Hi
 

Hi, I'm a new member here, but I've owned my RX7 for about a year now.

It's white with a tan primer front end (thanks to a local RX7 guy. If you're on here, jay, give me a holla!). The passenger fender is pretty banged up, but better than the peice of rust I used to have on here!

It's a GS model with rear disc brakes, a sunroof, and no turbo. It still has the 12 motor.

When we were taking my fender off, we found a couple of bolts that were rusted/corroded pretty badly, and, since my car might not be running for a while, I thought of an idea.

I want to do a complete restoration on the car, including replacing every bolt. Most of the stuff seems pretty straightforward, but is there any advise you can give me on this?

Thanks,
Danny.

Actually, I am on here, and quite often to be precise :D

Dude, it was me that told you about this place a few months ago.
And don't tell me you KEPT that fender on there? That's not sanitary!

Oh, I thought it was one of the second gen guys.
I couldn't get that fender that I thought I could get, and it was black anyways.
Instead of just posting useless crap, do you have any advise?

That's pretty harsh :)

If you want to do a total restore, that means breaking everything down, removing everything, replacing EVERYTHING, repainting EVERYTHING, sandblasting any rust, the frame, anything. That's a lot of work. But go for it, it'd be nice to see a fully restored one. You're best bet is to keep every bolt you remove, and before you start piecing everything together, organize all them and then count and then buy, thats what my old man did with his truck (but still never put it back together), but he said that was probably the smartest thing he had done with the truck so far.

My advice : Take your time, and do it right the first time, you'll spend more time backtracking than you will in being precise and slow, but getting everything right.

yea, that was a nice way to thank someone who tells you of the greatest rx7 forum ever.... :rolleyes:


aaaanyways; my biggest piece of adivise right now would be to get a Tap & Die kit. you are going to break and ruin alot of bolts most likely. this will be the quickest way of fixing. oh and you'll need a nice drill bit set as well.

Yeah, but he knows I was messing with him.

I was planning on replacing EVERY bolt. EVERY one. I want a COMPLETE restoration.
THanks for the advise though :)

exactly why you will need a tap and die kit. not every bolt is going to come out. alot are gonna break, so to even get a new bolt in there.. you will need to drill the hole, and re tap it.

Damn. I don't have that stuff. Oh well, I'll borrow it from someone.
Any other stuff I should look out for (parts that just don't come off, etc)

ha every bolt...to do that your going to need a-lot of time and money...I'm still working on a complete restoration and I'm going on 4.5 years...I havn't had to rethread anything yet...just be careful when you take them off you don't want to over torque them!!

Add many cans of PB Blaster to your list. That will save innumerable nuts and bolts. Another option you might look at is getting on of those vibrating cleaners, for nuts and bolts fron Eastwood. Add one of thier plating kits, and it may be cheaper in the long run than replacing all of them. The other plus is, besides saving money, you bought new tools doing it.

Zac, hes in NM. Nothing rusts out there. Stop scaring him! :D

Uh yea, lotta money your gonna spend on fasteners. Buy in bulk once you get the sizes measured. www.mcmastercarr.com has loads of bolts. And for a complete resto, the cash on bolts is gonna pale by the $ your gonna spend resto'ing all the parts. The fact that you dont have a tap and die kit tells me also that you probably dont have the tools and facilities to take on this project. However, you can achieve great results with alot of time, patience and cleaner. Look at brownmound , Max7 and Kenetsu <sp> cars in a recent thread. They have some clean lookin cars, but not fully restored. Hang in there, and dont bite off more than you can chew. I did the same thing in my younger days and I never finished the car.

Well, what I'm gonna do is to just replace the bolts I take OUT. For now at least.

Thanks for the website there, Carl. It'll help tons.

I have the tools to do most of the stuff I've had to do ("Cherry picker," ratchets, jackstands), but is there any specific tools that most mechanics wouldn't usually have? Like what would I need to rebuilt my carberater, because I think I'll need to do that soon.