My friend and mechanic is no stranger to rx7's, and his Seven, who has been a huge work in progress, is almost done. The **** retentivness this car received is enough to lose a good chunk of weight in just bolts. It still has a bit to go before it comes out, but I was just posting up some pics to get some imput, opinions, and a feel for the car. Any questions asked I will try to get answered.


The shop


245/40/17 in the front, with plans to go to 275, I belive.



The driving lights set #2, curious if we should go bigger.

Everything is GONE.


Waterpump

 

The custom dash work. I honestly think this is a pretty slick setup.




This is what he is really proud of, and I agree. Since alot of the stuff on the surrounding was now useless, he filled it in to be fully smooth. It might allready be painted, im really anxious about this part, it looks really nice in person.



Its not a rx7, but this is what we were doing to my car.

 

Damn that's a lot of work.
It's certainly is a little...well, too much for my taste. The fog lights crammed into the front bumper i don't like, i'd really need to see the dash in person.

Still though, good work!
I want to see it pained and done.

 

Damn, man. Very impressed! what type of racing do you plan on doing with this beast

 

what kind of wheels are those?

 

The wheels are Enkei RPM2. Plans for the car include: BEING street legal(emissions could be another story), drift events, track/autoX events, and most importantly, the way for the car to pay itself off, late night fun runs.

 

Nice work.
Let us know how that water pump works out.

Please tell him to sort out all that BX hanging on the walls. It's a little dangerous, and its not too hard to get locked onto that stuff.

 

why the super extravagant (sp) water pump set up?

How about some specs?

 

Cool stereo surround.

 

He also might want to rethink the placement of his torque brace. That water pump mounting ear is known for breaking off.

 

very nice. i agree i'm not big on the lights crammed together, but other than that its sweet

 

the damn lights KILLS the whole look man. He must have done the dashwork and then moved on to the lights because that **** is UGLY!! Change the front bumper. Other than that the car is freakin kool!

 

I kinda ribbed him about them as well, but they are fully functional. Its the second set of headlights, if you cant tell. He wants to be seen, and after playing with diffrent variations, this is what he chose to go with. Hese thinking about if they are bigger, that will help the look. Im thinking bigger and something like the FD style, into the bumper with round plexiglass covering them, and keeping the shape of the bumper.

 

Dude that purple vert is very rare, nice car!

 

jebus .....that is a work of art......my jaw is still on the floor........ there are mods on there i would have never thought of doing...(i.e. the brake setup)...... gorgeous.......

i personally think the foglights look pretty good.....and concidering he wont have the pop-up headlights...they are a necessity

 

Looks like a fun project. Can't go wrong with a Cosmo engine. I like the ic location and water pump setup but I would have routed both slightly different. However, I'm sure he has his reasons and knows what the finnished product will look like when all is said and done.

Tell me he's not going to run those drilled rotors, or stock size rotors for that matter with those Tilton MC's and pedal assemblies. That would be a monumental waste if so.
He has the makings of a great braking sytem if he opts to use some larger 2-piece rotors and bigger calpers. I like the proportioning valve location too.

I like the dash setup...all business.
Why two boost gauges?

Wierd place for the engines torque brace if you ask me. Has he mad a manifold and figuered out the turbo location yet?

What is he planning on using the car for besides street driving?

 

Thanks for the comment on my car, apprichiate it.

as far as specs on the car, I honestly dont know if he wants me mentioning anything or not. He will get back to me later, so I will see what he says. I dont want to divuldge information if its not his wishes at the moment.

One boost gauge is for turbo pressure, or the normal reason people have a boost gauge, and the other one is for manifold pressure, in texas summers, its good to see what its at, so he can set boost accordinly, as to stay away from knocking

 

i was thinking the same thing about the brace, though that is the best location for it it doesn't give much room for the turbo or piping setup, may as well go with solid mounts.

 

i really like the custom gauge cluster. is that a shift light in the cluster also ?

 

CUP HOLDERS!!!, and it looks like he relocated the window switches and put some not-so self destructing ones in there. the brake system is sweet. i love the color combo, purple/tan, sexy, the dash is cool, i dont care for the shift light and i wish the tack and speedo were bigger and filled in the cluster more but hey, i wish i had this car! the only thing that ruins the fron look is the foglights, otherwise, ******* awesome

the torque brace on the engine looks like it might get in the way, but im sure it will be worked out, cant wait to see the final product

KEEP IT UP

EFFN AWESOME

 

Ok whats first...
the "fog" lights. there was really no other place for them; I need the bottom side holes for the brake duct coolers There are headlights behind the ftp lenses, hibeam-lobeam. i didn't want to put them in the main opening. with that said i dont really think its quite right either... however its different. and it will work well.
the dash... 2 boost gauges, one at the turbo and one at the manifold. That is a shift light in next to the tack. paint wont happen till i get the cage and the fuel cell fab done. wheels are 17 *9 front and rear with a falken rt-615 275/40/17... I can rotate my tires too!
"BX hanging on walls?" not exactly sure but nothing is actually "hanging"
lets see, Brakes, i am running the drilled rotors on the street only.
on the track i am going to run a full ceramic pad with a stock rotor (with a warranty) ... unless someone wants to loan me the $4800 i need for race brakes however this car cannot exceed 168mph and with the tilton and the long acre can the stock brakes will be fine for at least A track day at a time before they fall apart. But autozone and orilies are going to help me with that. keep in mind this is a street tire car not slicks or a full race tire ill only have so much traction available. and I assure you Ill be able to lock up the brakes at any speed.
the water pump... it is a mezier pump and flange with a Ron Davis radiator. it is located where it is because the turbo routing on the pass side takes up allot of available space. also that is the spot that offered the straightest shot (least turns)
as well as helping cornerweight the car. it will run of a relay activated by the haltech with no thermostat to restrict the flow. I ended up loosing 13lbs with the removal of the WP housing. And who knows how much HP. This will allow the car to run at a very small window of temperature say +/- 5 degrees from 195 I imagine that the water pump will be off most of the time as the elWP moves allot of coolant. Ill be using Evans coolant. the system will be pressurized at 20psi.
the torque brace... I hadn’t heard of anyone braking off the "ear" do you know how they did it? it is also not the only brace I have. the brace was made after the turbo was fitted so i know it works. I am not running solid mounts just the rod ends on the torque brace the engine will still move a little
this is a needle-bearing car... IE no bushings on the suspension... no binding either
Roll center adjustment and all the other adjustments
JICflt2's, torsion, or clutch type lsd, manual rack
atl fuel cell and lots of speed machine CF.
Act clutch +flywheel
Im building this car to do everything, or whatever I feel like doing at the time it, mainly learning to go fast in non straight lines. will be subframed Xbraced and caged (I also expect that this wont be the last FC i have to build)
Thanks for All comments
Most certainly I welcome any criticism or ideas, even on where to place the dam fog lights. They do look funny but, I don’t see any other options.

… “finished” dash and the front lip with the 275’s on the front and the mock up of the cell
http://img385.imageshack.us/img385/8268/dscf00047xr.jpg
http://img385.imageshack.us/img385/9966/dscf00123gu.jpg
http://img385.imageshack.us/img385/6456/dscf00110ia.jpg
http://img385.imageshack.us/img385/4586/dscf00089sn.jpg

 

Wow, I just saw that thing two days ago, and allready you knocked out a chunk of stuff!
I'll see you this weekend, I want to check it out, and the dash is great looking

 

I know the stock rotors and calipers with upgraded pads are more than adequate for most applications. Some, as do I, run a proprtioning valve within the stock system to tune the brakes to our style. I just don't understand why you went through all the trouble to install the new pedals/mc's with the rest of the system remaining stock (except the pads). I'm not knocking it , I just don't see any real advantage to it besides the wow factor. I suppose you could argue the pedal feel is improved but that can easily be achieved with a 626 mc that is a direct swap.

Evans coolant is the best.
I don't know why you'd run it at 20 lbs though. One of the advantages of Evans, especially with a rotary, is it's ability to cool at 0 psi. They even recommend running a zero pressure cap since there is absolutey no adavantage to running it under any pressure.

I've tried running with no t-stat on road courses. Even with the Evans, my temps would get to hot. Moving coolant throught the radiator too fast does not allow it to cool. Some people claim succes with it though on turboed cars. We used to succsefully run our 25 Star Mazda cars with no t-stats in the summer since the shop manager insisted upon it. However, those were n/a and had two radiators.

Do you anticipate much pressure drop from the ic between the turbo and manifolds?

 

as far as the brakes go im not concerned with them because Im still running a stock 13b maby 400hp at most and certainly not while i am learning to drive but I wanted somthing that could grow with me. and the tilton stuff requires fabrication ie mounting and lines. when the car is finished i will never have to "tare the car down" to upgrade. I can throw brakes on in an hour after I have real power that requires it. an engine to i can "drop in" with no change in external parts. then I can through it on slicks and go scare the poop out of myself.

Actually your right on the cooling system and Im glad you brought it up, I was planing on running a presurized system before I found out about Evens, just never updated my plan accordingly untill i got the stuff and read the instructions. but even after that I still am planing on running pressurised just so I can see if theres a differance myself...

I expect at least 3psi drop between the turbo and manifold... maby more maby less. but that # tells me alot about about how stressed the car is. if Im driving and I dont have any differance with this setup Im shutting the car off quick. I plan to substitute a dule intake temp guage when I get the $300 spare to give to autometer... although isnt it buy 15 get the 16th free?


you wouldn't happen to know where I can get some BIG side feed injectors for the primary rail?
enough about my shitbox....
how you liken that vert? Really clean! I wanted to ask you hou you shaved the lines in the front and rear bumper? or rather what material you used?

 

Nice ride.....the dash looks really good, Iwish my dash looked as good.
Hope I'll get to see it some day since I'm in Houston also.