Been meaning to make a build thread to relive the good ol' days of 7club, figured I might as well start now.

I've already had the car for 6 months, it arrived at port oct 18 2022 and immediately I knew it was going to need some TLC.

• Auction grade: 4 (best possible scenario for its age)
• 23,460 verified kms
• No major damage

Despite having a "verified" 23K kilometers, there was substantial oxidation on all things aluminum, plants that had grown into the headlight that lingered, and a generally crusty appearance.
Fortunately rust was limited to hardware and powertrain components, the shell is in great shape afaik.

The car arrived with mods to the engine including:

• IHI RHC7 single turbocharger
• extra 2 injectors welded to some crude intake elbow that were not functional
• Knight Sports ROM tune
• 3/4 extra piggyback control units for boost, fuel, turbo timer, and something unmarked idk.

Exterior:

• RE Facer AD front bumper
• RE hood (modified extra vents)
• RE halogen headlight kit
• 99-spec sideskirts
• RE wWangan wing
• pair of Work Equip 05's in back
• resprayed pearl white (orig. brilliant black car)

Interior was mostly stock, very clean but with some rust on the rear speaker vents.

Immediately noticed the clutch was toast, and quickly after receiving my rotary compression tester finding that my rear rotor likely had a blown apex seal (no compression on 2/3 faces)

Im going to keep updating this until I get caught up


First test drive after getting it home

Auction photo

Auction photo

Auction sheet

Auction photo

Photo sent from importer

Port of Tacoma 10/18/22

First look around

Wedged that k&n filter on to at least attempt to block debris


Front rotor compression

Rear rotor compression (I was in denial for a while and continued to drive it hoping it was just a stuck seal)

 

I remember seeing this one when I was shopping. The mileage really stood out for me, Definitely looked like it has way more miles than claimed but was probably just stored very poorly. I'm excited to see the restoration of this one.

 

Another Washington guy. Looks like a nice example, just needs some TLC after sitting for a while?

 

neat! that kit looks great on the outside. that turbo was really popular back in the day, although its probably hard to find any info now. ARC intercooler is really good.

but what is going on with the water pump, isn't the belt on the wrong side?

 

yea I was originally hoping to rebuild the turbo but it is very hard to find info on. Even a direct email to IHI did no good lol. Sold the ARC to a buddy with an identical kit FD but his is red. Got a greddy v mount that will be going in

WA gang rise up 💪 needs a fair bit of cleaning and rebuilding but we can overcome

that’s awesome! Yea I was skeptical as well having seen horror stories of misleading auctions but given the state of the interior I’m tempted to believe that it was just sitting outside for years just neglected, likely near the water too given the amount of oxidized metal and surface rust on the bolts

 

was hoping to enjoy the car a little more before having to overhaul but this at least gave me the opportunity to give it a fresh start. Pulled the engine out 1/5/23


First time pulling a 13B. Surprised how easy it went

After accepting that the compression wasn’t going to magically reappear, the decision was made to get at it and pull the stinker out


Initial thoughts: crusty af

Ordered an NPT- barbed fitting and jp3 rear bleeder to remedy this rear coolant nipple.. this would turn out to be a recurring issue with various coolant passages


Should have spent the money on a flywheel stopper (or an impact) I did buy an impact after doing this lol

Irons were all in fantastic shape. Barely any step wear to comment on

I thought this was a stock port at first but the guys at Atkins informed me that was not the case

Rear housing was toast. Picture isn’t great but there’s deep scoring from the broken apex seal

The culprit

 

after pulling the motor. Some parts showed up from Japan that I purchased prior to realizing I was going to spiral down the engine build rabbit hole

also sent my internals to Atkins For balancing/porting

ATC sprint with RE-Amemiya horn button to keep the theme going into the interior

Favorite aero mod for FD’s. Have one on the LS car as well

HKS Hipermax coils because yen was too cheap to pass up on this bargain (sub 1k shipped)

Decided to give my old SA3’s a second life after leaving them like this for the past 11 or so years

Barrels and lips cleaned/polished by me

Got the faces powdercoated arctic white

235 up front and 255 in the back

Soaked my parts in evaporust before taking the housings to Atkins for street porting

Brand new S5 higher comp rotors

Brand new housings

Various seals

 

With help from YouTube and Atkins rebuild DVD it was finally time to stack the 13b and tackle some side quests like painting some ugly aluminum bits.

things I’ve purchased for the build so far:

• turblown stud kit
• goopy apex seals
• atkins cryo side seals
• atkins solid corner seals
• OEM water jackets and springs
• Turblown EFR shorty turbo manifold
• BorgWarner EFR 8374 + turbosmart dual port wg & bov upgrades
• Radium fuel rails
• ID1050 & 1700 injectors
• hellcat 525lph fuel pump
• Haltech Elite 1500
• Rywire haltech harness + aem coil harness
• JP3 rear iron coolant bleeder
• ORC 409D Single Plate Metal Clutch Kit + flywheel
• GReddy V-mount IC
• RE-Amemiya AST
• RE-Amemiya shift collar
• Wedssport braided clutch line
• Project-Mu braided brake lines
• HKS Hipermax IV SP coilovers

This covers it for past-completed work and moving forward will be current updates as I make more progress



Painted the front cover along with some other small parts

Atkins street port

First time doing this, Atkins DVD came in clutch as well as YouTube videos like radpotential

Looks 100x better than when it came out so I’m stoked 💪

ORC flywheel & clutch setup (clutch not installed atm)

Turblown stud kit

FFE trigger wheel and banzai under drive pulley

Reason for getting new pulleys

 

WOW !!!!

Another awesome build.

I really love this kit, I remember the green one just like it sold recently.

Thank you for all the detailed pictures, it really helps those of us who have not done this type of work before.

Subd for sure.

p.s. Those 3 spoke Advans are me and my wife's favorite rims <3

 

Thanks dude! Those are my fav wheels too along with the ver.2 supers.

 

I see the new motor still has the broken tab on the rear iron for the trans bolt hole. Do you have a plan for that?

And as stated the car had the water pump belt on wrong so the water pump would have been spinning backwards. Fun!

I've NEVER seen that TB elbow before, wondering if it was custom made or something.

Not surprised the motor was blown, that is a total late 90's setup of "throw some fuel at it and pray" - with a single turbo you were just playing Russian roulette every time you hit the pedal.

Set this up right and this car will be awesome for many years to come.

Dale

 

Yea i meant to tap the rear iron when the engine was still disassembled but completely forgot.. my plan is to stuff an earplug in the hole and tap to 1/8 NPT, magnet/vacuum up shavings, and throw a nipple fitting on there that will hook up to the JP3 rear iron bleeder.

Honestly blown away that car never even came close to overheating in the week or so i was able to scoot around in it lol, never noticed the wp belt, yikes....
You hit the nail on the head though as far as the old build. I would bet money it was put together a year or two after the car was made, using whatever they could find lol. Theres some stickers in the bay for ERC or 'Elite Racing Company" who appear to still be making time attack FD's.

edit: realized you were referring to the trans bolt, I have the broken ear, probably going to attempt to weld or even jb weld it back on as it fits into it's place easily

 

Did some side-quests today to make use of the nice day we had


had to make sure this little ear matched the rest of the iron

too bad this paint doesnt sparkle once it's dry

JB weld, we'll see how it goes. Worst case scenario I'm short one trans bolt bfd

rear iron inspection cover getting cleaned




I know the tab goes under the iron this was just a mock up

 

An all-original low-mileage car that has been abandoned or neglected is worse than a high-mileage car that has been meticulously maintained and restored.

My car was both neglected and high-mileage. Hehehe.

 

Dont tell me truths

 

ORC clutch installed

Thought this was kinda poor QA for a brand new part but idk maybe that’s perfectly normal considering it comes assembled and there would be some friction there

V fancy v nice v swag

 

you should post some pics of the old water pump and pulley, i wonder if someone rebuilt it to spin the other way

 

I would but that got tossed almost immediately upon disassembly. I would highly doubt they went through all that effort, plus wouldn't it just swirl in place given the passage on the housing? Pulley has channels for a belt though which might add validity to your theory

 

JB Weld isn't going to hold... you probably need to take it to a specialist welder who can do cast iron?
Also, high compression rotors aren't really an upgrade for a turbo car. If anything, you want lower compression.

 

I understand the reason for running lower compression with boost for safety measures, but the difference is not that much, and at the power levels I'm shooting for it shouldn't be detrimental. Plus higher compression can increase thermal efficiency. I've seen people run RX8 rotors which are 10:1, these are 9.7:1

..But yea JB weld did not hold up (didn't have high hopes but figured it was worth a shot)

 

not a lot to update on but I’ve been slowly refreshing parts to get them ready to be reinstalled. I’m sure I’ll get flamed for spray painting my intake manifolds but worst case scenario if it flakes down the road I’ll go through with vapor honing.


Wanted to do vapor honing but impatience and financial reasons led me to paint the aluminum bits, i think they turned out great but we’ll see how they hold up to temps (I did use engine “ceramic” paint at least)

Little mock up to motivate myself

Probably going to put some heat tape on the LIM at least or get a shield

Had a nice view while painting (my first car that made me want to take another crack at rotaries)

 

Nothing wrong with a little spray paint

 

Looking great! I need to start my write up too. I’ve got a year and a half worth of catching up to do.

We Washington folks are busy refurbishing FDs. You, Twincharged Rx7, GtiKyle and I are all at it in the Seattle area. There are several more on the Seattle and PNW Rx7 groups.

Hope to see you out driving it before too long!

 

Some updates
Painted the engine bay
I want to eventually respray the whole car, so I used the bay (and taillight cover) as an opportunity to test out some wesco paint that I hoped to match to this old RE time attack vehicle which is like a greenish-white. I think it came out close enough and still cool in its own right that I will paint the whole car this color eventually.


Got my Turbo Kit
After about an 8 month backorder from turbo source, my EFR 8374 IWG kit arrived with almost everything (minus t4 gasket..)
got it all mocked up and installed the Turbosmart BOV and WG.

Now i just need to sort out my motor mounts, wire in some sensors, and install the motor for the home stretch of work!