Hey guys!

I picked up an 82 bridgeport 13b carb-swapped rx7 after racing VW's for a few years and I'm looking to slowly put the rx7 on track in the future. The goal would ultimately be NASA ST3 but possibly a higher PT class depending on how things go. There's really no restrictions or rules so I'm open there.

Starting point is handling so I'm wondering what kind of setup people are running.
Budget, at a rough guesstimate, would be 1300-ish. I've heard of people using Tokico HP's or Illumina's but I've heard Tokico is kind of in limbo with their supply right now depending on who you ask.

What shocks are you guys running? Spring rates?

Any and all help is appreciated

Thanks!

 

im running tokico blues all around
front I have ground control weld on perches set up, they can be found very reasonably new on ebay
rears I also have weld on perches to my rear for the springs. I think im at 175 rate? but I cannot remember

SO your car has an '85 or later 13b in it that's carb'd ? so 6port? neat, GL with the build

 

https://technotoytuning.com/mazda/fb

 

Do you do any tracking with the car or just spirited driving? This is going to be a full track car so comfort isn't a concern and suspension can get pretty serious

 

the occational autoX, I plan to do more in the spring with mine and the gf's '79 sa22.

for full purpose track car build *on a budget, the GC front adjustables with good shocks are great. probably run you ~$400 or so for the fronts.
Rears, depends if you want to be adjustable or not. you can just get RB's lowering springs (which imo don't really lower it that much), or I think it's eibach who gives you dead coils to cut for "adjustable" height, but once you cut one off, it's off... lol
then some good shocks in the rear

on my car I have a rear strut bar that bends around the shock towers inside the car and a straight bar is going between the towers. THen the piece the bar is welded to on either side bends about 1/4 - 1/2 the way around the shock tower and 2 bolts going through the tower hold it in place. im deployed atm and don't have any pictures to upload... but if you find me on fb im sure I can find the pic and tag you in it. makes a nice difference.

Now cage depending, (im cage-less atm) but have a custom harness bar just going between the seat belt mounts inside the car and honestly it makes a nice difference if you build it correctly. really stiffens up the car more than you would think

for the front in my gf's 79 we have a RB tri point brace, AWESOME is a good word to describe it. im in search of a CP racing quad brace for mine, but if I cant find one i'll just build it - lol like the rest of my stuff (tig welder btw)
I have a 3 way adjustable rear sway bar from RB as well in the rear and since I still street my car I have it on the medium setting.
Glad to see you don't have an SA as the first thing I would have recommended would have been to swap your front brakes out.
Being an 82 though you have the small axle rear (or you should, if the rear is oem). You can upgrade the diff to LSD (if it's not already) but bear in mind you have small axle, you would need to whole rear if you get it from an '83.5 - '85 rx7 (GSL trim is 3.9 and GSLSE is 4.11), or you could just take the pumpkin out of an 81 or 82 GSL and it'll drop into your rear (assuming you have drum brakes rear). personally I just got a 4.88 old pumpkin i'll be putting in my '85, then giving my 4.11 gears to the gf and selling the 3.9 pumpkin from her '83 gsl rear.

that's about all I can think of as far as suspension goes

OH! pan hard kits are nice for our live axles btw

see if you can find me on fb and i'll tag you in some pics

GL with your 7! -Chris Szuba

 

For budget set-up. Ground Control camber plates. Adjustable spring perches (ground control or ebay specials). 2.5" x7"or 8" front springs. Tokico blues, hz1086, in the front. These are for the rear of an 85-86 MR2, but should be stiffer than RX7 blues and also fit the ground control camber plate, which the RX7 does not. HE2317 Tokico blues in the rear. The ground control rear springs with the dead coils are about 200" and will pair well with 300-400# front springs. Yes if you cut too many dead coils you can't put them back, but you can easily put in spacers if needed. How did I know that? ;-). From my experience 350# pairs best with the 200# rears, but I might be trying 400# for my next race (or test).

There are also versions of this using Bilstein Sport shocks (I am still experimenting with them), but for the dollars the Tokico blue based suspension will take you everywhere you want to go. The Tokico blues are $80-90 ea vs $150-200+ for anything else.

 

plus there's a reason these were so popular in the 80's and are still around now! THEY WORK GREAT!



Dan - saw your fb message, sent you a friend request followed up with some pics of my set up. After you accept it i'll add you to the 1st gen rx7 page, we have about 6k members and it's a good group of knowledge with hardly any spam/trolls.

 

Here is my setup that I have been running for for a few months so far... just a street driven 1982 FB. It is a completely different car now... I was on stock suspension/wheels.

-Stance Coilover Kit (Street Spec Springs)
-Techno Toy Tuning Adjustable Lower Control Arms
-Techno Toy Tuning Tension Rods
-15x7's with Yoko S.Drives
-No more bushings up front... all solid rod ends

I still need to do a full write up, there isnt much info on the TTT hardware. It is amazing quality and is the best you can get for the FB chassis. Very happy so far.

 

I agree with this, I didn't mention any of it though being he said budget build lol

 

Here is a post where I show how I installed Bilstein HD struts and shocks on my car.

https://www.rx7club.com/1st-generati.../#post11904648

I run a tri link and panhard bar in the rear.






Here is a video from our last race, nobody was able to get through The Snake or Climbing Esses faster than my car.

 

Good looking stuff! Does anyone sell a three-link conversion or is that custom fab

 

OK, love that video. My favorite bit is your G force gauge:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-l...lZZckF5Z21nRFU

 

Funny you should notice that, you can’t see it in the video but the digital dash does have a lateral G bar graph just under the clock. I looked back at data from the race and we were getting consistent 1.4-1.5 G with a high of 1.7, not bad for 200TW street tires… The red and white BMW that he is following in this video had all pro drivers and ran fast lap of the race, I am sure that if our car had still been running at full potential later when the temps cooled off and the traffic thinned out we could have been right there for fast lap.

Those connectors are for the 2 wideband AFR sensors, since I don't run the car in closed loop for the race and since the sensors have a finite lifespan at full race temps I removed the sensors so they wouldn't get 24hrs of wear for no reason. That turned out to be a better decision than I even imagined, within the first hour we got a crack in out header and all the heat blowing out into the engine bay caused all kinds of gremlins, including a fried TPS, and fuel pump selector switch that eventually took us out of the race.

 

It is all custom fabbed stuff, but it is not very hard to do, just some angle iron, steel tubing and rod ends. This winter I plan to replace the SCCA legal third link with a straight link that will come through the floor, it will be stronger, maybe allow me to design in better geometry, and a lot easier to adjust the pinion angle since I can use right and left hand rod ends.