Another update for you Jon: George was working on your wiring yesterday. You went from automatic to manual? They are waiting on some fittings for my oil system (it's going to have two oil filters on it) so the time is all yours right now

 

Yeah. The "good deal" I got on a car with an automatic is turning out to be pretty expensive. Adding another 10 hours of labor for extra wiring now. Oh well. It's a little late to start over now.

How long were they expecting the fittings to take? Just wondering how long I'll be at the top of the list. Are you going to have a separate dry sump for the center rotor?

 

My theory with the term "RX7" is that it stands for 'retail times seven". There is nothing inexpensive about the car. The fittings are due in over the next few days so I'd say you are at the top of the list until then.

I don't quite understand what George has done with the oil system but from my limited knowledge he is using the oem filter location to run oil to the rear housing and a race in-line oil filter to run oil to the center and the rear irons. This may or may not be correct and I'll have to see it to know what he's done. He claims it's the best thing next to a dry sump system.

 

Good one!

There has been a lot of talk about the center housing oil mod. I just want to chime in and share what Mandeville said about it. First off, they are a great resource for this kind of thing because they cater exclusively to professional motorsports teams, have the benefit of a lot of Mazda's R&D and have tested just about everything I have ever dreamed of, including titanium rotors, under race conditions. Most of their customers have ongoing service relationships with them. They also catalog the condition of the parts coming out of the motors that are in for service.

They tested the center oil feed mod and found it had no impact on bearing life.
He said the key to center bearing life is the balance of the e-shaft, clearances, and something related to the rotors. There certainly may be some benefit to doing that mod, but for those of you that haven't, don't assume you own an inferior product.

 

Well, this time I'll have all of the above so I should be good to go. Based on the above, I wonder where the perception that the center bearing gets starved of oil at higher RPMs comes from. In my case with the Pettit engine failure (center bearing), Roger was right. The failure most certainly came from a lack of a balanced engine and an incorrect assembly of the bearing and numerous other parts.

 

Well my car is basically "done" at Gotham. It's running and, assuming no issues come up in their street tests, I should be picking it up in a couple weeks. I got to hear it running over the phone and it sounds INSANE! Although part of that was because my exhaust was stolen when they were robbed a few weeks ago so it there was no sound muffling at all. Anyway. Here's a couple camera phone pics from last week.

 

Nice! Have fun w/ it!

 

Sweet! It lives. Hope to see you and the car at Gotham in a few weeks

 

nice radiator, and I'm positive it's not a Pettit radiator , it's bigger and cools better.
The Gotham radiator is typically more than 7% cooler than a flux bonded aluminum core (pettit) and more than 15% cooler than copper and brass. The epoxy free 100% tube to fin contact in the core provides for maximum heat transfer and dissipation.

 

any clips?

ps:speaking of gotham...i called for 2 days and noone answered. tried to order something. oh well.

 

There were/are just some loose ends to finish up. Very soon, I hope. Of course, then it will be straight to the body shop. :-/

 

what front bumper is that?

 

It's the burnout front bumper. Going with the full burnout kit from Shine:
https://www.rx7club.com/shineautoproject-161/fd3s-ks-auto-burnout-style-full-aero-kit-now-available-560157/

 

that's a beautiful kit. it should look great.

 

Just thought I'd make a quick post. I got my car back two Sunday's ago. Got it home at 1 AM and took it to the body shop at 8 the next morning, where it's been since. But for 7 whole hours I was the proud owner of the 20B FD. I'm still doing the break in mileage (or will be when I get it back), so it hasn't had the final tune. the RPMs are limited to 5K (which I didn't get close to on the way back) and the boost is limited to 3 pounds (which I only hit once on accident merging onto the highway).

Even driving it pretty cautiously and without it fully tuned, it pulls like a beast and sounds AWESOME! Anyway. Here's some quick pics. The head lights are up cause the fenders and lights weren't totally lined up and when I turned off the lights when I stopped on the way back, the headlight surround got caught on the fender and bent it out, resulting in the driver's headlight being stuck halfway up giving me a great view of the ground three feet in front of the car. Hopefully things will look a little better when it gets back from the body shop and I'll have two working headlights. And, no, I don't think there are any bugs left between Texas and Kansas. They are all stuck to my intercooler.



On the way to the body shop:

 

wow, well done man! cant wait to see it done

 

is that a chevy alt ?

 

No. Well.... I don't think. It was the one that Gotham recommended. It was about a year ago since I talked to them about it, though, and my invoice just says "FD 280 Amp alternator".

 

Do you think this Gotham radiator is better than a Koyo N-Flow? I have a regular Koyo on my 20B now and am going to upgrade it real soon. Looking at the N-flow/Ron Davis radiator. Not sure yet.

 

It's the same alternator they put on my car. Mine was installed quite some time ago too but I do seem to recall it is a GM custom alternator.

 

yeah it does have that GM look to it

 

The engine bay looks great, I like the black ceramic coating on the pipes. When's the car going to be out of the body shop?

 

There is no way I could take the car as soon as it was finished and drop it off at a paint shop. I would have to at least a month of time with the car before giving it up again.

But congrats on having a finished reliable motor.

 

Got the car back yesterday. Spent all day taking it apart again and breaking stuff (anybody have a spare passenger headlight cover and oil temp gauge?). Here's some pics:





Feed hood:



A view of the Burnout flares:



The body guy fabricated a quick cold-air intake. Sounded good at first, but I'm worried it will be too restrictive when the engine is fully broken in and tuned and I get to open it up. Anybody done anything like this before? I'll test it out a bit with and without it and if I keep it, I'll get it cleaned up a bit and ceramic coated like the intercooler/IM piping:



Replacing the interior. The before pic:



And where I left off for the day:



Gotham had mounted the air condenser under the engine, attached to the radiator, so it was the lowest point on the car. Which made it right next to the hot pavement and basically useless during the day and also right out there waiting to get destroyed. You can see how low the bumper is in the pics and the air condenser is another 3/4 of an inch lower than that. Well, here's what happend on the drive home from Texas:



And, since it was welded to the radiator, the radiator took a nice hit too and actually bent the side radiator bracket:



I have now got a custom air condenser that will fit between the intercooler and the radiator. Should keep it from getting destroyed and make the air conditioner actually functional when it's hot.

You can see how much lower the air condenser was than the bumper (though, now it's even lower after the broken bracket):

 

Looks good.. Congrats..