Let the Budget Sleeper Project Begin!
 

Ok, so a bit of history. the first car I owned 5 years ago was an 86 Rx7 GX. It was my baby. However, my parents were borrowing it for a bit because they sold 2 vehicles at once and I had a deadly 86 Tercel Wagon. Anyway, my mom was driving it one morning and a lady turned right in front of her...totalled. It was a sucky day when I get to college that morning and my buddy is like "dude, that sucks about your car, hey?" and I was just like "WHAT?!!?!". So anyway, the insurance money covered paying off the car and buying it back. My dad eventually found another Rx7 with a blown motor for cheap so we swapped in the motor from my old one as it was recently rebuilt. However, while putting the motor in, we pushed the car onto the street and someone called to have it towed (angry). Anwya, a couple years ago, my dad sold that Rx7 and I have never stopped thinking about them.

Well, just recently, I saw an ad in the paper that said "1986 RX7, good condition, needs engine, $1600 OBO". Well, I just had to look because a blown motor didn't scare me. I went and had a look at the car and met the owner. The owner was an excellent Irishman in his mid-fifties and bought the car when it was a year old. It was in great shape. It had been repainted 3 years ago and re-upholstered 2 years ago. It never saw a winter and he knew how to store it. Needless to say, it was the perfect specimen.

So i offered him $1200 and took it home. Sure enough, blown rear rotor. I at first thought that I would just pull the motor, send it away to get rebuilt with a streetport and call it a day. However, I underestimated the price when I told my wife about the whole project and thought it could be accomplished for $3500. However, the rebuilt engine alone (with a couple goodies) was going to cost me about $2950...plus $1200...plus a new clutch...plus if anything was wrong... put me a ways over what I had told the misses. So, I was trying to figure out an alternative...

Then it came to me...We have so many JDM turbo longblocks kicking around here in Canada. After a little searching and some questions, I found it. An S5 Turbo in good shape and I got a 30 day warranty to test it and 30 days after that to drive it. Good enough, I bought it shipped to my door with taxes for $1500. That leaves me a little bit of room for error and some goodies to make the swap work. It arrived today and the compression is good! (very relieved)

So here it is. My plan is to leave it looking like a completely stock S4 NA. Phone dials and all :) ...although I don't know how long I can stand them. I have always wanted a great sleeper. I found some piping from someone on the forum to frontmount the stock intercooler and have been sourcing a few parts to make the turbo work. My plans in the near future are:

Port the wastegate
Upgrade and rewire fuel pump
Add an intake
Frontmount the intercooler
Get a freeish flowing exhaust
FCD
BOV
Tune with SAFC-II
Probably a couple things I forgot.

If you have any other suggestions that I should think about, please feel free. The biggest hurdle will be the time to spend splicing the S5 ECU to work with the S4 dash harness, but that is how I want to do it.

Anyway, here are some pics and I will try to keep a blog of how it all works out.

http://i165.photobucket.com/albums/u...bum/rx7001.jpg
http://i165.photobucket.com/albums/u...bum/rx7004.jpg
http://i165.photobucket.com/albums/u...bum/rx7005.jpg

I know this may not be the best sleeper ever as I don't have a huge budget and will be my DD, but it should still be fun. Certainly better than a 97 Rav4 with 120 ponies! :)

the phone dials are fun, but when you actually make power they suck. so much sidewall and so little width, its a bad combination.

Yeah, I will definitely have to add that to the list. However, new rims and tires would be around half my budget for the whole project and that would be just rims, but it is something I would like for the handling aspect too. Also, I would have to do a 5-lug swap with some bigger brakes if I was going to do that...

well its definetly asleep, just kidding

hurry up and do a 5 lug swap on that thing!

What a dick, just because our cars are sexy dont mean they gotta tow our shit away. I bet you just snapped on him eh?

Anyways, nice car man only thing I dont like is the maroon but thats all personal preference. Are you swapping it out or?

Well I absolutely hated the maroon for most of my life until I saw this one. it's really hard to tell by the pics, but the previous owner replaced all of the carpets with new ones that look brand new and the interior is so nice that it just looks classic. The last two I had were gray and that was ok, but I haven't seen an interior in as good shape as this one so I will probably leave it...for now...

your project sounds sick. thats a lucky motor find! but that red interior has to go!!

She RUNS!!! Got her started tonight. It took a bit as we were missing a ground wire going by the Main fuses. However, once that was sorted out, it would crank. It was close, but then the battery died. So once we swapped spark plugs and boosted the battery, off she went! It only took about 3 minutes of cranking. It was idling by itself too which was excellent.

Holy cow was it loud though!! The J-Spec longblock came with the J-Spec downpipe which doesn't have any pre-cats so that was all there was for exhaust plus the intake and a ported TB. It was like Harley loud. It was running really well and idled pretty well even though it was at 500 RPM. I will need to bump that up to around a grand. Now all that's left to do is get the driveshaft and put all the little things back together. So excited...

On a side note - On my way home, I stopped at the DQ for a treat for my wife and a young guy in a Skyline GTR was in the lot. It was pretty nice. Wished I would've had the 7 to chat it up.

Anyway, it has been a long time since I have been so excited! :D

A huge thank you to everyone on the club as there is NO way that I could've done this without you guys.

Congrats! Car looks clean. I've also got an 86 base, also currently looking for an S5 TII to swap in myself :) I had also planned on leaving as much as I could stock :) Glad to hear yours is running, looking forward to more details.

that was fast! lets see some pictures of engine bay

need a 5 lug conversion? I've got one from my 88 GXL.

sorry but when you drive a 2 seater with rear wheel drive and dual exhaust in that condition, you do NOT drive a sleeper.

yah, because of instead of a sleeper, it is a "waker", and wakes up your neighborhood at night when you come home

you should paint some fake rust on it and stuff...j/k

Nice car. If you want it to be a sleeper you should just get some stock wheelswith a bit more width from another car. and keep the center caps. I went to the junk yard and picked up two 88tii rims for $40.

And, 5-lug FTW

Your next project should be 5 lug swap with T2 brakes, along with the rest of the drivetrain. Good job.

complete the "sleeper" look by sleeping your headlights. AH HA HA. jk

cool project. I'm waiting for my n/a to go before going t2... but i'm still in school =(

nice looking car. Should be surprising to a few people.


While I do think your car is a sleeper, I submit one of the ultimate sleepers for RX7club to consider.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/79053...QQcmdZViewItem


With traction it should be a mid 11 sec car.


BC

Proof positive that Tim Allen is alive and well.

car looks pretty clean. cant wait to see the turbo engine in it though

I'll post some pics tommorow when I am back working on it and hopefully get an Auto driveshaft to get it driveable. However, I would like to drive it and make sure everything is ok before I frountmount the stock IC...although it would be nice to front mount something a little bigger. Does anyone know if it would harm the engine if I drove it for a bit with the stock intercooler and no hoodscoop? Because it's a J-Spec, I don't plan on breaking 4000RPM's for about 1000 km's so it would probably just be until then.

As for 5-Lug, that will be the next project, but that is not always so cheap as there are the parts for that plus then you need to find some rims and tires. So the next project is between that and the turbo rear end and driveshaft.

Anyway, I am very curious to drive it as I have never been in a Turbo Rx-7...just a bunch of N/A 1st and 2nd Gens. Also, it will be a little bit different as the S4 TB I got ended up being ported with a set of the butterfly's removed. I am sure it will be tricky for me to keep the revs down for the first bit :).

hey there, cool project. I am a huge fan of the sleeper. Work on my own right now.

I decided to go with the v-mount intercooler to add to the sleeper style. but if you are sticking with the stock ic, without the t2 hood, you should mount it in the front. otherwise it will heat soak and defeat its purpose.

nice job getting her running. cant wait for more pics

dont forget to hange your secondaries to 720cc.

Get a boost gauge atleast. You'll want to know whats going on.

And S4 to S5 will end up costing you more.

Good luck ;)

Crap man..I though someone had Stole MY Car!..( and put a Complimentary TII in!),then I noticed the Interior(mine is Blue!),and said"ah,no such luck!"...haha!..So that is what you have been working on eh Chief?..Nice..I'll send you Pics of It's "sister" if you give me your Email!..( I bought one,same color..Same condition!)

just for curiosity's sake, got pics of the donor car?

What about Fiero's...mid engine, RWD, two seaters... :D

Alright, it is time for an update! Somehow I missed that a few people had replied, but here is what has been going down.

The car runs and she drives. There were a few kinks to work out and leaks to fix along the way, but it is mostly done. The major issue I am having is with the automatic driveshaft I got (I think). My whole car shakes when I let off the throttle, put it in neutral, or coast above 35MPH...when you hit 65MPH it is really really bad...but the only thing is that it is not an issue when you are giving it any gas. I am going to probably take the auto and manual driveshaft to a shop and see how much it would be to use the spleen from the auto on the manual shaft and change the U-joints. That way the shaft wouldn't be too short, it would have the right spleen and new U-joints. Hopefully it won't be too much, but I kinda doubt that. To get the mazdatrix Turbo tranny to N/A rear diff up to Canada is close to $350 bucks which I could probably get a used Turbo rear-end, half-shafts, and driveshaft...but again, this is a BUDGET sleeper project. I was hoping just to use the auto one and be done with it...oh well no luck.

I also have an exhaust leak between the JDM downpipe (which does not have any pre-cats :) ) and the N/A catback exhaust as it is pushing the exhaust back about two inches. I will have to take it to te exhaust shop and have them trim it down and properly join them. Even with the exhaust leak and only a main cat, it is really quiet which I wasn't expecting.

As this is going to be my daily driver, I am keeping the power steering and A/C which means that there isn't much room at all for getting piping to frontmount the stock intercooler around there. I am tempted to buy a turbo hood to make life simpler, but it would probably be just as expensive, loose some of the sleeper aspect, and I can't find one for the life of me (on the prairies of Canada). I have been driving with the N/A hood which isn't great, but I haven't gone past 4k RPMs or half throttle so it will be ok while I break in the engine and figure out what to do.

After that, I just have to mount a couple gauges, break it in and she will be ready to go. If I can remember, I will post some pictures of the car and the engine, but be warned that I didn't clean every piece of the engine before installing so it isn't super pretty :).