I bought this as a surprise for my wife. It's an '85 GSLSE and had a real nice interior, the outside was a little rough. Anyway, I prepped and with the help of a friend painted it this summer. Got the A/C working great on 134. The only remaining items are to rebuild the tranny (syncros are shot) and buy "RX7" emblems for the front fenders...the holes look bad. I have all the other emblems, just don't have them all on yet.
Hope the pics work OK.





Thought I'd share the restoration of a classic.

BTW, spark plugs are hard to find for this sucker!!

 

Crap, the pics are huge, if someone knows how to downsize we would all apprecdiate it. I'm a realtive newb when it come to posting pics. Also, if someone can tell me how to make the last pic my avatar I would be ever greatful.
Thanks.

 

The pics will resize if you upload them to photobucket and this site, http://www.shrinkpictures.com/ , will make you an avatar.

Beautiful car.

 

that looks really good.

 

Very nicely done. It's good to see a well kept/refurbished stock 1st gen.

 

Very nice. One piece of advice though; are you sure you want to rebuild the tranny? You can usually pick up a used one for a couple hundred bucks, and they (somewhat) rarely go bad.

In fact, how bad are the synchros? Some of us have had great success using a 50/50 combination of gear lube and ATF. The ATF contains detergents which do a great job of cleaning the gunk out of the synchros and getting them working again.

Best of luck with your project!


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spark plugs an be had at napa usually overnight for around $6 per plug. they are NGK BR8EQ-14. beautiful 7!! would love to see some interior and engine bay pics!

 

was your wife surprised? in a good way?

looks like its in amazing shape

 

Thanks for the kind words folks. Took about 8mos to git-r-dun. Would have been a lot less if she had known about it. One thing I learned, I'll never do that again!!

The car has 150,000 on it, I figured the tranny is tired. I can buy a rebuild kit for about $100 and do it myself...no problem.

The interior is why I bought the car. It is in really nice shape, amazing actually. I'll see about getting some good pics.

I have ordered the BR8EQ's as suggested, they should be in tomorrow.

Was she surprised?...ah, yes, big time. She didn't believe me and I had to show the insurance papers to get her to belive me, "Why would I insure a car that I didn't own?" Pretty much a whole bunch of OMG's followed. (and a whole lot more later)

I have never worked on a rotary, so I am in a big learning curve. It seems to run fine, but idles high for a long time, like it takes forever to warm up, maybe normal, I don't know. I was surprised that it's ****ahem*** top speed is about 115MPH, give or take 45MPH. Is that all it has or is the motor tired as well?

 

have you tried putting GOOD fluid in the trans yet? like some Redline MT-90 or Royal Purple?

also if it feels down on power...2 things come to mind. either the cats could be clogged or....if the cats were removed at some point the 5th-6th ports may not be actuating properly.

 

Listen to this man. This trick has so far gotten me an extra year and a half of life out of a tranny that would have otherwise been only fit for scrap. I'm gonna keep using it until I blow it up.

 

Right on the money. Also, the Fuel Filter might be pretty screwed by now as well.

 

My tranny grinded gears like an ole dump truck... I used 50:50 mix ATF and gear oil... Ran that for about 1 week. Drained it out and put Redline MT90 and Lucas oil stabilizer in her.

Shifts perfect, no gear grinding now!!!

 

I find it hard to believe you can undo worn out parts, so I'll have to look into that further.

The cats are still there, and I hope they are not fouled, because I've seen the price of those suckers. 5th and 6th ports? Dunno. I did/am running Seafoam through the fuel, and it definetely helped cold starts. Perhaps there is an additive to clean the ports, cats, etc?

 

The ports are easy to test, and not too hard to clean. they're located on the lower intake manifold. If you can actuate the um..... actuators(they're thwo little tiny keg looking things in an orientation like this \ /) by hand pretty easily, then they are probably working. The way to check for sure is to apply some form of a caked on, grease (not spray on, it's too thin) grease around the little pole coming out of the top of each actuator(not the rods going into the manifold, but the connecting rod to that) and then go do some WOT pulls through the first 3 gears, then pull over, and see if the grease is still there, if it's clean, then the actuator worked, and pulled the rod in, taking all the grease off of it. I say replace the fuel filter first and see if that gives you your power back.

(Oh and if you find that the ports are stuck, or take a good bit of force to rotate, what I did was pull the manifold, soak the port sleeves and the holes they go into with degrease rs and cleaners (by spraying them down like crazy), and then lubing up the sleeves with a high temperature grease and reinstalling.

 

As far as the tranny goes, get a s4 or s5 n/a and just swap you tailshaft over. This will cut your highway rpm down by 500rpm.

 

Thanks man, expect a PM for more detailed info if you dont mind, but right now, there are othre pressing issues...like Santa and such.

BTW Happy Holidays everyone, I'm done 'till 2010, the 25th annv of this car....amazing.