JerryLH3's RX-7 Turbo II Restoration
 

Last July, my 1991 Turbo II blew an oil cooler line. It had served me quite faithfully as a daily driver for over four and a half years at that point. I ended up buying a new (well, used) car as a daily driver with the intentions of finally making the RX-7 my fun car. Flash forward to this month and I had replaced the oil cooler lines, but had yet to get the car running again. Over the years, I wouldn't say I have abused the car, but it certainly has been neglected. I finally decided to take it off the road so that I can do a semi-restoration/modification to finally make it a fun car that I can take out for weekend drives, go autocross, take road trips in, etc.

The project finally began in earnest Sunday with some disassembly. First, the before pictures:

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My friend suggested to break the ice, I needed to just take the grinder to the car and start to grind away some paint. This fender is pretty severely damaged as you can see in the preceding pictures, so we were going to use this for some practice at body work knowing full well (but trying to forget) that this fender will most likely be scrapped. That air compressor in the background was a nightmare to get home, by the way.

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The fender after grinding and some work with the hammer and dollies:

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After filler, some rough sanding, my friend getting impatient, and hanging the fender back on the car, this is what it looked like:

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Not bad, but the fender is tweaked by the door as well, so it's well worth it to take a trip to the junkyard and find a fender in better shape.

After taking quite a bit of things off the car, I'm quickly going to run into a storage issue with bags and boxes of parts.

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The junk box thus far:

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And the car as of now:

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That's it so far. Hopefully, it will move along pretty swiftly, but time and finances will dictate that.

That drivers seat. ACK!
I'm sure many fun miles in that seat. She did us proud!

Fun! Looks like a solid starting point overall, save for a few rough spots. Good luck with the resto, keep us posted. What are your plans for mods and stuff?

And I thought my GTUs was rough!

As far as mods go, nothing too extreme, but I haven't quite decided on everything just yet. The suspension will see a lot of work, as I will probably go with a set of coilovers, camber/caster plates, etc. I've been browsing through wheels, but haven't decided on anything yet other than nothing bigger than 17". My power goals aren't all that lofty, but the standard intake and exhaust will be taken care of. I'm exploring upgrading the stock top mount intercooler as I will retain the stock turbo. I've never been a fan of FMICs and it doesn't meet my goals, so that's a no-go.

Yeah, when it was still my daily driver, I didn't realize just how rough it had become over time. It's finally time to show it some love.

Week 1 has pretty much drawn to a close. I managed to work on it about an hour or so each of the past few days. The interior is close to being gutted. A lot of the interior trim pieces need to be sorted through to see what needs to be replaced, either via new parts from Mazda, or used parts that are acceptable (anything would have to be better than what was in there). Everything in there has been so unbelievably brittle and faded.

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With all of the change, it looks like finances for the project have improved. I think I can now afford to buy a fastener or two that have gone missing.

haha yeah idk some of them can be pretty expensive. i spent 20 bucks at the hardware store the other day just replaceing all the screws missing in my doors and door sills i think i forgot some too.

I've been steadily removing more interior over the past week and a half. The interior is now mostly gutted with the exception of the dashboard and the front carpet.

Today, my friend was over and we went to the junkyard in search of a fender. We found three RX-7s, two that still had passenger side fenders, but neither where in decent enough shape that it was worth paying for. So, we came back to my place and tackled a couple of smaller jobs, polishing the fog lights and repainting the wiper arms.

Here's a before shot of a fog light (they both looked about the same):

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We progressed through four grades of wet sanding:, 400, 800, 1000 and 1500. Then we used some Meguiar's PlastX on the lens. Then we masked off the lens and repainted the trim a satin black (not sure that was the stock color, it looked sort of gunmetallish, but I went with black), and these were the end results:

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We were quite pleased with the results.

Also, for the first time in over nine moths, the engine ran today. We jumped it with my daily driver and it turned over the first time and started. The cold start assist kept it around 2500-3000 RPMs before it started to settle down and promptly stalled. In hindsight, I should have kept the throttle down a little to keep it running, as we couldn't get it to start again. I'm guessing (and hoping) it is now just flooded, but we'll see. The gas in the tank should really be pumped out. The good news is there were no leaks, so all the oil cooler line fittings must be properly aligned and torqued.

Good work so far! Those small jobs really add up over time. Attention to detail will really make a difference in the end!

looks like a good start. Im doing the bodywork on mine right now. sucks cause i really dont know a whole lot about body work. GL

After the results achieved with the fog lights, I decided to pull the FTPs out of the trash box and give it a go. They look pretty good, but the driver's side FTP still seems pretty hazy.

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Nice! It's little details like that that really contribute to making the car look great. It's crazy how crusty exterior trim can date a car so much.

Great progress!

Good to see you still have the TII. I envy your energy and ambition. I'm trying to generate enough personal enthusiasm just to do the windshield wiper repair. Any projected time frame for completion?

John! Good to hear from you! I'd say expected time frame for getting body work, paint and the interior redone is the end of this year or early next. Then I'll have a stock TII, which of course I'll have to mess around with in 2011 and hopefully have it fully the way I want it by early 2012.

Give me a call or shoot me an email sometime, my email address and phone number are still the same.

Jerry, PM sent.

I tried to clean my FTP lenses, and when removing them (yes, I removed the 2 bolts holding each), EVERY plastic mount broke. So now I don't have any FTP lenses. :(

Awesome job so far!

That seat was painful to look at. Are you going to buy new ones or get them recovered?

I'm sure the car is just flooded based on the time frame from start to stall that you described.

I can't wait to see the finished product. Keep up the great work :)

The seats all depend on what I can find. The driver's seat would have to be completely recovered and rebuilt, foam and all. It's pretty much destroyed, especially on the door side, the side bolster has collapsed and the foam up by the shoulder is completely worn away. The passenger's seat could just do with recovering; the foam is all intact on that seat. Of course, if I were to come across a good pair of Infini IV seats for the right price, that would be an option too.

I picked up another load of parts yesterday from the Mazda dealer. The difference between a new part and one that's been on a car for nearly 20 years is quite amazing.

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I also have now amassed quite a collection of OEM parts. While it may seem ridiculous, and my original pictures may not have indicated it, the vast majority of all these parts needed replacing. I started this little collection a couple of years ago in anticipation of one day finally redoing the interior as well as the rest of the car.

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The night of my last update, I found out I was going to be a father, so the RX-7 took a backseat for a week or so while we told everyone and let it sink in ourselves. After that, it was back to work on finishing stripping the interior. The dashboard and carpet came out last Saturday, along with the blower unit and air mix motor/heater core assembly. After a good vacuuming this morning, the interior was pretty much gone:

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There's one major problem area, but after a lot of stabbing at it with a screwdriver, it all appears to be surface rust. This was mainly caused by what I found to be a clogged hatch drain years ago. While not as bad as the hatch area, the surface rust extends down into the storage bin area and behind the driver's seat.

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ALL of this change came from the car hidden in various locations:

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I wanted to come inside for a little while and get away from the 90+ temperatures outside, so I took the instrument cluster with me for a little touch up.

Before:

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And the first brand new parts to go on the car or a part of the car:

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The end result was quite nice, but after further inspection, I need to pull the cluster apart again, as a few stray cat hairs found their way in and I forgot to polish off a water spot. I'm not sure I needed to go to all the effort I went to, but it is better than before.


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That's about it for now. My friend picked up a dashboard for me in Raleigh that a forum member had for sale and he will be bringing that down with him when he comes to visit in July. Now that the interior is gone, I'm going to sort through what is good enough to be sold and raise a little bit of money for the project. Next up, I just need to start a whole lot of body work.

Nice... Loving the progress so far

Great thread. Looking forward to more updates, and ideas to apply to my project.

Very nice job on your project. Should look great with all of the new OEM parts installed. Keep up the good work.

Sweet job

Awesome project! too bad I'm no longer in Tampa or I'd lend a hand.

One day (when a new car worth buying comes out) my TII will get the love and attention she deserves, until then she'll have to settle for reliability mods and performance upgrades that can be completed within the scope of 1 weekend :lol:

It's pretty hot outside today, so after my girlfriend and I did yard work this morning, then cleaned up and went to breakfast, I wasn't about to do anything that required me to stay in the garage today. So, I worked on finishing up the instrument surround and reinstalling the switches into the cluster.

One of the locating tabs was broken, so I went to work on that first:

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A little epoxy and it will work. There's another broken off piece that I must have lost, so this will have to do.

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After we went to the Mazda dealer to order some parts and then lunch, the epoxy was set up enough I could work on it without fear. The bag is 100 Neo Wedge 14V lamps for the headlight, turn signal, wiper and cruise control switches and the warning light cluster. I got them from allelectronics.com and after I saw it was a $7.00 S&H fee regardless of how many bulbs I ordered, I went ahead and ordered 100 of them to get the bulk discount. To replace all lights of this type in an FC requires 19, so I've got plenty if anyone needs them. The green silicone cover is easily removed to expose a regular tiny incandescent bulb.

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Removal of the old bulbs is straightforward enough, just a simple twist lock that requires a small flathead screwdriver. The lower bulb on the headlight and wiper switches has an amber cover that should be transferred to the new bulbs.

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When reinstalling the switches, extreme care should be taken. The mounting posts on my surround already had tiny cracks and I definitely made them bigger and even broke a couple of the posts. Luckily, everything is still secure and none of the switches flop around at all.

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I installed some new knobs and it's now ready to be reinstalled in the car (whenever that day may arrive).

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Here's a comparison of a twenty year old knob and a brand new one. The old one may have had "patina", but I'll take the new one. I'm not out to win the all original concours d'elegance.

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Dam! Do you work at the Mazda parts warehouse. That is alot of new parts. i thought I had a few...

nice project..

Nice knobs!

The FC insturment cluster surround where all those switches mount is a complete PoS.

I have had so many break on me it got to the point where i would not ever use cruiser control because when i went to gingerly turn the CC puter on the CC switch would just disappear into the dash.

I finally just filled the whole thing in with JB weld....MASSIVE amounts of it.

I thought about putting in a little epoxy to hold each switch in place. Of course, I imagine as soon as I do that, one of the switches will cease to work and I'll make it even worse when I wiggle it out to replace/repair.

just ....wow

Sexy!

jerry didnt I sell you something?

I would, no joke, pay someone $500-600 for a black anodized aluminum version of the S5 surround. Something with machine screw threaded posts for mounting all the switches etc...

Of course im sure something like that would cost $2k

Wow. I thought I was a stickler for details... When I saw that you replaced the little piece for the trip odometer-reset I was impressed! Above and beyond is all I've got to say. Great job.

WOW.
Subscribed.

Wow, excellent attention to detail!

Awesome Jerry...glad to see you still deep in it after all these years

No, I wish I did live closer to one though. Sometimes I'm impatient and don't like waiting the measly two days it takes my dealer to get the parts in.

I think that's a compliment. If so, thanks!

Yes, a dashboard and some other various trim pieces that I had my friend pick up for me. He's coming down next week so I'll finally get them. Thanks again for holding them until he made a trip to Raleigh. :icon_tup:

They really messed up with that piece. It's almost like a throw away item anytime you have to pull a switch out. I'd check availability and price on it from Mazda, but I'd scream when I broke a brand new one, so it's not even worth it.

I think if they had made the plastic posts thicker, it may have helped, but I don't know.

Yeah, still in the game, even after having my last one stolen. Good to see you're still in it too, although you've now taken a slightly different path.

Thanks for all the compliments guys. It should look pretty darn good once I'm done. I need to get off my butt and do some body work, but the motivation is hard to get when it's 95+ outside, thus the smaller tasks right now. I may just wait for September to come and then do all the bodywork and paint by Christmas so that it's still done before the baby arrives.

Car looks AMAZING! Cant wait to see it finished!

I got a little more work done the past couple days. I took two overhead consoles, one from my car and a donor, and disassembled, cleaned and put together one that will go back in the car.

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This plug was being a major pain. I eventually cut the plug off and reattached the plug from the other mirror that I was able to disconnect.

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The initial problem with my mirror was the prongs that hold on the bulb for the dome light had fallen off. I figured it was easier and worth my time to just spend a few dollars on a new (used) one.

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I gave the lenses the usual plastic treatment of sanding and polishing to remove some of the yellowing. Once reinstalled the assembly will be finished off with a new dome light lens.

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I also took some time to remove all the switches in the center console, give the trim piece a good cleaning and then reinstalled all of the switches.

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nice work! the guy working the parts counter must hate you lol


wanna sell that steering wheel?

very nice. love the attention you are giving your car. my car is jealous.

I'm toying around with an idea that might work for reinforcing the mounting posts for the cluster switches. There is a local hobby store that sells various diameters of brass tubing. I'm thinking of trying to cut short pieces of the tubing and sliding it over the posts, perhaps using an adhesive as well. Copper tubing typically has thicker walls than the brass variety, so brass might be a better choice. This should work well if the posts are simply cracked. If there is a chunk of the post missing, then you could still use the tubing and fill it up with epoxy and drill a new hole for the mounting screw. Whaddayathink???

nice men!! where did u buy all the knobs?

Seeing how you carefully removed and restored your fog lights remind me of how I brutally ripped my starched once off the mounts when I could have done the same, lesson learned

very nice

The knobs should all still be available from Mazda. I bought mine from Black Dragon, but after checking some of their prices vs Mazda, it was a bit of a price gouge. They don't sell FC parts anymore though.