I was reminiscing on photos the other day and was wondering if anyone else had any cool stories

I left college with a mechanical engineering degree super disappointed that my curriculum had almost no wrenching or practical application (no one told me about trade school when I went to enroll)

I knew my uncle was a mechanic for UPS delivery trucks and wrenched on Hondas and Mustangs in his spare time, so in 2017 I dropped him a text asking if I could swing by and be an extra pair of hands on the weekends. We swapped a blown 5.0 in a 2008 Mustang and the rest was history.

I hadn't even passed my driving test when I bought my car in 2018, my uncle had it driven from 2 hours away in Roseville back home to San Francisco while I sat in the passenger seat. It was probably 6-12 months owning the car before I even learned to drive stick.

Last Winter he came around and helped me stick my factory 13B replacement into my FD. I'd seen on the internet 'how to do it' but you really don't know how to mate an engine on a transmission or what kinda pushing and shoving is involved until you've done it a hundred times. My uncle was the 'done it a hundred times' that got my car across the finish line.

A few medical situations have come and gone and his hands are no longer in a place to turn wrenches like he used to. A mustang similar to his has come up for sale around me and it got me looking back at old photos of his mustang and my FD.

Anyone else have any cool stories?

 

The design of the 1964.5 Mustang was, and always will be, a marvel. In that sense, the FD is very similar.

 

Great story!

in '95 or so I moved into a rental house with a guy who was needing a roommate. He had a VW Corrado VR6 and it was just SO cool. I had always dug cars - I liked how some looked, liked the idea of the performance, etc.

I started thinking that I wanted something cool - it had to be something I could afford, something I could modify and tinker with. I went home to San Antonio to visit my mom and went to a bookstore after dinner one night and looked in the Automotive section. Saw the RX-7 Sports Car Color History, read through that at the bookstore and was like WOW, these cars are really cool, really unique, and have a cool history.

Came back home and discovered the RX-7 mailing list and started reading EVERYTHING. Next time I was home I bought that same book (and still have it).

Within short order I traded my 87 Camry in on an 87 TurboII, this would have been '96. Been full up insanity ever since

I bought my FD in October 2004 and it's been a great journey with that car. I was married in '03 and finally was making enough money that I could afford one after years of having FC's. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE FC's, but the FD was always the pinnacle.

Dale

 

i started out when i got an old non running 1980 suzuki RM125 from my brother in law and i was about 15 at the time, diagnosed the faulty CDI and fixed up the bike to ride with my friend, then i got a 1969 datsun 1600 520 pickup, eventually i got a job at a dealership as an apprentice in 1993 where one day a 1987 turbo II came into the dealership as a used car trade in. at the time nothing drove like that car did, it revved so smooth and effortlessly i loved driving it. about 10 years later i found one that needed an engine rebuild for a good price and snatched it up. about 4 years after that i was building rotary engines every day.

if i could do it over again i probably wouldn't have chosen being an auto technician as a career, you certainly won't get rich doing it and most days you get 0 appreciation for anything above and beyond that you do for people.

ive had about 50 cars in my life and half as many motorcycles, every one of them i have had to tinker with and maintain because i rarely trust anyone to do a job right.

 

My uncle had a Plymouth Barracuda convertible in Sub Lime he completely restored from the frame up that he took me, my dad, and my brother/cousin for a ride in one beautiful summer day when I was about five years old.

The top was down, the smell of "old muscle car" hit my nose for the first time, and when he took us to their old high school parking lot and ripped a fat burnout down the entrance road, I was hooked.

 

Very cool to hear everyone's stories.

I "blame" my father. He used to own a computer repair business and one of his customers couldn't afford pay for a CD-ROM drive that he had installed for him. As payment, he gave him an '83 GS that needed some work. That summer my dad and I spend a lot of time cleaning it up, fixing rust, and getting it running. I had such fun working with my dad, and grew to love that car. When I turned 16 I bought the car off him, although looking back, he nearly gave it to me. I drove it for years before it finally succumb to rust and had to get scrapped, but it was too late, I was fascinated by RX7s. To date, I've owned well over a dozen RX7s and a few RX8s, but I have never gotten, or even driven, another FB for fear of it not living up the the memories.

 

I have no one to blame or credit but myself. Deeply into bicycles and cars as a kid for reasons I cannot explain or understand.

 

I don't think I really had much outside influence as a kid that got me into cars other than movies. We grew up very poor so we didn't have any cool cars in my family that were close by, I did love how loud my uncle's rusted out El Camino was but it was a junker. I remember being obsessed with the '50 Mercury Sylvester Stalone drove in the movie Cobra and was really into the cannon ball movies with all those different cars. I loved all the cult classics (which weren't really classics then) like American Graffiti and Bullet, gone in 60 seconds etc. I was always addicted to hot wheels and micro machines until I got old enough for R/C cars. Being Mexican in Colorado in the 90's we used to do a lot of property maintenance so my brother and I were able to make money at a young age helping with those jobs so I started building R/C cars while I was young until I could afford a real car. My first car was a Yugo that my grandfather inherited that hadn't ran for 10 years, so for my 16th birthday he said I could have it if I helped him fix it. Luckily it was just a fuel pump but learning to work on the car really fueled my drive for working on cars in general.




I bought the neighbors F150 for $200 so I could use it for hunting and hauling stuff from the junkyard. My friend and I would go to the junk yard just to tear things apart and learn how things worked. I would always stand and read all the car magazines in the grocery store while my mom was shopping so I knew what a lot of popular sports cars were but didn't really know much about them mechanically. The FD was still very new and there was an add for a Shogun FD body kit in every compact car magazine so I knew the name well but really nothing about the car itself or the type of engine it had, just loved the body lines along with the MKIV Supra. I came across a Turbo II RX7 in this used car lot that was just traded in on something and decided to take it for a drive. Needless to say, after driving a Yugo around for a while, the Turbo II was an amazing car to drive. They said they would make me a great deal if they could sell it as is without running it through the shop. Against my better judgement, I traded in my Yugo and the F150 and paid the rest cash thinking I wasn't going to have a payment........but it is a 2 seater turbo car and I was 16 years old. Insurance was stupid expensive but not enough of a deterrent for me not to keep the car. I would spend hours on teamfc3s.org and different RX7 sites researching what the Hell I had bought. Ari at rotary performance was a ton of help and I bought most of my parts through him and mazdatrix. I learned a lot about rotaries in a hurry but it was cut short when another high school student hit me head on and totaled my RX7. Luckly not bad injuries but I insurance wouldn't cover any of the modifications and wouldn't let me buy the car back.




While I was at the junkyard one day with a friend, there was an old 66 Mustang somebody was dropping off for scrap with a decent body. I talked the guy out of scrapping it and ultimately ended up having him tow it to my house. The car had sat on a property for 20 years and he got the engine running, it was just missing on a few cylinders. The entire brake system was rusted out from the cap being left off so I had to replace every inch of the brake system. The fix for the engine was simple, he just had the distributor wires in the wrong firing order but the engine was pretty much toast. Rings were bad and when I finally drove it as a daily I would use a quart of oil a week even with the no-smoke honey stuff. I was a junior in high school by this time and they offered a trade school program where half the day you go to trade school and the other half I went to my regular high school. I signed up for the auto shop class for the last two years of high school. The teachers in that program were unbelievably helpful and were legit car guys (not really teachers) so I was able to buy a parts fairlane and pull the engine from that and rebuild it in shop class for my mustang. I learned a lot about cars in that class and was able to totally restore my mustang in high school and race in the high school drags my last two years of high school with that car. I also picked up another Turbo II RX7 my senior year because I was addicted to how it drove and the feeling of the rotary revving, it was entirely different than my Mustang. I would join the local RX7 club at 2nd creek raceway (used to be a track north of Denver) where I got to ride in my first FD RX7 and that changed my life. Being able to run circles around a brand new viper with twice the horsepower was incredible.




I met my current wife at the drag strip racing her turbo eclipse during test and tune one night right after high school. I worked for Ford for a while then on to building cars with a friend specializing in Supras, RX7s and the like in the early 2000's. I've owned at least 12 FC's and a couple FDs over the years. Built and worked on countless amazing cars and I will still be a rotarhead/motorhead for life.

 

I grew up on a farm in the 1940’s and 50’s with a bunch of old equipment and a shortage of proper tools.
We had a 1922 International Harvestor “8-16” tractor and various old farm equipment that all had their unique features and starting procedures.

As I got old enough in the ‘50’s I learned how to start and operate all of these things, usually with some sort of cobbled fix to keep them running.
The 1st car I remember was a 1947 Desoto with “tip-toe shift”, a sort of automatic trans with manually selected ranges and a clutch pedal. When that car got too decrepit, I drove it out in the fields and between the grape-vine rows. It had a dead battery, so I started it with a cobbled crank arrangement or by coasting downhill and putting it into gear.

A neighbor across the street had a junkyard and I went over there to help a kid slightly younger than me put the final touches in destroying a few of their still drivable junked cars.

My father began to teach me to drive as soon as I could see over the steering wheel, even early on sitting on his lap. Anything I drove, I went as fast as it would go, including my bicycle which I crashed more than once.

After my father died in 1960, in 1964 I convinced my mother to buy me a TR-4, because when I tried to teach her to drive in our '59 Chevy, she decided she didn’t feel confident enough to drive by herself. I, of course, drove the TR-4 with 4-wheel drifts any time I was on a twisty road. When my wife & I got married in 1967, we did a 3-week 7K mile honeymoon trip in the TR-4 up through Canada, down the west coast then through Las Vegas, etc. to home.

In 1968, my wife and I drove our new Chevy Nova V8 to New York to buy a Formula Vee & trailer, and I’ve been driving racecars ever since.

Long story short, when the 1993 RX7 FD was first featured in Road & Track in 1991, I started to drool over it, and bought the 1st one in Akron in March 1992. I still own it. See my signature.

 

Pretty similar response for me. As an adolescent my dad managed a service station for my uncle, and as a young teenager he opened his collision shop where I worked in High School and college. I state this because cars were just an object for my dad, something to maintain and repair like a HVAC technician takes care of your AC and furnace. So while I became familiar with cars, I was into them inspite my dad.
And while friends in HS were jacking the backends of Chevelles and Camaros to make room for fat tires, I drooled over a rich kid’s Lotus Europa and the Triumph he had before that. In 70, when the 240z hit the States, my fate was sealed. A car that outperformed those British marks, looked awesome, and started and ran for more than two days in succession.
A couple years out of college, where I drove nothing but hand-me-down POS’s, and despite new car interest rates of 17%, I bought my first RX7…an 81 ‘S’.

 

After the TR4 I bought a 240Z that I outfitted with dual 3 into 1 headers that I picked up for ~$50 at a place that sold shipments damaged in transit. That made the 240 sound like a 12-cyl Ferrari. Sold it to help finance our 1st house. Had several other cars after that including a Datsun 510 and a '79 FB RX7 before buying the FD.

 

If you've met me in person, I've probably told you this story. But for everyone else, my story of getting into an RX-7 was completely by chance.

My FIRST car (in 1996) was a 1984 Mustang 4 Cylinder Automatic. I didn't care a lick about cars and was just happy to have transportation. It was bought from a Mazda dealer with the advertised 59,000 miles and I was off to teenage freedom. Turns out, the car didn't have 59,000 - but 159,000 thanks to rolling the odometer. When everything started to show itself (sunroof would POUR water in the rain / car wash) I took it back to the Mazda dealership, they fessed up, and let me trade it in for full credit on a 1992 Mazda MX-3 4 Cylinder 5 Speed. All 88HP was now at my disposal.

That MX-3 was great. Learned to drive manual on it. Delivered pizza's in it. Put a wing and chrome exhaust tip on it - life was good. BUT, as I began to appreciate cars a bit more, I knew I needed to one day obtain my dream car. A 1994 Ford Probe. Preferably white with a Testarossa body kit. But no matter how many issues of AutoTrader I would thumb through at 7-11, I never found my white whale.




[Any REAL car guy had a stack of these in their passenger seat in the 1990s]

As an aside, for those that were not aware (or alive) AutoTrader used to be a weekly newspaper quality MAGAZINE before it was a website. You'd pay $20 (or whatever) to list your car, phone number and a number of acronyms to describe your vehicle. It was the original 120 characters or less ad!

But I digress. Lo and behold, one day I was driving back from my girlfriends house, and parked on the side of the road, on someone's lawn, was a red Ford Probe with hood scoop and a 'For Sale' sign on it. The weird thing was, it wasn't a Probe. But a Mazda RX-7 Turbo II. I knew what a Mazda was, I was after all hauling around in my MX-3. But I didn't quite know what a RX-7 was, let alone a Turbo II. But that didn't stop me. I jotted down the phone number, got in touch with the seller and struck a deal ($3500 in 1997 if you're keeping score).


[Artists rendition of red almost Ford Probe]

I was all set to go pickup the car, so naturally I went to my local Meijer's (Michigan's version of WalMart) to buy some chrome exhaust tips and detailing supplies. With tips in hand, I went to meet with the seller. When I got to her house, she started to tell me the story of the car. It was her late husbands. He was a master Mazda tech at a local dealership. He loved the car, already rebuilt the motor and "did a bunch of work" to it. I knew what some of those words meant, but didn't really know what they meant. I was just happy to have my new "basically a Probe" and drove it home. Of course, first on my list of to-do's was to install the chrome tips that were burning a hole in my pocket. When I went to bolt them on, I realized they fit INSIDE the exhaust tip, and the exhaust tip said "Racing Beat" on it.

I wasn't YET allowed to drive the car on the street as I was waiting on insurance. So I decided to take it around the neighborhood. On my first drive I got about a 1/2 mile from my house and... it died. I had no idea how to diagnose let alone work on this thing. Did the motor blow? Did the battery die? Did it run out of... gas? Yeah, it was that one. A quick trip with fuel tank in my hand and it was running again and promptly back in my driveway.

It took me weeks to realize what it was that I bought. I was not a great driver - certainly not a racer. But when I found myself side by side with a brand new C5 Corvette at a light and my buddy in the passenger seat goaded me to race him - I figured it'd be fun, but I'd lose. When the light turned green and the Corvette roared off the line - I somehow launched, took off and walked him. In my utter disbelief - I asked my friend in shock "what is this thing?".

From there, I was hooked. I jumped on the internet, research everything I could. I found The Big List mailserv, browsed what I'm sure was the very first iteration of the Racing Beat website (not THAT much different from today) and even got to visit Mazdatrix while on a trip out to California. I was officially a "car guy" and not just any car guy I was an "RX-7 guy". My love for that FC3S was deep, but when I discovered the FD3S - I was hooked. I had that FC for a couple years before I saved up enough for an FD and never looked back. I'm now on my fifth FD and although I have owned a stable of different vehicles over the years, I always seem to find myself behind a wheel of one.



[My final white almost Ford Probe]

I do wonder from time to time what direction my life would have taken if I DID find that Ford Probe or never found the RX-7 to begin with. From jobs I've had, companies I've started, friends I've made... my path would have been... different. But I can't imagine it would have been more fun.

 

A bit off-topic but true story…I was pre-approved and just had to write a check for what I wanted. That RX7 would have been a silver 280zx I had my eye on if the dealer wouldn’t have been such an a-hole by meeting me at the door of my old car, BEFORE I even got out, just to dismissively tell me he wouldn’t take it on trade-in. I told him I wasn’t trading it in but thanked him for coming out to tell me that and left him standing there mumbling.
​​​​​​​About 2 hours later I drove up to his floor-to-ceiling office window in front of the Datsun dealership in my SB just to honk and wave at him.

 

That made me smile.

When I traded in the TR4, it was so rusted out, in spite of getting it sprayed with a rust preventive underbody coating early on, from driving it on the winter salted roads the fenders were held on with duct tape. Also the trans was on its last legs due to trying to teach my wife to drive in it. Initially, she was too short to fully depress the clutch pedal (after many gear-grinding episodes I cut a notch in the trans tunnel to allow the seat to move further forward) I got $50 for it on trade. The Datsun dealer and I had pre-arranged the $50 trade-in when I ordered the 240Z 6 months prior. When he saw the TR4 he said $50 was too much, partly in jest. I laughed and said a deal is a deal, but I agreed with him.

 

When I was young, I was raised with the belief that cars were just cars, they were a essentially just that, nothing more than a form of transportation. Well, I definitely didn't stick to that belief.

I grew up playing Gran Turismo on the playstation 1, in the late 90s, the best looking car, hands down in my opinion was the FD RX-7, which was still sorta new back then. Fast forward a few years, and I'm in high school, my best friend dad's owns a body shop in Pontiac. Well, him and his dad find a junkyard Series 5 N/A FC, and they do a full makeover on it. That becomes his car for the next few years. At the time, he was the only friend of mine with a car in high school, so this became the car that first seemed attainable to me. But, I'm still not really into cars at the time, but by now I can at least appreciate the design of certain cars, especially the FC RX-7.



What started it all? FD in Gran Turismo. Honestly didn't think graphics could get more realistic than this at the time.


I graduate high school, find myself in the local community college nearby, using my mom's 1996 Malibu for transportation. I get my first job, and as soon as that first paycheck hits, the first thing I think of is I should probably buy myself my own car. Well, I wasn't quite sure what I wanted, until I drove past a house a few streets over, and saw a car for sale in the driveway. It was one of the coolest cars I've ever seen at the time in person, I don't know, it just spoke to me I guess.

It was a black 1992 Mazda MX-3 GS, with the 1.8L V-6 (Or, so I thought). Well, the seller of this car so happened to be a family friend of ours, he is a "Master Mazda tech" about to retire. I asked him how much he wanted for it, and he told me he refused to sell this to someone as young as me, and as their first car, something about it not being a typical MX-3 (I'll get to that later.) I wasn't sure how much he even wanted, so I did the next best thing, and told my mom I wanted that car. She reaches out to him, finds out how much he wants for it and tells me. I immediately run to the bank and grab the funds ($1,200). My mom does the deal and drives it home for me. I'm now the owner of an MX-3!


1992 MX-3 GS


I quickly buy some cheap aftermarket black wheels and new tires for the car, absolutely loving how this car looks now. It took me a few weeks to really learn how to drive this car properly. I learned how to drive stick on an old family owned 72 VW Beetle (or maybe it was a 73?), but learning how to drive in this car, was WAY different. My biggest struggle was I'd always spin the tires starting in 1st gear. Living close to Woodward avenue, I drive it up and down woodward on those nice summer nights, gawking at all of those other, much faster, much nicer looking cars on the road. Until one day on my way to Woodward driving down 15 mile, I find myself behind the coolest, most awesome sounding red sports car I've ever seen. I have no idea what it is though! There's no badges on the back of it or any markings I can identify. It has a black carbon fiber hood, aftermarket wheels and tinted windows. It sounds awesome! It was like seeing a beautiful piece of artwork, that was familiar, yet so strange. I try to follow the guy, without trying to look like I'm tailing the guy. He pulls into a restauraunt off of Woodward, I do a loop and turn around and pull into the parking lot as well. I find the car! I get out of my MX-3 and immediately the parking lot attendant tells me I need to pay to park here. I tell him I was trying to figure out what this car was that I saw and that I'll leave right after. He says "Oh, the red RX-7? He's here every Friday!", immediately everything sort of falls in place, and I realize this is the car I was obsessed over as a kid playing Gran Turismo, and this is the newer, better version of my friend's FC that I've spent so much time in. It's like my mind couldn't connect the puzzle until that moment. Seeing one in person for the first time was just so awesome, it was nothing like I expected, it looked so different, yet so much better in person. I'll probably never forget that moment.

One night in the MX-3 on Woodward, I catch myself at a red light next to a modified VW, I believe it was a golf? The guy clear wants to race, with the sound and looks of his car, I can already tell I'm going to lose, but I tell myself to just have fun and go with it. We're both revving our engines now before the light turns green. Soon as it turned green I dump the clutch and bang through the gears, and I look at my speedo, and I'm well over 60mph! The VW is way behind me. We pull up to the next light and the guy is telling me nice shot of nitrous I used, and let's do it again. I was pretty confused by his statement, because I didn't have nitrous, or knew what it ever was, but also incredibly shocked that this car did that. Light turns green, same outcome. This would happen many more times and I eventually got pretty confident with this car.

I eventually enlisted in the USMC, and get sent to Japan for two years. While there, I see my fair share of RX-7s, mainly 2nd generations and 3rd generations. I tell myself, when I'm back stateside I'll buy one if it's not the first thing I do. Well, a few years later and I'm sent stateside, and the first thing I do is look up the local craigslist listings for an RX-7, but there's nothing! I eventually find one, but it's back in Michigan, no issues the seller says! (I know nothing mechanically about cars as it is at this point) It's a 1986 Arctic Silver GXL for $2k, I arrange to buy it sight unseen, and have it shipped out to me. Well, I arranged it with my uncle, who tells me the brakes don't work, and the pop-ups stopped working when he picked it up (already not a good sign). He's able to get the brakes fixed for me before it's picked up. I pick the car up in a Walmart parking lot in Massachusetts and drive it home to my apartment, I was absolutely hooked on how this car sounded and drove. I daily the car for about a year, until every issue with the car that could possibly happen, happened. Turns out the clutch was slipping, the aux ports were seized closed the entire time, I was on my 3rd alternator, and now the engine was low on compression. I buy a Ford ranger while I try and fix the FC's problems. I believe it's at this point where I officially became a "car guy". Eventually, getting fed up driving the truck, and missing that sportscar experience, I fly back home and drive my trusty MX-3 out to daily.


My FC next to my MX-3 on base at the time. Yes, duct tape worked great when it came to patching that fiberglass front kit.

My four years is up, and I'm back in Michigan, I sell my truck before moving back, and I have my FC shipped back home while I drive my MX-3 home. Living in my mom's detached garage in the city while I attend school (Hey, it was something). I eventually get the FC running again, after a whole rebuild and the nine. During this, I make some new friends online and in person who are also into the RX-7 scene. Oh, and I ended up buying another FC, this time a blue 1991 vert. I land a good job, finish school and buy a house, both FC's and the MX-3 comes with me, I soon sell the vert to a friend. Another friend of mine who I met through the RX-7 world needs a daily to drive, so I sell him my MX-3 for cheap. MX-3 runs into some issues, and after a few friends dig into it, they discover it's actually a 2.5L swap! Well, that explains a lot!

I finally decide it's time for me to start looking for an FD. At first I keep my hunt local to Michigan, and I find a few prospects, and even got to test drive a few, but none of them gave me the confidence I was hoping to get. Eventually, I move my search outside of Michigan, and I find a for sale posting here, and reach out to the seller, we talk over things, and make a deal! I easily convince my RX7 friend to drive out to Nashville with his trailer, and we pick up my 1993 Red R1! After I bought my FD, three other close friends of mine end up buying their FDs as well.

2017 was a great year for me I guess, finished school, got a big boy job, bought a house and bought an FD.



The FD has been good to me, my wife and I get married and drive the RX-7 to our wedding reception, where we have an entire car show there as a bonus. My wife comes from a car culture as well, except it's sort of the opposite of RX-7s, (Geo Metros!) But she totally understands the culture and is all about it. I'd love to get her an RX7 of her own one day.

Looking back though, if I never got my FD, my FC, lived in Japan surrounded by JDM car culture, made friends with someone in elementary school who would drive me around in their FC, or even played Gran Turismo, I truly wonder where I would be at today, how different would things be? Would I even be into cars? Would I be into Dodge Neons, VWs? BMWs? Still in the military? Our current home we're in now, is probably our forever home, but that's largely in part due to a good friend of ours through the RX-7 scene, simply asking his neighbor if he'd sell their house. All of my closest friends today, were made through the RX-7 scene in some shape or another, and to be honest they're more family than friends. It really is the friends you make along the journey, more than the journey.