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Mirrors, door moldings, fender moldings, side skirts. and front lip have all been installed.
Wet sanding, polishing, glazing, sealing, and waxing. For now, this paint job is as good as it's going to get. There are many imperfections, but it's a solid 10-footer.
All exterior lighting has been installed - headlights, FTP lenses, turn signals, fog lights, sidemarkers, taillights and third brake light.
Rear emblems have been painted silver (or "aluminum", whatever the can said it was) and clipped in.
The hatch lock cylinder has been installed, as well as the hatch opening mechanism. No more reaching in through the third brake light hole to pull the rods!
Moldings around the hatch have been replaced, as well as the hatch to body seal. The sunroof seal has also been installed.
This has been an AMAZING restoration thread!!! I can't wait to see how this car turns out. I did check the website you suggested, leather seats.com and they do not have a listing for an S4 RX-7 sadly. Was your set a custom order?
I'm about halfway done with the driver's side door. Wiring harness, window regulator, window, inner door handle, and all latching and locking mechanisms have been installed along with new door seal, window channel, and outer window seals. Next up is to get this far on the passenger door, before wiring in window switch relays, putting in new speakers, sealing it all up and finishing with the interior door panels.
Funny you mention that. I've been thinking that DGRR is an absolute necessity for me next year. So, yes!
Awesome. Gives you plenty of time for your build completion. I believe we could caravan with about 6-8 other cars too so we'd have some support vehicles ect..
Had to take a couple of months off while the wife and I did some house projects (interior paint, new flooring, sold some furniture and bought some new stuff), but I'm back at it again.
The interior is nearing completion. I had to wait on a new gauge hood from Japan, but now that is back in as well as my Momo Monte Carlo steering wheel. The horn button is from Revlimiter.net. I have unfortunately saved some very big ticket items for last and they will probably be my hold up. New windshields are SCARCE and I need to see what's available used before going that route. I still need to buy an exhaust, and every used driver side seat-belt rail I've found doesn't meet my expectations (yes, I know about the recall. No, a dealer is not touching this car at the moment). I also need to get my set of wheels either re-finished or powdercoated and have new tires mounted.
Its CRAZY to see your updates are still going strong..
I remember looking in on ur resto updates years ago. Ive since lost an Rx7 to hurricane IRMA and just got back into a 91 recently.
Well, im Back on the forums and i just happened to run into your thread again....
Your build is an inspiration to alot of members including myself and im glad u are now seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.
Looks absolutely amazing!!
I made some progress this weekend with a few minor things. Rear carpet is in, along with the cargo straps and the driver's side storage bin. Need to redo some mounting for the battery tray before the passenger side one is in. But I wanted to end the weekend on a real high note, so I did this:
Got the battery tray and battery installed Friday night with the help of a friend. He also did a marvelous job getting the rear speakers installed.
Once it was all wired up, I wanted to test some electrical components. Sat in the car, flipped the switch to ACC, and .... nothing! Turns out I forgot to flip the circuit breaker to on. After that minor hiccup, real testing could begin.
I counted 8 known issues after some testing.
Driver's side brake light
Driver's side turn signal
Stereo would not power on
Power windows
Clock on warning light cluster
Reverse lights
Cigarette lighter
Fog lights
Yesterday, I went to it and immediately fixed the stereo power up issue. Replaced a blown fuse and it powered up, but no sound. More on that one later.
The fog lights either decided to work later on, or my friend may not have knelt down far enough to actually see the fog lights. They worked when I checked a second time.
The driver's side brake light and turn signal were similar issues. Two terminals (ground and a bad power wire) were heavily corroded. I replaced the terminals and both of those worked.
No sound turned out to be a little trickier. It's the one system I almost completely rewired so I knew it could be many things. First, I checked the amp power wire from the battery hoping for an easy fix. All the connections were sound. So, I removed the radio from the dash and looked at my dash harness looking for anything amiss. Turns out I forgot to run power to the AE system on connector J-02. I spliced in a power wire and added it to the harness. I also added the power wire to my Bluetooth receiver to this circuit, removing it from taking +12V from the cigarette lighter. Hoping that everything else was good to go and it was simply this missed power wire, I tried again. And I had sound!
That leaves several other issues that still need fixing, but I am tracking them down one by one.
I mentioned Bluetooth receiver in that last post, but I'm not sure I ever shared what I did there. After I decided to leave the stock stereo in, I knew I would need some form of auxiliary input so I could enjoy some music or podcasts while I drove. Initially, the plan was for an auxiliary input jack to plug a phone into. Now, too many phones have lost headphone jacks over the years for this plan to work very well. So, I went Bluetooth. How I did this was by intercepting the output from the CD player and running it to an auxiliary jack. The auxiliary jack is then plugged into a 3.5mm jack to RCA adapter, which is then plugged into a 12V Bluetooth receiver mainly meant for boats, but just fine for automobiles as well. I think I missed taking pictures of a lot of this, except for when I ran the CD audio output cable outside of the head unit many years ago.
So there is the head unit on my coffee table in several pieces. I was after the audio output from the CD player.
That connector on the circuit board runs audio output to another location on the head unit.
Unplug the connector, snip snip, and there we are. A typical three wire audio setup.
Outside of the head unit and ready to go wherever I want it.
This is where that wire terminates on the head unit. You can see "CD" and below it the three pins "R G L".
I didn't get any pictures of the rest of my wiring, but you can see my Bluetooth receiver on the passenger side floor in this picture. It is mounted where a dash speaker on the passenger side would go.
Anyway, it works! With a CD inserted and spinning away, the head unit plays audio from the Bluetooth receiver which my phone easily found and connected to.
This has been an AMAZING restoration thread!!! I can't wait to see how this car turns out. I did check the website you suggested, leather seats.com and they do not have a listing for an S4 RX-7 sadly. Was your set a custom order?
I know this is (relatively) old and maybe you've already taken another path, but I've had experience with leatherseats.com back when I had my NA Miata. They work really well with customers- I would contact them. I wouldn't be surprised if they still have patterns for S4's stashed away somewhere and could whip up a nice set of covers for you. I was super happy with the covers they sold me for my 97 M-Edition Miata.
Damn, I missed that comment too. I think I bought mine off of eBay (was able to use a coupon or something at the time to cut down the price), but the vendor was leatherseats.com. As the above poster said, I would contact them. I see they don't list S5s anymore either, but they sure did make them before.
This thread will soon draw to a close. Since the last update, the interior has been almost completely finished. The only thing left to install is the sun visors, as I have misplaced (yeah, they're lost) the correct tapping screws. The cowl, windshield wipers, and windshield trim have all been installed. Wheels have been cleaned and the tires I bought a few years ago have been mounted. These were put on the car last weekend with some clean center caps. Today, I spent some time under the hood tidying up as we get closer to the first start. Reattached heater hoses and AC hoses, put the throttle cable back in place, and got the intercooler in.
The only major component not installed is the exhaust. Think I'm going to clean out the garage and sell some no longer needed tools and parts to fund that. About all that's left before I start the car is to change the engine oil and filter, air filter, transmission fluid, differential fluid, engine coolant, spark plugs, and spark plug wires. Then, I'll fuel it up and see what happens.
I went to Mazda and had two new keys cut instead of having a copy of the original made. Attached them to some key chains and I have a key for every possible mood:
Why, yes, that is a Rand McNally road atlas in the seat pocket. I don't know if I will ever use it, but I wanted it for nostalgia purposes.
