamei reproductions were gel-coated fiberglass, the design might still have the weak points stated above, but being heavier material would likely resist fatigue. The upshot to the original Kamei spoilers was that they weighed about 10lbs. My Mariah Mode4 is about 35lbs - and it's at the furthest possible fulcrum point on the car.

WOW! Thank you very much for all this info. If you ever get anything contact me

Perhaps this is little bit of a topic stretch, but I'm actually looking at making a repro Mariah kit to be used on my car sometime in the future. I got the idea when I was helping out someone with their newly acquired '82 with a Mariah kit installed (engine was blown unfortunately) and I realized that it was the kit I thought looked so great. A bit of research into 3D scanning later and I discovered photogrammetry. While it's not the most accurate thing in the world, it gives a close enough model with using plain old photos without needing special hardware. I'm figuring on scanning his and my car and then working out the kit based on that - I've already done the front of mine and it worked fairly well. I might also just design a kit based on the Mariah one instead of going for full accuracy, although surface modeling is something I've rarely done and CAD is just a pastime for me so we'll see how quickly I can learn...

If this all goes well and I get the models done up nicely I'll be 3D printing them in segments to create a plug for mold production. I'm figuring on fiberglass at least as a start (maybe a really long way down the road I'll try some carbon fiber parts), and it's not like this will happen anytime soon - perhaps the models, but no physical work for a good many months. I've never worked with fiberglass either, but I feel like it's something I can get worked out based on what research I've done already.

So that's that. Not trying to steal the thread or anything, it just seemed like good timing. I'll of course make a thread for the kit building process if anything ever comes of this.