Stay the course, it's coming together nicely!

 

Just as I was getting ready to drop the car to the ground, I got a bug in my *** about swapping out the suspension. I thought the 9K/11K rates would be fine for street driving, but I suppose the overall dampening of the coils is a little more on the stiff side, with smooth Japanese roads and tracks. My period correct/90s parts fanboyness loves the idea of having Aragosta coilovers, spec’d specifically for RE-A….but I have always found these (and the Aragosta/swift combo on my Cosmo) to be a bit harsh for PA roads. So, I stumbled upon a set of Quantium suspension for a pretty good deal on FB marketplace. And if you’re going to replace RE-Amemiya coilovers…may as well replace them with the brand they so famously used on so many of their notable cars. I’m also a sucker for cool part with a cool story or are from notable members of the community. These checked that box as well, as I bought these from the current owner of the Rotary Xecret 7. I had posters of that car up on my wall in college, so having a part that was possibly destined to go onto that build was a pretty cool notion. I believe I even found the original thread they were sold to him from, so I’m putting that in here for my own prosperity:

https://www.rx7club.com/market/1149333




Amazingly, and thankfully, they height of these were set almost exactly the same as the ones that came off the car, which meant very little adjustments were needed. With the tight working space of my garage for a project like this, I was very happy to not have to revisit adjusting things too much. Initial impressions are, the ride is noticeably improved for the roads around here. From here, I had a brief adventure with the CPU#2. I go into more detail here:

https://www.rx7club.com/3rd-generati...ssues-1166230/

But after all that, the car is back on the road, and I’m going through my map to lean out some cruising AFRs. I’m seeing a bunch of inconsistencies, so I think I’m either dealing with a battery going bad, or an alternator going bad. Of course the battery will require removing the rear bins to change out, which will suck, but at least I have most of the interior out at the moment anyhow. I’m hopeful this will solve the issue and I won’t need a new alternator, but we will have to see.

I also got another little nick-nack exterior piece finally put on the car as well. It’s a replica Jiko-Shiki style plate (of course it’s a 7 plate). I think this company is no longer around, and I wish it was a Chiba plate, but Gunma certainly has some rotary history, so that’s fine as well. I’m not crazy about the plate being mounted directly to the bumper, but that is how the authentic MS bumper had the provision for the plate on it as well. There was just no way to hard mount it anywhere without making some elaborate bracket. I did add a bit of support to the underside of the bumper where it attaches, so I hope that will be enough to hold it. I’ll just have to keep an eye on it for now. I attached it with an Import Bible tilt plate adapter, so it will be very easy to take on and off during track days when I need maximum cooling.




Lastly, I couldn’t stand the chrome bezels for the fog light kit. Chrome has always felt tacky to me, especially on Japanese cars, so I had to paint them black…and of course yellow Laminex for maximum ricer points. I was immediately more satisfied with the front end after such a seemingly minute detail.



I’ll also post this little “teaser” for the last piece of the front-end vision of the car. I’ve been on the hunt for an RE-A AD hood for many years now, and the logistics has just never made sense when I find one to buy. So, I’ve decided I’m just going to make one. I was able to get the RE-A louvers from RHDJapan, and my plan is to have a body shop just graft them into the OEM hood. Since I’m doing it all myself, I’ll also probably add a few cutouts to the front to replicate the Auto GarageTBK look. Or possibly add a naca duct to the hood at the turbo inlet. We’ll see. Judging on how long it has taken me to install mods in the past, I’ll probably have a year or two to think about it.haha

 

I had been putting off replacing the battery for too long. So, with wanting to take the car out and park it without having to have it jumped, I needed to get this done. As I eluded to in the last post, this required taking out the rear bins. As I got the bins out, I realized an even bigger pain. When IRP did the relocation, they used bolts with nuts on the underside of the car to mount the battery box. Since I don't have arms 6ft long each, I needed to recruit my 5 year old to help. He held the bolt in place while I removed the nuts from the underside. Since this process was so annoying, I decided to put some nutserts into the floorboard to at least make the next battery change slightly less frustrating. Not the greatest/most detailed photos for this update, but I was kinda on a roll, so this is the best I got.

While I was in there, and had everything torn out, I went ahead and installed some secondskin sound deadening. They say you do not need full coverage for their product, so I added to the main areas where I thought vibration/resonance would be at its highest. I'm no audio engineer...so this placement was more of a wild *** guess, but I figured Mazda knew a thing or two, so mainly I just added to where they had already installed some thin sheets. The hatch area, I went a bit further and went for a more complete coverage just to be on the safe side. I also installed a sheet of it to the underside of the LRBSpeed spare tire cover. This, according to secondskin should dampen the vibration of the thin aluminum sheet, and keep noise down. Took me way too long to put on some cut-proof gloves when dealing with this crap. The thin metal sheet inside was tearing my hands apart.

I also made some 'modifications' to the panel so I can hopefully get it in and out without having to take the passenger side rear quarter plastics out in the future.


Another 'modification' was needed to get the panel to fit with the SBG rear washer tank.

Lastly, I put a charger cord on the battery and ran it though to the opening for the jack in the rear. This will make keeping it on a tender much less of a hustle. Up to this point I was running the clamps through the passenger door every time. It doesn't sound like a big deal, but it got very tedious to go though that every time I parked the car. This will hopefully help extend the life of the battery and I won't have to go through the hustle of changing it anytime soon.

It felt good to get all the interior back together in the rear of the car. It had been out since way back when I installed the wing, so I drove around for about a full year with a gutted rear. But I didn't want to put it all back in until I had put the sound deadening down. This has definitely given me some motivation to get the doors done, and put together as well. This car has never had a full interior since before I owned it, so that will be very gratifying to accomplish. I'll have to take a few things out one last time for new speakers and for the Raceshop roll bar install. So hopefully I'll tackle that soon.

 

having just relocated my battery to the rear area, I like the idea of fishing wires to the access panel for a tender. I'll be stealing that idea. Thanks.

 

After only having it on for a night, I can already say it is a far better user experience than awkwardly reaching the clamps in there all the time. Definitely recommend.

I can't take full credit though. My interest in doing something like this had initially been sparked a few years ago from a thread on here, where the OP called it a Tesla Charger Mod...or something to that effect. But I didn't like the idea of drilling yet another hole in the floor and having the dongle just hanging out under the car during driving. Then a few months ago, we installed a ring connector harness on one of our forklifts at work, and the idea came back to me. Took me a while to figure out where I wanted to go, but once I thought of this spot, I can't really think of a better spot that doesn't require any drilling into the body or interior plastics. It's nice and accessible when you need it, and hides away nicely when you don't.

 

Super unrelated, but I just have to ask. What model Vaughn leg pads are those in the photo of your bumper on post #27? Velocity 3's? I've gone through several sets of Velocity 4's over the past 11 years and don't really want to use anything else .

Nice idea with the battery tender. It's usually the little stuff that ends up making the difference!

 

I agree. The Orange/Black ones are actually V4s with a V2 leg channel (you can probably see my old V2s in one or two of the older pics). I ran my old V2s into the ground haha. They were literally falling apart. Luckily, I stumbled on these in the perfect size and with the leg channel I was used to in one of the FB groups. Turned out the guy lived in the same township as me, and these were the retro colorway (I haven't liked a velocity graphic since the V2 swoosh. They just look like they would be better suited on a west coast customs chopper, not a set of goalie pads, in my opinion)...so win, win, win, win for me. I just got them pretty recently, and it was essentially a seamless transition. I'm not sure what I'm going to do when these fall apart. I can't really use any of the more modern stuff. Hell, I've even tried using my brother's P2s and I was just uncomfortable in them. They are just so numb feeling. Though, my glove and blocker are still old P2s. I do like the feel of the Lefevre designed gloves over the Vaughn stuff. There's a couple more goalie-related easter eggs in a couple of the pictures as well hahah.

 

Always wanted to try a pair of V2's with the tighter leg channel. I modified my first pair to have a leg channel similar to the one that Jimmy Howard had back when he was wearing the iceberg graphic and actually got Vaughn to do it on the next two pairs (which also had the iceberg graphic, lol), which was really cool. Ended up moving to a V4 base with a solid outer roll and the sliding surface from the V5 like what Antti Niemi had back in 2012. I actually used the same V5 blocker for 8 or 9 years before replacing it with another V5! Got hooked on the 580 style gloves when I was playing in high school and don't think I can use anything else, haha.

Were you on the GSBB back in the day? I would spend hours reading threads from decades ago and learned way too much about goaltending and equipment than I probably should have (sort of like I do here with these cars) If you're on the "new" TGN forum, you might recognize some of my equipment.

Here's a link to some photos of them. Didn't want to clutter your thread so you can check them out on imgur.
https://imgur.com/a/K8CU54n

I hear you on the new equipment. I don't think I would be able to play in that stuff! If you're ever near Harrisburg or Allentown and happen to have your equipment with you, let me know! We have a few rinks over here and the hockey is pretty good.

 

No worries about cluttering up my thread...I could nerd-out over gear (and technique) all day. I'm pretty sure the reason I became a goalie originally was solely based on me thinking the gear was so cool when I was young. And to briefly connect that back to RX-7s, I'm also pretty sure this was the foundation for why I love the cool parts aspect of these cars. Similar to how I learned how to play goal after being intrigued by the gear, I've had a particular vision for this car, and once that is completed, go enjoy and learn how to have maximum fun with that vision.

I was definitely on the GSBB back in the day. By that point in my life, I was done with competitive hockey as a player, but I was doing a lot of coaching then. I think I learned more about the position (and the gear) in those couple years than I had in all my years of playing. I really miss that forum. Something was definitely lost in the transition from there to the GGSU and facebook groups. Similar to how things in this community are lost on the FB groups. I have popped onto the TGN from time to time, mainly to relive the 'gear sightings' threads during camps and things, but I'm no longer working at rinks and not coaching anymore, so it's not on my radar as much as it used to be. But my 5 year old just finished learn to play and we can't even take our 2 year old to the rink anymore because he wants to be on the ice so bad he's literally inconsolable if he's there an has to just watch his brother.....so it seems like I'll be making a return to hockey in a different way here soon.

I really like the way you do your iceberg. Since I've always felt this graphic was Vaughn's answer to Potvin's old Koho graphic, I never liked that they added to the thigh-rise area. It just made the pads look too busy IMO. So, I love that you mute that portion out. [Told you I can nerd-the-****-out over this **** hahah. OMGWTFMAFBBQ]

 

With the JC finally back up and on the road again (see the other build thread), I was ok with digging back into the FD, and risking it being down for a couple of days/weeks.

Continuing my effort to finally have an interior in this car (it has never had one during my ownership), I purchased some new speakers, head unit, and BubbleTech speaker adapters. While doing the stereo upgrade, I wanted to get to as many of the "while I'm in there projects" as I possibly can. Since I don't have Pioneer head unit 'keys', I wasn't able to easily get the old single din head unit out with the trim in place, so I had to take out the cluster trim to get at it. This means I will finally get to tackle a little project I've been planning on for a few years: Mounting my boost trim switch.

Originally when I was spec'ing out my ECU, I had a trim switch provision wired in. I had initially intended on mounting the switch in the ash tray (that way I could slide the cover over it to 'hide' it away), but after getting the trim pot in my hand, I realized the body of the switch was far too big to be able to fit in that location. The dimmer switch location was my next idea, but that was quickly scrapped because I just didn't see a way to make that look 'clean'. Plus, I didn't want to lose that functionality. I then thought about the cigarette lighter location, but I had another idea for a cheeky mod, that I had planned on utilizing that space for in the future....and again, I didn't want to lose that function in case I needed a phone charger, or needed to use an air pump or something that could be powered by the lighter. But as the years have moved on, cell phones can easily be powered by the headunit, battery powered air pumps are dirt cheap, and who knows if I’ll ever get to the other mod….so the cigarette location became the ideal place for this. It just fits so well here. It’s very inconspicuous, doesn’t look too out of place or ‘racecar’, and it’s very close to the wheel if I ever wanted to change things on the fly. Win win win.

I removed the lighter and placed the body of the switch into the housing of the lighter. From there, I sanded a tinny tinny bit of the cluster face trim to get the switch popped through.





I also modified the amber light diffuser ring-thing to be able to be glued on when it’s all said and done, but I’m not sure if much (if any) light is going to shine through to make it light up. But I think it’ll help to give it that “factory finish” vibe.



On the next episode of the stereo install, we will again….not be installing any stereo equipment. Instead, we will be swapping the HVAC controls over to a fresh A.I. Designs stereo/HVAC trim piece, and installing some Black Cat Customs HVAC stickers (green to match the 30th Anniversary cluster).

Stay tuned.

 

Let me start this section by saying, the A.I. One Designs interior pieces look great, and have a very sturdy feel to them. Which is great news, because I have had almost a full interior’s worth of his parts just sitting on my shelf waiting for this section of the build. I should preface that I still haven’t put any of these pieces in place, but man, they are well constructed. I hope the fitment is as good as the craftsmanship. Anyhow, I started to transfer all of the HVAC components from the OEM HVAC panel to the new one.




I did come across an issue with the new panel, though. This new panel used a ’93 panel as the base model, so the ‘cups’ that hold the stickers/dials are slightly different. On the ’93 the receiver (we’ll call it) for the dial is integrated into the panel itself, where as with the ’94 it is integrated into the cup.


Reproduction panel behind the ‘cup’ of the ‘94


You can see here where the dials ride in the channel of each piece.


Original ’94 panel to show the difference for reference

I should really mention that this was NOT an issue with the creator/seller of this part. In fact, he brought this up and discussed this situation when he opened up the preorder for the piece (he even went as far as to reproduce the ’93 cups). Unfortunately, since I had never taken this piece apart before, I didn’t fully comprehend what he was saying (I took it as to mean, if you have a ’94 piece, you wouldn’t need the reproduction cups). So, knowing what I know now, I would have definitely bought his reproduction cups when I purchased the HVAC panel for two reasons: 1. So there would be no need to risk modifying the ’94 cups. And 2. I would have had a back-up just in case I would have broken the cups that came on my car. It was super nerve-racking prying that piece off of the original. The glue had really set in over the years, meaning I could have very easily broken this piece, then been SOL. BUT, since I didn’t have the foresight to purchase new ones, I had to modify mine to make it work.

Modified to fit

There was one modification to the panel itself that was not foreseen though. The post (circled in blue below) was just a bit too tall. It left a big gap between the panel and the sticker piece. This could also be a side effect of using the ’94 cups, or it could have been that this post on piece I got was a bit too tall. This wouldn’t have been an issue with a OEM piece, as you could just grind down the post. But this A.I. One Designs piece goes a step further and puts metal threaded inserts into the posts. While this is a great addition to the piece, I was worried I would ruin the threads taking some material off. So, instead of cutting the post from the side, I came straight down with a Dremel. Happily, once I got everything sized right, I didn’t even have to re-tap the peg. Just ran the screw in a few times to clean out the threads and it was good to go. There is still the slightest of gaps, but I was kinda at my comfort limit grinding down the post. I was getting dangerously close to hitting some other areas of the panel (even nicked a small portion, that thankfully was just on the back side and won’t be seen. Though, a keen eye on this picture will catch it), but I do not think the light from the backlighting will shine through and make it noticeable.


There was one more “while I’m in there” type jobs that I kept thinking about, but finally realized I really needed to do now, so I may never have to take this interior apart again. Lighting. So, before putting everything in, I got the list of all the bulb sizes for the hvac and cluster, and put an order into Superbrightleds.com. Happily, these came in less than 2 days. There is certainly the worry about hot/cold spots with LEDs when you are dealing with diffused light, but the 194 replacements I got for the cluster were essentially identical to standard 194s but with an LED in place of the filament. This should mean full 360-degree lighting. I couldn’t find the same type for the 74 bulbs, but I was able to find some that were listed as 270 degree, so it should be as good as it’s going to be. I also busted out some black hockey tape to line the new panel and replace some of the factory friction tape in an effort to keep squeaks and rattles to a minimum.





I also took a wire wheel to the hood clips then soaked them in WD-40. I hope this will limit corrosion on these pieces (which I think may be one of the main reasons the hood can be so difficult to remove). We’ll see if that holds true if I have to remove this cluster again in the future.

 

maybe a spot of grease on the clips? or sand them smooth? or both

 

You could soak them in vinegar or evap o rust, clean and paint. Then add some grease to the screw. However, that is probably overboard.

Nice work so far.

 

Nice!!
The hockey tape thing is a good idea! I would bet that does help some.

I greased my cluster tabs with dabs of grease before sliding everything back together.

 

Well. The day I had been putting off had finally come…. Stereo day.

Through my youth as a car guy, I somehow skipped the phase where everyone was putting aftermarket head units, speakers, and subs in their car. My first FC had an aftermarket CD player in it, but I just took it to BestBuy and had them put it in haha. I have never been comfortable with wiring (cars or other forms of wiring/electrical). My plan was to have the same friend who helped me with the wiring up of the headlights also help with this, but life is what it is, and it was had for us to synch on our free time. So, armed with a little more confidence after diving into the CPU#2 issue I discussed briefly in an earlier post, I decided I could tackle this project.

I know I’ve waxed on about period correct mods in this thread, but oddly enough, I had no desire to have a “period correct” looking head unit for this car. My two main priorities were: Phone mirroring and physical buttons. The Atoto S8 was on sale for black Friday last year, and it seemed to check all the boxes, while having the added benefit of being a very compact unit (depth wise). So, I picked that up and set it on the shelf waiting for me to decide on speakers. Since I know absolutely NOTHING about car audio, this was another agonizing decision for me. I wanted something decent, but didn’t need something crazy high-end. I’m not really an audiophile, nor am I really someone who listens to music every time I drive one of my fun cars…. But I did want something that would sound nice to play some music if the urge arouse. I landed on Focal Access speakers for the rear, but with the limitations for the fronts, I could not go with that line. Luckly, I had procrastinated long enough, that BubbleTech had come out with his front speaker adapters. Using Benny’s handy measurements, I was able to conclude that the Focal ICU 6.5s would fit.

I first got to work on the head unit wiring. Since I don’t know much about this stuff, it’s hard for me to say if the previous install was a hack job or not. As you can see in the picture above, they just cut off the OEM connectors, and spliced each wire. They were kind enough to label each wire, and I was able to confirm they were correct in their labeling via the wiring diagram. So, from that aspect, it seemed somewhat professional. However, they extended each wire slightly, and at each connection the wire was just twisted together and electrical taped. So, from this aspect, seemed pretty hacky. Irrelevant though, and I was told that the best connectors to use in a situation like this (that is easily and safely reversable) would be posi-lock connectors. While I went to work splicing in the new harness, I also wired up and ran the connection for a reverse camera. This was something that came with the head unit for the black Friday deal, and seemed kina silly for a small car like the FD, but after driving a bit with the fender mirrors, I discovered backing up at night can be tricky. Plus, the Atoto allows you to switch to the rearview camera live while driving, so it could be cool to watch some fireballs. What the heck, let’s throw it on there. Thanks to @level7 for some tips on wiring that up.

The speakers were the same (cut and spliced), so those connections were also cleaned up.


The BubbleTech adapters were great, and I absolutely love the packaging with his own part number and sticker. Super cleaver.

I found a couple more bad connections during testing, so I got rid of all the splices/extensions from the previous install, and everything seems to be working as it should (even the backup camera being triggered by reverse). Though, I have to say, I’m a bit disappointed in the sound out of the rear speakers. Granted, it could very well be a wiring issue, but the rears sound super ‘thin’ compared to the fronts which sound a lot more robust. The rears are supposed to be a step up in quality compared to the fronts. Pic of the rears for reference….as well as a bit of a teaser for the next installment. It is a part I’ve been excited to put in since I got it back in 2017.

 

Nice job getting the rear camera working! Its been way more useful than I originally thought. The next time I have the engine bay torn apart I'm likely going to install a front camera too.

 

As I mentioned in the early post, that discussed my goal/vision for the car, 90s+ has been my overarching theme. It is very easy to imply that this is in regards to what the Japanese were doing with these cars. However, as someone who was tangentially involved in the ‘tuner’ car scene here in the states back then, I think some of the things that were happening in the US at the time is often overlooked. Obviously, there were the big guys like Racing Beat, Mazdatrix, Rotary Performance/rx7.com, Pettit, PFS (purple engine eater aside), but also the smaller shops like Cork Sport invoke just as much ‘nostalgia’ in me, personally, as does the cool stuff from Japan at the time. One of those things came from M2 (not to be confused with Mazda’s skunkworks of the same name): Their Rollbar.

The Raceshop Rollbar

I knew this one was going to be a big project…little did I know just how big. BUT, I did realize something while digging up old install threads. There were two different versions of this bar: Street and Weld. This bar was sold to me as “Lary’s personal bar” which from old photos, everything indicates that to be true. So, I knew I was getting all the bells and whistles with this bar, but I didn’t realize what that would mean to the install process. Every install thread I could find, all discuss the install of the street bar. For this bar, all the ‘feet’ of the mounting points were separate, meaning the main hoop could be manipulated independently of the mounts. However, the weld-in bar all of these mounts were….well…welded. I’m assuming this is where the NHRA certification came in. All this is to say, I was very happy to know that I had a “better” version of this bar…..But that came with some difficulties for the install.

While I had the interior out for the speakers, this was the perfect time for a test fit. Right off the bat, I realized just how tight the tolerances are in this bar. It took probably a half hour (with the help of 2 other people) just to get it close to the final resting place. It was here that I realized why the mount for the rear strut tower was cut from the bar. There is virtually no way to manipulate the bar in with those in place (especially once the full interior is back in place). Even with everything out of the way, I had to drop the rear suspension out of the tower, and slide the mount in place, then had to put the suspension back through….and even after all that, I still had to pry on the bar to ‘pop’ the main hoop into the mount. Sorry, this is a lot of rambling with no pictures. So, here’s an image of the test fit. Maybe this will help to illustrate what I’ve been talking about.




From there, I just drilled the holes in the floorboards and cut the carpet before removing to reinstall the interior. I must say, there were a couple of close calls with the windshield, and I think I was lucky to get it back out without cracking it. After putting all the interior back together, I was stuck with putting this thing back in by myself. Surprisingly, I think it actually went back in a bit easier than the first time. There was probably a scratch or two that I had put into some of the interior plastics, but honestly, mine were so weather beaten and rough beforehand, that I really don’t think anything I did here would be noticeable haha. One thing I did need to keep in mind was to put the provided strut tower caps onto the rollbar prior to connecting the rear hoop with the strut top. These pieces came with the bar, so I assume Lary had made them, so I was confident that they would be correct. Thankfully, I did remember to do that.



When I fitted it this time, I had put on the main diagonal to make sure that was all in place before bolting everything down. I figured this would be necessary, because if things were off just slightly, I’d never be able to get that back on. It did take some significant prying on the secondary diagonal to get it to fit up, but eventually I got there.



I’m not sure if I will run with the main diagonal all the time. Since this bar was Larry’s, it came with ALL the options, so it came with the ‘mini main diagonal’ which I think will allow for full travel of the passenger seat. Plus, I think it may actually look a bit cooler with that one in place. We’ll see though.

Lastly, I needed to make some modifications to the base plates for under the car. Fitting them up as-is, the one side doesn’t have much support. The bolts are straight now through a bit of a notch up in the floor, so I wanted the plate to span to the other side of the void area, which would allow the plate to sit flat and have support at all 4 corners. I could probably just leave it….hell, I could probably leave it unbolted and unwelded at the rear strut towers, and this thing wouldn’t freakin move….but of course, that would be foolish. My neighbor decided this was a good opportunity to teach me how to use a plasma cutter. So, after a few tries on some practice metal, I took a shot at the real thing. He is currently still in the building stages of his garage, so we only had a little 5 gal compressor, which left quite a lot of boggers on the metal that needed some cleaning up, but it was far better than me trying to drill through this thick of a plate with anything I have.



Underside plate before:



Unfortunately, I forgot to take a picture of where the plate landed to illustrate the change before finalizing the plate with some rust protection. I surrounded all the bolt holes with Permatex black silicone, and after that was cured, I sprayed the whole area with undercoating. I’m hoping this will keep any water out of the area to help avoid any rust. I feel like this is really the main drawback of a bar like this, so I’m trying to do everything I can to lessen the chances of that happening.



A keen eye will notice the provisions for the door bars on the main hoop. While I certainly plan on installing them, I think that will happen over the winter. That will take a bit more finagling and more drilling through the floor, and honestly, I just want to drive the car again. So, it’s now time to get the rest of the interior back together.

 

Putting the interior back together was happening somewhat side by side with the install of the roll bar (once test fitting and all the provisions for the install were in place). Obviously, the rear of the car needed to go back together first, before installing the bar. One of the things I kept telling myself was to not forget to put the rear strut caps in place before final fitting and welding the bar in. There was a bit more trimming of some of the interior that was necessary as well to allow for the larger rear strut bar to fit, but nothing super crazy. The pictures of the rear of the car can be seen in the last post, so no need to repost that, so it was on to the front.

After replacing all the bulbs in the dash with LEDs, I was really excited to get that put back in. Unfortunately, I was met with a lot of, we’ll call it, less than ideal illumination.


So, it was back out with all of that. I realized that for some reason, the LED bulbs were polarity dependent. I flipped all the ones I thought were wrong, and put it all back together.



Got a couple corrected (all of the HVAC portion was good), but I had to remove the cluster again. This time, I got smart. I unhooked the cluster from the cluster face/hood, so I could just hook it up and trouble shoot everything.



Success. I also added something I hope to be a trick little addition. The head unit came with a microphone for wireless calling. I decided I didn’t want this think sticking out anywhere, so I came up with the idea of putting it (as well as the wifi antenna) in where the center speaker would have lived. I’m not sure if the mic will actually pick up my voice here or if the mic is too enclosed, but I figure if it doesn’t work, I won’t be all that upset.



You can also see in this pic, that I had installed an LRB speed defroster in the past. I had driven around with it a couple times, and honestly, I wasn’t crazy about it. The raw aluminum caused far too much glare on the windshield (you can even see how bad it was in the above picture). I certainly could have just painted it black to match the rest of the car, but ultimately, I decided it was a bit too ‘racecar’ with the bolts sticking up (yes, I understand the irony of me saying that, considering the state of the rest of the car). I decided to pick up a brand-new OEM grill. With the cluster out, it was a great time to swap that over.




Next was to put the center console back in, and I also put on a BubbleTech V1 center console support. I had picked this up a few years ago at DGRR, so this is another part I’m happy to get on the car and off my shelf.

From there, it was time to move to the seats. I haven’t really showcased the condition of the seats that have been in the car. But, if you look at the condition of the rest of the car to this point, I’m sure you can guess the shape of them.



So, these were not going back in. Kind of a bummer, cause having touring seats in a base, was kind of nice…but they are just too far gone for me. I don’t think there is even enough foam left to reupholster them. Knowing this, I had picked up a set of base seats quite a few years ago. They aren’t perfect, but they are much better than these. Since these did not come with rails, and I had to swap my rails over, this was also a great time to get another part off my shelf and onto the car: a JP3 fire extinguisher mount. Still need to grab an H3R extinguisher, but this will do for now.

 

I drove the car in this state for pretty much the rest of the season, as it had been off the road for most of the summer, so I didn’t want to dig into much more. Just enjoy the car. There were even a couple of days where I got to drive both the FD and the JC…which is a pretty rare occurrence, but a lot of fun to do.



After stopping home from work for lunch one day, I decided to leave the work truck at home, and take the FD back. Got to get a pic of it outside my office, which was fun.



After that, the season quickly went from a nice mild fall to the middle of winter pretty much overnight, so the FD went back to hibernation. But not for the whole of the winter. My wife and I are finally getting around to finishing our basement this winter, so I needed the garage for a staging/work area. This meant the FD needed a place to go. Luckly, I had spend a good portion of the summer helping a neighbor finish his garage build, so he was kind enough to let me borrow some space the winter. Of course, the day I SHOULD have moved the car I didn’t, and the day before having some wood and materials dropped off, it snowed. So, this was fun.



The Falkens are NOT snow tires haha. I wish I would have had my wife video me trying to get up the driveway. It was interesting to say the least.


Gotta keep those oil temps up in those below freezing temps.

The FD will have some good company this winter. There is a laundry list of things I’d like to get done to it, and possibly even take this to DGRR for the first time (I’ve always taken the Cosmo), but we’ll see how far I get. This will be an awesome place to get some stuff done though. Much better than my cold garage.

 

hows the mic in the center speaker area working out? That's a slick idea if it works well!

 

Unfortunately, I haven’t had the time to test that out yet, but hopefully soon. I’m just about to the point where I’ll be able to drive the car with the windows down in the summer. Hopefully you’ll see some things in this update that will make it ok that I have to delay an answer to this question haha.

As usual, I wasn’t able to get nearly as much as I wanted to done to the car over the past winter as I had wanted. But I was finally able to start to work on the JP3 AC kit. The AC worked in the car for like a week when I got it back from IRP, but really hasn’t worked since. I think it was just that the original kit had been open to atmosphere for so long, and the dryer was toast. I went with their “Big Turbo” kit to clean things up and keep the lines away from the turbo. I also did the 6 rib pulley modification as well:

https://www.rx7club.com/3rd-generati...ation-1167893/

It took a bit of trial and error to figure out the routing of the kit to make sure everything had clearance and would also keep everything else accessible/maintainable. I’d say the biggest drawback to this version of their kit would be how difficult it is to get the quick connects of the lineset onto the ports of the system (behind the UIM), but theoretically, you’ll only have to do that once. And for how much it cleans up the bay (and keeping the lines protected from the heat), that should be well worth the initial pains.






I used my Bubble Tech HVAC restoration kit to put the condenser box all back together. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the time to take the whole dash apart and complete the whole job. So, I’ll have to revisit this in the future.



Was able to get the system to hold vacuum over night, but that’s were some other issues started to arise. The main issue here was……I have no idea what I’m doing when it comes to AC stuff. The first time I tried, I got the compressor to click on for a bit, and got some cold air coming from the vents…..but all of a sudden I noticed the LS pressure was WAY up, the HS was down, and the compressor stopped clicking on. Eventually I got it, but here are some lessons I learned for anyone else doing this job:

1. Make sure your vacuum pump pulls a full -30 in/Hg. The original pump I had rented would only get the system down to around -22, and even though it held that vacuum overnight, I don’t think that was enough to vaporize the moisture in the system.

2. After you know you can hold the vacuum, make sure to re-vacuum and pull that vacuum for over a half hour to fully vaporize the moisture in the system. The first time, I only did this step for maybe 10 minutes or so.

3. Make sure to purge the fill line of air before opening the LS port to fill the system. I think not doing this step may have been my biggest contributor to my initial failure. You’d be surprised as to how much air is in that line before the refrigerant comes out.

Big thanks to @Pete_89T2 @Billy7 and @JP3 Motorsports themselves (as well as several of the threads on here and youtube videos) for the help in completing this job. I was finally able to get the system filled and the compressor working.


One thing I’ll have to revisit is how the left side of the intercooler is sitting on the condenser. I tried to move the condenser around a few different ways and move the line to a couple different positions, but this was the best I was able to get. I may just notch the intercooler shroud where the line connects to the condenser a bit to get things where they need to be.




You can see in this last pic, the IC isn’t quite able to be bolted to the mount.

Keen-eye viewers will also notice one of the other “while I’m in there” mods I was able to complete: The Raceonly Pulley kit.


Next on the list is to address a vacuum/idle issue I’ve pretty much always had. I can’t get the car down any lower than -8 in/Hg at idle. Which also seems to be causing my idle control to be erratic, at best. I’ve tried many times to find a vacuum leak post TB with no luck. I was about to contact JP3 about their TB rebuild service, when I stumbled on another part I’ve always though was pretty cool: an RE-A ported TB. Since I think this is a cool and fits the theme of the build (plus it was half the price of the JP3 rebuild), I decided to give this a shot first to see if the TB is actually the issue. The PO of this TB had said it worked great for his setup (he went DBW) and said his idle vac was good, but I did notice some light shining through the secondary butterflies. I tried to adjust the stop, but even with the set screw all the way in, the butterflies stopped before the lever made contact with the stop. I decided to not try and get them to close any more, for fear of really messing something up. So, instead, I researched the coatings that could be used to help seal up the little gap remaining. It seemed as though people weren’t totally happy with the coatings they had tried, and JP3 keeps theirs pretty close to the chest…so I thought I’d give the Tomei Throttle Coat a shot. It certainly seems much thinner than some of the other examples I’ve seen, but the initial light test was a success. So, I put another coat on, and I’m hoping to get it installed tonight after cutting some grass before the holiday weekend.

 

Awesome thread, just got all caught up, don't know how i missed this one before. Love the progress you're making. Keep it up.

 

Thanks, that definitely means a lot!

So, I was able to get the TB on, and have the car ready for an impromptu 7s Day meetup. The timing just never seems right for everyone in our area to get together, but we were able to get 3 of us


Don't worry, the Supra owner also has an FD, it's just currently down for an engine rebuild. Though the Supra was no slouch. He just got done completing the build on that, and was dyno'd on Thursday @822. Not bad considering how hot it was around here.

The JP3 AC definitely kept me cool....and really made the meetup possible. Don't know if I would have wanted to have the car out in that heat without it.

Unfortunately, the TB did not solve my low vacuum at idle issue. BUT, the idle control was dramatically improved. I held a flashlight to the original TB, and the secondaries looked to be sealing well, but the primary was showing significant light coming through. Also, the dashpot of the old one was completely shot, so coming to a stop is much better now as well. The guy with the Supra has a smoke machine, so hopefully we can meet up again and smoke the intake.

The other bummer was, I noticed my voltage at idle was very low on the drive home (dipping as low as 12.3). I checked the log, and even while driving, the highest I got was 14.3. I went back and rechecked a log from just a few days ago, and I was seeing at least 14.1 at idle and 14.7 while driving. So, I snagged an Advance 150A alternator from their ebay store last night. Surprisingly, it's already left Tokyo and it could be here as soon as Friday.

 

I noted earlier that, last winter was the most work I had ever been able to get done on the car….Unfortunately, that did not translate to this summer being the most I had actually used the car. I have yet to actually burn through a full tank of gas this season. The major reason for this would be just life and kids and stuff, but there were a couple little things about the car that were bugging me and I wanted to address.

First was a belt squeak that had been on going from the time I put the RaceOnly pully kit on. This is ironic, because a bad bearing in the tensioner pully was the basis of getting the new pully set. What I found was, the water pump pully was interfering with the water neck hose clamp. I’m not sure why, but there is virtually NO clearance between the pully and the OEM water neck. I still need to reach out to Ohmar to see if this is an issue for others, but something tells me it’s not. I’ve moved the clamp around a few time to try and find a spot where it’s not contacting the pully, but can’t seem to get it completely away. For the time, it is better, and it does not appear to be wearing on the hose (which would be my main concern). You may be able to see the mark along the outer edge of the face of the pully here:



The next thing to address was the fuel level sender. While the gauge has always seemingly worked from full to about half-tank, from there, the needle would drop off bellow E and then at about a quarter tank, would come back. It always seemed to be consistent, but it was not confidence inspiring. So, a while ago I bought an aftermarket replacement from A.I. One Designs, but had not gotten around to putting it in. So, it was finally time to do that. Upon getting the old one out, I noticed the new one did not come with the connector (pictured here):





For anyone else doing this mod, I was able to find it on Corsa Techniques here:

https://www.corsa-technic.com/item.php?item_id=1233

There were some hiccups with this fix that I inquired in more detail in this thread:

https://www.rx7club.com/3rd-generati...-next-1171594/

But the short version was, there must have been a small hole in the float, which weighed it down, making the gauge read E constantly. So, I swapped out the float on the new sender with the old one from my original. You can somewhat make out the shadow of the gas inside the float here:





Lastly, I ended up buying a smoke machine for my vacuum leak situation. While this new TB is certainly better that my original, it still leaks like a sieve. So, I’ll probably have to just bite the bullet and send it to JP3 for their rebuild service. Rebuilding that thing is just something that I am not comfortable doing, but who knows, I may try on my old one.

So that brings everything up to last week where I did a quick oil/spark plug change to be able to finally get the car to an autocross to get the feel for everything. Of course, this isn’t all good news….just a few weeks ago, we found out that Pitt Race will be sold and after November it will no longer function as a race track.










Figures. I was literally building this car with the main purpose of it being a track-day toy at this place, and just as I get close to that goal, the track closes. I did manage to find a group that will be renting the “original Beaver Run” track layout (what Pitt Race now calls the “North Track”) this coming Monday. So, at least I’ll get to experience half of the track before it’s gone.

 

I have read your thread before, not sure I didn't notice you are in my area. One pic looks like you were parked near where I work.

There was some talk about the track closing. There was support and flyers at parts stores to keep the track. I figured that the noise was an issue since they were asking for signatures and people to come to the township meeting in October. It looks like to owners are getting older and just want to retire, though. From what little info I have heard.

There is another track in Nelson's Ledges, Ohio route 422 east, past New Castle. More than twice the distance for me to Pitt Race. I had intended to hit up at least one event at the location in Beaver County this year. Life had other plans. That track is a short drive down the free section of the turnpike for me and a little more.

Thanks for the post. Keep us posted on any events that your in. I might be able to stop out and check things out.