After a brief hiatus from the rx7 forum I'm now back, but in 2nd gen form. I previously had a 1st gen gsl-se. It was my first rx7 and i loved it. It was pretty much a piece of crap death trap that was barely street legal. Last spring break I was in panama city fl with my roommates and I got a call at about 9am. Severly hung over i was wondering who it was. It was my dad with news that he just sold my car while i was 10 hours away.....uh thanks for asking.

I was pretty pissed but i was a senior at JMU and they gave me a new jeep wrangler for graduation. SCORE! After driving the wrangler for the summer and my first semester in grad school i decided [ricky bobby voice]I need to go fast [/ricky bobby voice]. Driving to school kills my back in the wrangler so there was another reason to get a car.

So the search was on.

I looked mostly at m3's and miatas, but couldn't find any that were a good deal and in decent condition. One day over Christmas break I was running errands with my Dad and we went to the car dealership to check on the status of the corvette he was buying. We talked to the sales manager about my dads vette and then about finding a car for me. I told him what i was looking for, something sporty to put miles on, and mentioned that I had a rx7 and was looking for something comparable to that. He asked if i wanted another rx7 because he knew a guy who might trade one in on a new miata....hells yeah.

The only information he knew was that it was a '91 convertible. It turns out the guy lives in keswick virginia (read $$$$) and wanted to sell it himself for some reason. The sales manager lined up for us to meet up last saturday so I could check it out.

Before I even saw the car it had two strikes against it. convertible....strike one, automatic....strike two. When i saw the car it was a different story, it was beautiful. Dark blue and perfect condition. After driving it i decided i must have this car. It had been garage kept it's entire life, new tires, new brakes, new everything basically.

The guy was looking to get $5000 out of it, which was a steal seeing that cars in worse shape were going for $7000 and up at auction. Talking with the guy he realized I knew more about these cars than any mechanic that he had taken it too so he knew it was going to a good home.

He was a car enthusiast with a few frame off triumph resorations under his belt back when he was younger. And he was an engineer so we had two pretty solid connections right off the bat. I offered him $3500 and he took it.....sweet. He also offered me a summer position at the engineering firm he works at. I am already funded for my research at school so I didn't really need summer work, but its always good to keep my options open.

Really cool guy to say the least.

All i have at school is my crappy camera phone, but i'll snap a picture and post it later.

The only issue with the car is the idle. When starting the car or putting it in drive or reverse it either stalls or almost stalls. I was thinking about just adjusting the idle control valve higher and seeing if it helps. It might be a vaccum leak or the tps is out of adjustment. I don't know alot of info about 2nd gens and the automatic tranny is like voodoo to me. Any thoughts?

 

crappy pic

 

Congrats on the purchase

 

Congrats and welcome.

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congratz on the new ride!

 

 

so i was out driving the other day and i noticed the brakes are really soft and have a decent amount of travel until actual braking occurs. the previous owner had just replaced the brake pads in december. are all fc's like this or should i look at replacing the master cylinder or bleeding the brakes?

 

Mine's like that. When I drive other cars it's very... jostling.

 

The brakes shouldn't be like that. Before you go replacing parts there's an adjustment you can make behind the brake pedal that will lengthen or shorten the rod that pushes the piston in the master cylinder. If you lengthen this rod you can get the brake pedal firm near the top of the pedal travel. Check the FSM or the haynes manual for the procedure.

My brakes used to be very bad, like they wouldn't catch till the pedal was almost to the floor, this was with new pads, reman calipers all around (all of the brakes were frozen), and a new master cylinder (the old one was leaky). I made this adjustment and my brakes were perfect.

 

I would think it's either the brakes need to be bled or there is a problem with the power booster.

 

I really don't want to replace anything unless it has to be. I was thinking it might be a common problem with fc's and i would get some useful info like this. I need to pick up a haynes manual, but here in the big city of blacksburg va the pickings are pretty slim when i checked for one earlier this week. Before I do any replacing i'm gonna look into adjusting the travel and probably bleed the brakes anyways because i don't know when the last time the fluid has been changed

 

man, i miss my vert.

this one looks just like it. same oh so sexy dark blue.

never should have sold mine.

im sorry about the auto tranny, but that car is gorgeous. and for the price, i'd have bought it too.

i'd love to see some more pics of it.

congrats on a beautiful car.

 

Thanks for all the compliments. I'll probably have some good pictures up by next weekend. Before I saw the car I was very hesitant about buying it. But damn the thing was just so gorgeous iI couldn't turn it down.

The automatic isn't as bad as I thought. The full "sports car" experiance isn't there but it's nice for driving around the city. I figured I could deal with the auto for a year or two until I graduate then i'll either sell it or keep it and drop a manual and TII in it

 

You can download an FSM from online for free if you do some searching... check the FAQs in this section. The procedure for adjusting the pedal is on page 10 in the braking section of the fsm and the correct procedure for bleeding is a few pages before that.

Good luck with your new car!