sup_mario

I'm kinda confused on your story man. lol Sorry.

daviddeep

iTrader: (4)

Take a look at the thumbnail I posted above. That's a page from the original Mazda brochure that tells you how your car was equipped from the factory. If it is a Sport (or GXL which are the only cars that came with five lugs from the factory), it should have the 10.7" vented rear rotors. Any five-lug S4 ('86-88) car would have come from the factory with the four-piston front brakes as well.

There were no five-lug S4 cars with solid rear rotors. The four-lug cars were the only ones with solid rear rotors until 1989 when Mazda did away with the four-lug models, but still offered the base brake setup on the GTU. (Yes, it's a little confusing. In 1988, the GTU was essentially the '87 Sport plus LSD; for 1989 Mazda made the GTU the equivalent of the base car just with five-lug hubs. This is of course different from the GTUs...)

My guess is that a previous owner had a parts car or two laying around and scavenged parts from it for your car. This included the hatch that has a rear wiper (from a GXL or TII) and the rear calipers and solid rear discs from an S5 base car.

waldog

iTrader: (12)

Why does that brochure not show ABS as a option? I thought in 88, ABS was an option on GXL?

daviddeep

iTrader: (4)

Because that was the '86 brochure. Here's the '88 which confirms that ABS was available on the GXL and TII:

waldog

iTrader: (12)

Wtf was I thinking. lol

Thanks.

b20forlife

iTrader: (2)

ok cool thanks. by looking at the brouchure it looks like me car is a sport model. now is there a difference in diamiter size between the s4 vented and the s5 non vented?

HOZZMANRX7

iTrader: (43)

Don't all S4 GXL's have LSD? Jack up the rear end and if both wheels turn the same way, you've got a GXL.

Over the 24 year life of a '86 car someone might have replace the 3rd member just as they might have replaced 4 lug with 5. But a twist of the rear wheels seems to be a pretty good confirmation point of GXL vs non-GXL.

daviddeep

iTrader: (4)

Yes, all S4 GXLs came with LSD, but they also were supposed to have the power sunroof, which his car does not.

According to the '89 brochure (which is posted in the FAQ section), the S5 base car had 9.8" vented front rotors and 10.3" solid rear rotors vs. 10.9" vented (front) and 10.7" vented (front) for cars with the four-piston setup.

https://www.rx7club.com/showpost.php...27&postcount=6

Alex_n/a

iTrader: (1)

i have a question and don't think a thread should be started for it.
how well should Mazda know what trim level you have. I went to mazda the other and they gave me "car fax" thing and it was listed as a gtu but i have gxl stickers on my fenders, the fenders have newer paint then the rest of the car which leads me to believe they were swapped by PO. so should i believe mazda and say its a gtu?

daviddeep

iTrader: (4)

I don't know what exactly you got from the Mazda dealership that you refer to as a "Car Fax." If you mean something from the website Carfax, they've been wrong about equipment level on some of the cars I've owned, especially the older ones. Your car was built years before the Internet really caught on, so it's no surprise that a newish service like Carfax might have some inaccurate info. If you got some kind of printout from the dealer supposedly providing the features of the car, you would think that should be correct. On the other hand, Mazda claims to have not kept records about how many of each particular model RX-7 were sold in a given year, so their data may not be 100% accurate.

Since so many individual features can easily be changed by owners over the years, it really doesn't matter much what your car was originally, unless you're planning to restore it to original spec. That said, it is fun to try to do the detective work to figure out how your car started.

I took a look at the photo album of your car that you've posted. You have the AAS dust caps over your front shock towers, and you have the power windows and the cloth door panels that came in the S5 GXL. You have the fog lights which were standard on the GXL and you have a rear wiper. Obviously the seats have been swapped; they could be either from a GXL or a TII. Looks like you have the 4-piston front brakes which again says GXL. Seems most likely your car has always been a GXL unless somebody meticulously swapped all those GXL parts over to a car that started as a GTU.

Aside from these easily swapped features, about the only other distinguishing feature of the S5 GTU vs. GXL would be the type of power steering. In '89, only the GTU (base) car came with the engine speed sensing steering while the GXL, 'Vert and TII had vehicle speed sensing steering. In '90, only the TII still had the fancier steering. I've driven cars with both and for everyday use, it doesn't seem all that different. I think overall the engine speed sensing power steering feels a little lighter sometimes, but both systems seem pretty similar.

waldog

iTrader: (12)

Couldn't you just have your insurance company run the vin? Normally that should tell them the exact car you have, shouldn't it?

I know david said something about this up top. But state farm can tell the features and all from the vin. They did with my truck and my wifes old car.

13bpower

I wouldn't trust the mazda dealer for knowing **** about an RX-7. They are sales people, not car people. The fist thing to distinguish the FC as a GXL is the EAAS. That **** will never be swapped in, only removed. If it is there, you have a GXL. If it's not there then you can move to the next thing... Power windows, which rarely get swapped off a GXL, the LSD diff, cruise, sunroof, rear wiper, ect.

13bpower

I have never seen a vin/title on a FC distinguishing anything beyond "coupe", "turbo" or "convertable". Has anyone else?

daviddeep

iTrader: (4)

I agree about AAS. I've never heard of anyone swapping it in. In the photos Alex_n/a posted, you can see the AAS-style dust caps on the front strut towers so that's probably all the info you need. However since his car is an S5, it would not have LSD; S4 GXLs had it but S5s didn't. Sunroof was optional on all models, so that doesn't help a lot (though if you don't have a sunroof it's not a GXL). Cruise was also available on all models either from the factory or as a dealer-installed option.

A few years ago when I had a 30-day subscription to Carfax for a used car I was buying, I ran my old '90 GTU. Carfax identified it as a "1990 RX-7 GTU/GLX." (Which is humorous because there was no such thing as a "GLX" in the U.S.) I just pulled out some really old repair orders from when I used to have that car serviced at the dealership in the 1990s. The Mazda computer identified it as a "1990 Mazda RX-7 CPE." Their computers were able to pull up the correct build date for that car which I always thought was sort of cool.

When I bought my '88 GTU in 2007, I had the local Mazda dealer give me a printout of warranty-related work that had been done on the car. According to the guy at the service counter, that's all they info they can track about a car by VIN. This one-page printout listed the car as "RX-7 SP 2P / 1988." I assume the "2P" is two passengers, but what is the "SP?" Also interesting is that this printout had the original build date (8/1/88) and date of original sale (10/19/88) along with the engine number which is different from the VIN. It listed the "Point of Entry" to the U.S.: Port Hueneme, CA and says it was originally sold in Texas by "Retail Dealer #34403." All interesting info that evidently you can get from your dealer if you're curious.