1990 S5 NA FC
Picture, write up, how to and review
on the mods, upgrade, maintainance.

 

My FC is going to be set up for daily driving, so all my upgrades and mods will be aiming for reliability and comfort.

History:

Bought it 8.17.10






Day 1
Installed Clifford security alarm system @ The Car Shop.
...but also I decided to do the Led conversion on my car, and also the Lexus led license plate lightings.
I guess it was emitting heat or touching it. because the tail light got burnt and craked.
Failed...



2nd week
bought BBS RGR from a rx7 FC owner, so i thought rims from him will PROBABLY be 5x114.3, because he didnt say anything about it.
after repainting them with DK, found out it was 5x120.
so i sold them.
Fail.




2nd month
Due to my newb driving skills, because FC was my first manual tranny car
this happened.
BAM

Fail


Ordered F1 GripForce clutch kit from Sonic Motors
and with help from DK, I was able to get the FC back running within a week.

wasnt very expensive so I thought it was going to be slippery, but it grips well and its pretty impressive.

 

3rd month
Tanabe GF lowering spring




belt change

seems to crank up better than before.


solid tranny/engine mounts



the old mount was broken.

love it how the engine dosent shake anymore
hate it how it makes the car shakes now

Ebay $15 short shifter.
made the flimsy and loose shifting go away.
but its knotchy.
overall i like it.

 

that sux on the sweet bbs rims,looks like your on the right track now,cept for the solid mounts,i wouldnt put them on anything but maybe drag car,not worth the sacrifice in comfort and noise/vibration dampening

 

I don't think "comfort" means what you think it does...

 

I had no clue of the sacrifice i have to give up using solid engine mounts.
really like the fact that the engine is stable,
because before with the old mount, the engine was all over the place.

but the ride quality really is rocky.
it feels like my FC my phone on vibrate, especially on low rpm going to high rpms.

I just put that on 1.3.10 yesterday with couple friends.
planning to rock it for a while and change it out when i have some other work in the engine

 

I guess my old engine mount was THAT bad, because the solid engine mount is freaken awsome.

pro:
the car it self dosent shake anymore.
the engine responds really quick

con:
the interior shakes.

2:1
the mount is a keeper
its not that bad for daily driving.
was really surprised of how fast the engine responds.
no more lag

 

I think you'd have been better served with Mazdacomp engine/transmission mounts and maybe a torque brace, if you're really into it.
Good engine stability and much better chassis isolation (no squeaks & rattles).

If your old mounts were shot, anything would seem awesome in comparison.

 

You get use to the mounts quick, imo more good than bad comes from them. I've daily driven my car with solid mounts like 15000 miles, just seems to like to eat up the vulnerable electronics that FC's have problems with(window switches, wiper, etc).

Car looks good, any plans on a turbo swap in the future?


Edit: If you throw soft mounts in, I'll sell you a torque brace!

 

no big upgrades, however i have this EPIC incident i want to share with yall.
I was doing an oil change (my 2nd one in my life)
everything was going well,
loosen up the oil pan screw to empty the oil
and I put in half of the 10w-30 oil i had left in my 5qt oil bottle.




I FORGOT TO CLOSE THE OIL PAN SCREW.
...
so I ended up spilling crap load of oil on my garage and i had to clean that crap up for hours.

 

I replaced both slave/master cylinders.
slave cylinder DK done for me before,
so i had new Masters sitting around.

SO i decided to work on the my car by putting in a new master cylinder.
I had no idea how to do this install,
all my source came from this helpful thread
https://www.rx7club.com/2nd-gen-archive-72/clutch-master-slave-cylinder-%2Awriteup%2A-532869/

anyways it was this DICK that had me working for hours



heres how it went.
I couldnt pull out the slave cyl line out of the master cyl
due to too tight space.

so enstead, i pulled out the two 12mm screw from under the dash



then i was able to pull the slave cyl line out the masters by lifting the master cyl out of its place.

and it looks something like this




not much different, but this is a picture of the old master and the new masters.



now with putting the new masters back in place.
it was kinda hard to fit it in its place, especially with the stick poking out that needed to be fitting in between the lugs.
but i manage to do so by shaking it alot.



and I put in fresh new brake 3 dot fluid in the masters
and bled the clutch.
the clutch feels stiff enough

did this 2 in the morning, so i havent tested it out.
will update on the new master cyl upgrade.

This is by far the hardest mechanical job Ive done in my life lol
will be happy if it all works out tomarrow after a drive.

 

along with couple other things.
as i posted on
https://www.rx7club.com/lounge-192/can-i-say-worst-day-2011-a-936421/
I had an accident, breaking my tail lights.

and I replaced them with a vert s5 tail lights I found at a junk yard
thanks to whiterice 7

I dont know if you guys can tell the difference,
but the vert tails are shorter and
as u guys may notice, I have two trunk key holes.


Ive also aquired a stock s5 radio things.


the top one is the stock one and the bottom one is the one that came with my car.
I thought the stock one will complete my stock interior and MAYBE the cd player will work.
because the one that came with the car didnt work...

also, ive been having problems with my passenger window, struggling sometimes going up.
and recently, it just gave up on me.
Ive tried everything the forum informed me to.
cleaning the contact, wires, ect...
and finally i have concluded that the motor gone bad.
so i bought new motor and regulator from a former rx7club member aicrotary2

and will update on this fix later

and so with all this fix and all, my car currently looks like this

bah....

i miss the good old days when everything worked!

till then, i guess ill have to pile up parts to replace

 

good old days...
i tell ya



lol

 

That's quite a taillight collection.

You may wish to add relays to the windows to make operation better. Here's a thread with the info:
https://www.rx7club.com/showthread.p...+power+windows

 

Your doing a damn good job if i do say so myself! Keep it up man. My slave and master cylinders are both leaking so i will be doing that little project soon as well.

 

after the master cyl job, the clutch was very spongy.
so I had my friend inspect my car, and the clutch slave line was tangled up.
and when we straightened it out, we noticed a big rip.
so being tangled was the only way it was working.



that being replaced, the clutch feels alot responsive
but the clutch is still not popping back up like it used to.
have to check into it.

 

^ stainless steel braided line from mazdatrix

 

and another fail.
my radiator is leaking!

my daily morning warm up procedure was kinda off and not normal
and it started to smoke from the exhaust like it never did.
the white sweet coolant smoke.
so i look under the car and I find this...


so I shopped around for a bit and I went with Koyo N-flo radiator
along with goodspeed 14 inch efan 1500 ftm

 

And the installation of the new KoYo radiator and the efan was horrifying.

first of all, taking the oem fan, shroud and the radiator was no biggy.

just, unbolt the fan first,
then the shroud
drain the coolant from the radiator at the bottom drain hole.
and unbolt the radiator.



was simple and quick.
however when we open the koyo. they only provided us the radiator.
no installation manual paper, coolant cap, mounts ... nothing.
I thought this was going to be easy with little to no modification Bolt On Install.
NO.
this is how my radiator looks fresh out the bay.


and you have to cut the mounts off the stock radiator, because they dont provide you with any mounts!!!

cut them off and this is how the old rad looks without the mounts.


okay, okay lets mount it and drop it in already.
nope, another problem.

the mounts are short. uneven and hard to match.

so we had to drill a new hole


and mount it with one bolt on each side of the radiator.
unprofessional looking.


then we dropped in the radiator,
bolted the two mounts and clamped up all the hose.
and it was actually very solidly sturdy.
no movement, the radiator was in its place.



now the efan install.
this came with no paper as well, so we had to play with it for a bit.
but at the end it was simple install,
however i did not like how the fan was flush to the radiator.
making marks on my fresh radiator. but oh well


put coolant, water and bubble out
and
finish!

 

just so you know most of your pictures didn't work.

Anyway, Koyo Rad does not come with mounts, in fact most aftermarket rads except for some Autozone/AAP kind of "Crap" comes with no mounts.

You just need stock mount thats all.

I bought Koyo couple months ago with brand new mounts from Mazda. but then winter comes ... its getting warmer will probably start working on it this week or next week.