RX7Club.com - Mazda RX7 Forum - Wednesday kind of sucked, Thursday kind of didn’t

Disclaimer: This is a long and probably boring post. But it does have a happy ending: an RX-7 brought back from the dead.

As I’ve already posted I’m the original owner of a blue 89 2nd gen vert. Back in 08 it’s radiator buzzer started going off and there were typical tears in the vert top near the drain pockets on the sides. So I parked it in the garage and turned my wrenching attention for the next seven years to the many motorcycles that I own.

I am now selling the house and needed to do something with it. My dumbass sister-in-law suggested that I just dump it on Craig’s List for a grand or whatever as a project or parts car. I politely explained to her that this was not an option as, even though I had neglected it for several years, there was not a snowball’s chance in hell I would ever get rid of it because it’s probably one of the best purchases I’ve ever made in my life.

While cleaning out the house over the last couple of months I have used my “spare” time to work on bringing the RX back to life.

I never diagnosed what was causing the radiator issue but decided “what the hell” and decided to replace the radiator and main hoses with some aftermarket parts since I plan to keep the car for a while. (Sidenote: Is that an oil cooler in front of the radiator? If so, it’s frickin’ HUGE.) Once the old radiator was out, it was a strange feeling to be able to stand on the floor in the engine compartment of the car. While I was at it, I also decided to install a new thermostat from Mazda just to be on the safe side. Can’t hurt, eh?

I ordered some new plugs and NGK leads off of Fleabay to install as well.

Having sat for so long with 10% ethanol fuel in them for so long, I assumed that the fuel injectors were probably varnished and fooked. Once I’d pulled the throttlebodies and
pulled the secondary FIs, I realized (with advice from this forum) that I’d need to remove the VDI to get to the primary FIs. My Haynes manual didn’t seem particularly helpful in telling me how to do that so I gave up, put things back together and decided to leave my fate up to the fuel injector Gods. I had a very bad feeling about ignoring injector maintenance but I simply did not have the time nor inclination to deal with it.

I was kind of paranoid about starting a “dry” engine that had sat so long so while I had the spark plugs out to be replaced, I sprayed some fogging oil into each rotor compartment, let it sit for a while, turned the main pulley 120 degrees and then put some more fogging oil in. (For an engine that had sat so long, I was very surprised at how easily it turned.)

I also did an oil/filter change with a Bosch oil filter and some dino Rotella 10-30. I plan to run it for a thousand miles or so to clean out the sludge and then do another oil/filter change with some Rotella synth or Mobil 1.

I drained the old gas out of the gas tank (nice to have a drain plug for that) and my last task on Wednesday afternoon was to replace the fuel filter. (What a PITA.) Before adding a few gallons of fresh gas and hooking up the new fuel filter, I spun it up about with the starter for about 50-100 rotations to get some fresh oil circulating in the engine prior to attempting to start it.

Once I had the new fuel filter installed on Wednesday (and new battery from Wal-Mart) I tried to start it for about 3-400 turns. Nothing – zero, zip, nada. I didn’t want to run the battery down so I gave up and grudgingly resigned myself to the fact that I’d have to have it towed to my FLD and bend over with a credit card to get it running again. Wednesday sucked.

I drove back to the old house in Seattle on Thursday morning thinking that I’d have to have it towed to the FLD. I’d left it on a smart charger overnight so the battery had a full 12.8 charge. I figured it couldn’t hurt to spend a few more minutes trying to start it which I did.

Then came my NFW moment, after Lord knows how many starter turns on Thursday, it actually came to life and started – and purred at idle. I couldn’t believe it!

(Sidenote on the 1990 Haynes “book of lies” manual: Although it claims there’s a yellow connector to short on the wiring harness to jump the fuel pump in order to prime the fuel system, there is not one on my RX.)

When I took it out for its first drive in so many years, it kind of ran like crap for the first few blocks until the proverbial cob webs were burned off. But once I’d taken it to the gas station to fill up the tank (along with a bottle of Techron concentrate) it ran like a top. I ran it up to the 8K buzzer a few times for good measure and it’s running as well as it ever did. I couldn’t f’n believe it!

The brakes were mushy and the clutch sucked too but that’s be expected with decade old DOT 3 in them. I didn’t have time to deal with that on Thursday but I took care of both first thing Saturday morning.

I live in the real world and realize that this car is an antique but I can’t express in words how fun it was to drive this car again. I hadn’t driven a sports car since I parked it and it was awesome to drive this thing again. I’d forgotten how great the headrest speakers are and, shortly before I removed it from service, I’d replaced the stock sound system with new speakers, a Blaupunkt MP3 CD player and installed an 8” subwoofer under the rear deck. (It’s not a ghetto or license plate shaking subwoofer. I just wanted some better bass.)

I now know why I bought this car in the first place and I still love it dearly. I regret having neglected it for so long.