A little bit of a background. I come from a car enthusiast family but didn't care about them myself until I could drive. Didn't get into performance at first but when deciding to do so I went DSM originally. I have always been a fan of AWD with turbo. The DSM was a disaster. I had it for around 4 years before finally getting it running with a built head and 6 bolt swap. My friend was able to get it running about 2 weeks before I left for Iraq. Needless to say after all that anticipation of driving it combined with me about to leave and not being much of a mechanic, I broke it in 80 miles.
A friend runs a local engine depot that is part of naganojapanese.com in Canada. My goal was to get a skyline with the money I saved from my deployment. Things didn't seem like they were going to work for getting a skyline over the border. Now I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do. My brother, who is ALL the mechanical know how of this project, wanted nothing to do with the Talon. He saw it as a waste of money. At this point I wasn't looking to spend bookoo bucks on a new toy. So I started looking into maybe 240's and doing a RB swap and SC300's and a 2jzgte swap. None of these really seemed to do it for me. My brother wasn't that eager to assist in building them either. I even looked at getting a Supra I couldn't bring myself to spend that kind of money on that specific car though.
One day in Iraq I started to look at 3rd gen's and couldn't stop. When I called home and mentioned to my brother I had been looking at RX7's he was totally supportive of making a purchase in this area. My father was also very interested in finding out more about them as well. None of us knew much about rotaries or had any experience with them. I found one in Rochester, NY near my Aunt. She looked at it for me and the guy said he would cut me a deal and let it go for $14,000. Mind you I'm doing this all over the phone from Iraq. I said something about maybe doing a catback or something and he told me not to go doing anything to this car as it was bone stock with around 80k miles on it and ran perfect. He told me that with how good it ran it would be a mistake to mess with it and risk something going wrong. This man just happened to be named Enzo but is NOT the tuner from the forum. Well ends up my brother picks up the car for me and 15-20 miles down the road it starts running funny and the check engine comes on. He has to drive it all the way home. Ends up the oil metering pump is bad as well as the coolant seals.
Now, I get back from Iraq and have this awesome car that I can't drive. Trying to figure out what to do I decided to sell it but do a rebuild first. The question at this point is how to go about rebuilding the motor. Do we do it and save money or send it out? While trying to figure this out I came across Banzai Racing and their very affordable rebuilds. So I decided to go with them after multiple interactions that proved to support an honest place with great customer service. I was going to do a stock rebuild to keep it all stock for a preferable resale value. When I was dropping the engine off at my fiances uncles house(her father & uncle work for ABF & were shipping it for me), he was in the driveway polishing his 9sec small block '67 ChevyII and her father was doing the same to his '70 10sec Camaro. After talking to them about how one day I'll get another RX7, I decided there is no way I'm selling it. As soon as I got home I emailed Banzai and told them port the engine! From there it has been a snowball effect with upgrades.

I'm going to try and list how I'm putting it back together (remember I'm the only one to mod this car, bought it all stock):

Mazda FSM helps soooo much
Banzai-Racing aggressive street ported motor(silver housings & front cover, black plates)
Apexi Power FC, Commander, Datalogit
BNR stock rebuilt twins
3"DP, MP, Apexi N1 catback
Cold Air Intake box (open corner)
Polished intake pipes
Efini y-pipe
Brand New OMP, had to through that in there got it for $200
SS braided OMP lines
Fluidyne radiator
OBX hoses
Pettit BOV on the turbo side
Greddy Type S BOV on the intake side of the IC piping
Extreme Turbo Systems FMIC, Core only is 26x9x4 SS polished piping Greddy elbow 3" pipe w/BOV flange
ACT fullface street/strip clutch & HD pressure plate (I think, bought it from Fritz) SS line
Denso Supra TT fuel pump
Aeromotive FPR
KG parts sec rail w/ their 1600cc injectors
Primary rail w/ witchhunters flow tested stock 550cc injectors
Upgraded lines w/ AN fittings
Air Pump Deletion Idler Pully Kit, group buy w/ Chadwick
PLX iMFD w/ wideband O2
NGK 7's&9's
Magnacore wires
HKS Twin Power w/ harness
AEM true boost
Pineapple Racing Dual EGT
Simp Seq with Silver silicone hose
Powder coated silver flake UIM, LIM, waterpump housing, therm housing, and the power steering pump holder
Banzai-Racing poly motor mounts
Banzai-Racing oilpan brace

Well I'm pretty sure there is more that I'm forgetting right now. I'd like to here some input as I'm new to all this and the rotary scene. My goal has been to build it right the first time. I've been talking to Dave at KDR about bringing my car in for a tune once it's broken in. He has been great helping me out over the phone. My expectations are to make 360whp at best. I'll update as things move along and let me know what you guy's think. I've got some pics I'll put up as well.

Plus I thought it was a touring when I bought it but I'm pretty sure it's a base model

 

Congrats on getting it done. Sounds like you did a good job getting it all back together. Enjoy it.

 

More pics

 

Still assembling everything now. We don't get a lot of time to work on it, just weekends. I want it all back together and running before I have to go to FT. Drum in June. Oh, I had to get the smoked bumper lights and the r spec front lip of course

 

That guy you bought the car from sounds like a douche. Great job on getting her up and running.

 

Making all the upgrades I have was made possible by many of the members on this forum. I have bought pretty much all performance upgrades from this site in the classifieds. This forum is more helpful than I anticipated when I joined. Now that everything is starting to get close to the end I'm hoping for a good outcome

 

My brother decided not to let the casting mark stop him from placing the sensor where he thought it would fit best. So he cut the cast mark down flat. The placement seems to be great.

 

The clearance is great.

 

To ensure the wires don't get damaged on the metal protector on the OMP I just placed a short piece of coolant hose on it for protection.

 

Nice.. Car looks good and also the mods you doing..You going to have a solid motor and a fun car to drive around as well.

 

Thanks. My brother lives down in BK and is coming to do some work up here for a little bit. Maybe when if goes back I'll have to take him back in the FD I'm dying to get it all back together. I've never driven the car or even heard it run for that matter. Some guy's come up my way after the meet in NC and the one guy with a FD let me drive his. It was a stock auto but just a little taste even had me feeling like a fiend for mine. My whole goal has just been to do this right, a car like this deserves it.

 

ohhh yea of course. When i gotten my FD I try to do everything in one shoot...These car with the right mods, they one crazy beast in the street.....

 

Everyone around me builds Honda's. One friend has a GTR R34 and some twin turbo AWD Porsche. The only other FD I know about is an older guy that works for GE. So I don't even know what these are capable of yet.

 

You wont be able to stop smiling, guaranteed.

Glad to hear you stuck with it and decided not to sell.

 

Great job, I would suggest you run all NGK 9's all around.

 

DJseven said the same thing last time we spoke. He suggested running these during my break in time and putting all fresh 9's in right before getting it tuned.

 

You are giving that car the treatment it deserves!

Great project, and with the attention to detail you are giving I would expect it to give you great results!

 

Nice Job!

 

I'm getting excited, today we mated the motor and tranny. Next week we'll be putting it all in the car. We had some difficulties this weekend getting the turbos properly lined up. My brother spent probably about $100 dollars on pliers for the c clips holding the comp housings so we could move them. Then I spent over $100 in the last week on helicoil kits. The 10mm kit lists for about $80 at NAPA, glad I get a couple different discounts to choose from Well I'll update with some more pics in the morning and as we continue to make progress.

 

Yo!!! Glad to hear that everything in your project is getting done!
BTW, it's me Shar, the dude with the Stock Auto Red FD from the trip to NC
Didn't know it was you till I started hearing that your came from Iraq and calling banzai...then you mentioned about finally being able to drive one thats when the lights came on haha. Whats the progress so far? I'd like to it through.



~Shar

 

hey man you live in albany? my girlfriend's family lives up there so we're in albany all the time. i think i'll be driving up there with the FD sometime in june...

i'll have to stop by and say hello and check out your FD!!

 

Shar, you get your parts to do the auto to man swap yet? It's coming along good, slow, but good.

theorie, I'll pm you my number my brother and I have been dying to have another FD to look under the hood of.

 

Finding new locations was a pain but my brother came up with some good ideas. Let me know what you guy's think.

 

This ended up being a great spot, in my opinion. There was a threaded hole already there my brother used, he just had to drill the tp hole out a little. I just wanted to make sure I could see the red light to make sure it's always working.

 

We picked up some 1 inch little screws nuts and mounted it to this bracket. Yet another location my brother came up with.