94 SSM Street Build--Realizing the Dream, Learnin' the Ropes!
06-12-16, 08:25 PM
#1
94 SSM Street Build--Realizing the Dream, Learnin' the Ropes!
Hey guys,
I've been procrastinating starting my build thread for the past six months and thought I'd finally get down and get it started! As you can see under my username, I'm a 15 year member to these forums. I've owned an rx-7 for only the last six months of that. The previous 14.5 years were spent reading and learning and dreaming--okay, maybe there was a big break in there where I wasn't active here for a long time, but the dream of owning an rx-7 never died and now I'm here to tell you about it. This first post, I thought I'd share a bit of my journey to owning my rx-7. Its a bit long-winded, but I hope some of you will find some enjoyment out of it and I promise there will be more car-related posts to come!
------
Maybe some of you on here can relate--I'm not really a 'car guy', or at least, I had never been one before. I always liked cool cars, but didn't grow up being around them, owning them or working on them. I'd never owned a sports (or even 'sporty') car before, never worked on them, etc. All my life I'd only driven around in my gutless-but-glad-to-even-have-it-pickup, slower than a prius and with more body roll than the pillsbury doughboy trying to nae nae. The most sports car-related thing I'd done was play a stupid amount of GT2 on my buddy's Playstation back when responsibilities weren't even a blip on my teenage horizon. I may only recently have been truly inducted into this 'sports car world', but I remember where it all started. I remember the first time I saw an rx-7. I was in Seattle with my dad for some family affair I can't remember. I was probably in 8th grade at the time. We had just moved to Washington the year before and I was still missing my old life and friends in the midwest and still figuring things out in my new life. Driving back to the hotel that night, we pulled up to a stop light behind an S5 FC. I only know this now because I distinctly remember the "cool circle taillights". The car was black and sleek in the glow of the streetlights. It had its own attitude and I liked it. "Is that a Corvette? What kind of car is that? Mazda??" It was more than a mild interest--I had to learn about this car. As soon as I got home, I typed in 'Mazda Rx-7' into google (or whatever it was we used back then haha) and read everything I could get my hands on. Upon discovering it was powered by some weird rotary engine, I was hooked! Somewhere along the line I found these forums, Initial D, and some terrible-quality Best Motoring videos and my interest turned into a dream.
Somehow, the Rx-7 captured some part of me that before had never been there to be captured and that all the Corvettes and Mustangs in the world couldn't catalyze. While the throaty roar of a V8 or similar is most car enthusiasts' nirvana, the rotary brap is what unabashedly caught [and maybe hurt] my ears, sucked me in and drew me into the fold. Maybe its the fact that its so different from everything else, that it doesn't try to be anything else but proudly excels in its own strengths and quirks. Maybe its the fact that its Japanese--not Japanese-made--the car is Japanese, and all my life I've held in interest in that culture, probably stemming from my own personal heritage. For whatever reason, the Rx-7 has been the vehicle that has brought me into this new world of motor oil, pre-mix and "oh god, i hope that wasn't an apex seal that just went out my exhaust". I don't know how far it or my bank account will go (those aren't connected, are they?), but I'm just enjoying digging into it, gaining experience, learning--both in how to more fully drive and enjoy this amazing machine and how to work, maintain and improve it. Alright, enough with my own sappy back-story and introspection--onto the real story!
------
I always thought I would own an FC, but I was either too broke going to college or playing music to own a sports car. Fast forward to last year--I had received my bachelors the year before and started my career as an engineer. My bullet-proof pickup daily (96 nissan pickup) was finally starting to seem a little tired and I thought about getting a new car. At first, I was looking at a turbo volvo as a practical but hopefully fun car to drive. Then I thought about getting an r2 rx-8 and owning a rotary vehicle. Eventually, I came to the conclusion that it would be stupid to get a 'sporty' car or sports car that was 'kinda like that one car i always wanted but not really' and decided to just stinking get an FD.
After six months of scouring the classifieds here, autotrader, CL and Ebay, I found it. It was on Ebay and the car was located in Texas. 1994. SSM (not red, yay!). Only 44,500 miles.
The pictures weren't very good but it looked to be in good shape. I was actually in Seattle with some friends to take the JLPT (japanese language proficiency test) and called the seller from the hotel we were staying at. He seemed like a nice guy (in the army) and he answered all of of my questions. Apparently he traded a really nice custom motorcycle for it a couple months prior thinking he'd have an easier time selling the car in the dead of winter. He didn't know too much about Rx-7s or rotary engines at all, but agreed to have it taken down to an import shop so they could take a look at it if I won the auction.
It wasn't all smooth sailing, though. There was some funny business with the auction. I was waiting for the hours and minutes to tick down to put in a bid on the car at the last minute. It stood at 11,200 and I was willing to bid up around $14k, at least. It got down to less than an hour when, to my surprise and horror, the auction ended early before I bid on it! I had no idea what happened but figured maybe someone gave him an offer or something. I sent him an email saying I was upset the auction ended early because I was going to bid on it and told him I would give him $13k for it if it was still available. I'm glad that I did, because he told me he didn't know what happened and that the auction just ended early somehow. I didn't totally believe him but he seemed like a decent guy so I kept in touch with him. Ebay told him to try and work it out with the guy that ended up being the top bidder but if they couldn't, he could relist it with a strike against him or something. Apparently, the guy was from out of the country and needed time to figure out how to get it looked at and transported, etc. and wasn't offering as much as I had. A couple of days later, the seller called me and said the guy wasn't going to be able to follow through and that he'd sell it to me for $13k. At this point, I was a little apprehensive about the whole process but felt good enough to go through with it and didn't want to let this one slip by!
The seller agreed to take the car to a shop and have it checked out before I booked tickets to come down and look at it. They were a small shop specializing in Subarus and ended up not even being able to do a compression test for me (tried explaining how it was possible to do this with a normal compression tester but it wasn't going to work). Because they assured me the car started right up and seemed to run great, I decided to take the risk and buy the plane tickets.
The seller agreed to leave the car at the shop until I arrived where I could pay the shop for the work they had done (inspection and replacing the coolant sensor so I'd feel comfortable driving it away) and check-out the car and hopefully buy it. This seemed good to me as the shop seemed reputable and could be there as a third party.
After seemingly an endless amount of research and planning, I booked tickets to fly down to Tucson, arrive there early enough to rent a car one-way and drive the five hours to El Paso, check-out and buy the vehicle that night (at like 7:30 PM on a friday night), crash at a hotel, drive the FD back to Tucson the next morning, drop it off at a shipping company and then book it to the airport to fly back home. It was about $700 cheaper to fly round-trip through Tucson for some reason and also cheaper to have it shipped from there, so that's why I did that. I also had to do this all in one weekend as I was out of vacation days for the year.
Long story short--I was a bit nervous about it all, especially as I had never bought a car out of state before and the car was making some 'funny noises' (the tech from the shop assured me they were normal... it was mostly the blow-off valve lol), but everything went well. Half of the guys at the shop were telling the guy that they'd buy the car from him (thanks guys). Thankfully, I didn't have to get into a bidding war with anybody lol and the seller sold it to me for what we agreed upon.
Outside of the car throwing some alarm code halfway there and me realizing I couldn't get the hood open anymore (release cable had come undone...), the car made the trip through the desert to Tucson alright and then I barely made it to the shipping company and airport in time! It made the trip up to the northwest in less than two weeks in one piece (super dirty though) and arrived the day after my 30th birthday. It took a good few weeks for me to really believe it was mine.
Here's a shot of the sunset on my drive to El Paso. I would never want to live there, but it was truly beautiful passing through.
Here's a shot of the car after I dropped it off at the shipping company in Tucson (shipping guy is inspecting it in the photo... guy was really great, came in on a Saturday to receive the car and was cool with it being stored there while waiting for the truck to come in). I had the shop raise the car about an inch as it was super low originally and I was worried about it clearing the semi ramp.
First shot in the car in Portland (raining, of course):
Alright--sorry for the crazy long first post! Future updates will be a bit more concise and more car-related.
I've already done a fair amount of things to the car since December... upgraded headlights, taillights, swapped in 99 spec and custom interior parts, upgraded sound system, suspension, intercooler, intake, etc. Like I said earlier, I've never really worked on cars before so I've been starting from square one, but [in between the moments of not being able to get off rusty bolts or breaking them off] I'm really enjoying myself! I'll post some updates and better pictures soon and get caught up to where I'm at now. I'm still sort of figuring out where I want to go with the car, but I know I want it to be track-able, but remain street-legal and be fun and reasonable comfortable to drive (my commute to work is 50 miles round trip).
Lastly, thanks to all you forum guys who have provided a lot of inspiration and fuel for my dream! I hope I can do the same for someone out there lurking.
I've been procrastinating starting my build thread for the past six months and thought I'd finally get down and get it started! As you can see under my username, I'm a 15 year member to these forums. I've owned an rx-7 for only the last six months of that. The previous 14.5 years were spent reading and learning and dreaming--okay, maybe there was a big break in there where I wasn't active here for a long time, but the dream of owning an rx-7 never died and now I'm here to tell you about it. This first post, I thought I'd share a bit of my journey to owning my rx-7. Its a bit long-winded, but I hope some of you will find some enjoyment out of it and I promise there will be more car-related posts to come!
------
Maybe some of you on here can relate--I'm not really a 'car guy', or at least, I had never been one before. I always liked cool cars, but didn't grow up being around them, owning them or working on them. I'd never owned a sports (or even 'sporty') car before, never worked on them, etc. All my life I'd only driven around in my gutless-but-glad-to-even-have-it-pickup, slower than a prius and with more body roll than the pillsbury doughboy trying to nae nae. The most sports car-related thing I'd done was play a stupid amount of GT2 on my buddy's Playstation back when responsibilities weren't even a blip on my teenage horizon. I may only recently have been truly inducted into this 'sports car world', but I remember where it all started. I remember the first time I saw an rx-7. I was in Seattle with my dad for some family affair I can't remember. I was probably in 8th grade at the time. We had just moved to Washington the year before and I was still missing my old life and friends in the midwest and still figuring things out in my new life. Driving back to the hotel that night, we pulled up to a stop light behind an S5 FC. I only know this now because I distinctly remember the "cool circle taillights". The car was black and sleek in the glow of the streetlights. It had its own attitude and I liked it. "Is that a Corvette? What kind of car is that? Mazda??" It was more than a mild interest--I had to learn about this car. As soon as I got home, I typed in 'Mazda Rx-7' into google (or whatever it was we used back then haha) and read everything I could get my hands on. Upon discovering it was powered by some weird rotary engine, I was hooked! Somewhere along the line I found these forums, Initial D, and some terrible-quality Best Motoring videos and my interest turned into a dream.
Somehow, the Rx-7 captured some part of me that before had never been there to be captured and that all the Corvettes and Mustangs in the world couldn't catalyze. While the throaty roar of a V8 or similar is most car enthusiasts' nirvana, the rotary brap is what unabashedly caught [and maybe hurt] my ears, sucked me in and drew me into the fold. Maybe its the fact that its so different from everything else, that it doesn't try to be anything else but proudly excels in its own strengths and quirks. Maybe its the fact that its Japanese--not Japanese-made--the car is Japanese, and all my life I've held in interest in that culture, probably stemming from my own personal heritage. For whatever reason, the Rx-7 has been the vehicle that has brought me into this new world of motor oil, pre-mix and "oh god, i hope that wasn't an apex seal that just went out my exhaust". I don't know how far it or my bank account will go (those aren't connected, are they?), but I'm just enjoying digging into it, gaining experience, learning--both in how to more fully drive and enjoy this amazing machine and how to work, maintain and improve it. Alright, enough with my own sappy back-story and introspection--onto the real story!
------
I always thought I would own an FC, but I was either too broke going to college or playing music to own a sports car. Fast forward to last year--I had received my bachelors the year before and started my career as an engineer. My bullet-proof pickup daily (96 nissan pickup) was finally starting to seem a little tired and I thought about getting a new car. At first, I was looking at a turbo volvo as a practical but hopefully fun car to drive. Then I thought about getting an r2 rx-8 and owning a rotary vehicle. Eventually, I came to the conclusion that it would be stupid to get a 'sporty' car or sports car that was 'kinda like that one car i always wanted but not really' and decided to just stinking get an FD.
After six months of scouring the classifieds here, autotrader, CL and Ebay, I found it. It was on Ebay and the car was located in Texas. 1994. SSM (not red, yay!). Only 44,500 miles.
The pictures weren't very good but it looked to be in good shape. I was actually in Seattle with some friends to take the JLPT (japanese language proficiency test) and called the seller from the hotel we were staying at. He seemed like a nice guy (in the army) and he answered all of of my questions. Apparently he traded a really nice custom motorcycle for it a couple months prior thinking he'd have an easier time selling the car in the dead of winter. He didn't know too much about Rx-7s or rotary engines at all, but agreed to have it taken down to an import shop so they could take a look at it if I won the auction.
It wasn't all smooth sailing, though. There was some funny business with the auction. I was waiting for the hours and minutes to tick down to put in a bid on the car at the last minute. It stood at 11,200 and I was willing to bid up around $14k, at least. It got down to less than an hour when, to my surprise and horror, the auction ended early before I bid on it! I had no idea what happened but figured maybe someone gave him an offer or something. I sent him an email saying I was upset the auction ended early because I was going to bid on it and told him I would give him $13k for it if it was still available. I'm glad that I did, because he told me he didn't know what happened and that the auction just ended early somehow. I didn't totally believe him but he seemed like a decent guy so I kept in touch with him. Ebay told him to try and work it out with the guy that ended up being the top bidder but if they couldn't, he could relist it with a strike against him or something. Apparently, the guy was from out of the country and needed time to figure out how to get it looked at and transported, etc. and wasn't offering as much as I had. A couple of days later, the seller called me and said the guy wasn't going to be able to follow through and that he'd sell it to me for $13k. At this point, I was a little apprehensive about the whole process but felt good enough to go through with it and didn't want to let this one slip by!
The seller agreed to take the car to a shop and have it checked out before I booked tickets to come down and look at it. They were a small shop specializing in Subarus and ended up not even being able to do a compression test for me (tried explaining how it was possible to do this with a normal compression tester but it wasn't going to work). Because they assured me the car started right up and seemed to run great, I decided to take the risk and buy the plane tickets.
The seller agreed to leave the car at the shop until I arrived where I could pay the shop for the work they had done (inspection and replacing the coolant sensor so I'd feel comfortable driving it away) and check-out the car and hopefully buy it. This seemed good to me as the shop seemed reputable and could be there as a third party.
After seemingly an endless amount of research and planning, I booked tickets to fly down to Tucson, arrive there early enough to rent a car one-way and drive the five hours to El Paso, check-out and buy the vehicle that night (at like 7:30 PM on a friday night), crash at a hotel, drive the FD back to Tucson the next morning, drop it off at a shipping company and then book it to the airport to fly back home. It was about $700 cheaper to fly round-trip through Tucson for some reason and also cheaper to have it shipped from there, so that's why I did that. I also had to do this all in one weekend as I was out of vacation days for the year.
Long story short--I was a bit nervous about it all, especially as I had never bought a car out of state before and the car was making some 'funny noises' (the tech from the shop assured me they were normal... it was mostly the blow-off valve lol), but everything went well. Half of the guys at the shop were telling the guy that they'd buy the car from him (thanks guys). Thankfully, I didn't have to get into a bidding war with anybody lol and the seller sold it to me for what we agreed upon.
Outside of the car throwing some alarm code halfway there and me realizing I couldn't get the hood open anymore (release cable had come undone...), the car made the trip through the desert to Tucson alright and then I barely made it to the shipping company and airport in time! It made the trip up to the northwest in less than two weeks in one piece (super dirty though) and arrived the day after my 30th birthday. It took a good few weeks for me to really believe it was mine.
Here's a shot of the sunset on my drive to El Paso. I would never want to live there, but it was truly beautiful passing through.
Here's a shot of the car after I dropped it off at the shipping company in Tucson (shipping guy is inspecting it in the photo... guy was really great, came in on a Saturday to receive the car and was cool with it being stored there while waiting for the truck to come in). I had the shop raise the car about an inch as it was super low originally and I was worried about it clearing the semi ramp.
First shot in the car in Portland (raining, of course):
Alright--sorry for the crazy long first post! Future updates will be a bit more concise and more car-related.
I've already done a fair amount of things to the car since December... upgraded headlights, taillights, swapped in 99 spec and custom interior parts, upgraded sound system, suspension, intercooler, intake, etc. Like I said earlier, I've never really worked on cars before so I've been starting from square one, but [in between the moments of not being able to get off rusty bolts or breaking them off] I'm really enjoying myself! I'll post some updates and better pictures soon and get caught up to where I'm at now. I'm still sort of figuring out where I want to go with the car, but I know I want it to be track-able, but remain street-legal and be fun and reasonable comfortable to drive (my commute to work is 50 miles round trip).Lastly, thanks to all you forum guys who have provided a lot of inspiration and fuel for my dream! I hope I can do the same for someone out there lurking.
Last edited by photoresistor; 06-13-16 at 03:06 AM. Reason: Fix photos
06-15-16, 11:03 PM
#5
Thanks man!
Alright, this post will go over some of the first things I did to the car--I started pretty small and took the time to take decent pictures with my actual camera (Sony NEX-7)... now that I've started to do bigger things I'm realize I've just been hastily taking pictures with my phone. Looking back at these has inspired me to bust out my camera a bit more again.
My very first fix on the car was replacing the driver side exterior door handle assembly. The handle was broken off, so I had to unlock and open door through passenger side... it was super annoying, so I had to fix it right away. I actually ordered the handle assemblies the day I got back from buying the car!
The second fix was soldering in new capacitors in the FD01 box. The seatbelt warning alarm would always go off. Again, very annoying (sensing a theme with my priorities?). I've done basic soldering stuff before so I was pretty comfortable tackling this right away.
makeshift solder station on an old, modified tanker desk I got off CL.
You can see some of the capacitor legs are in pretty bad shape!
I'm somewhat sad to list this on here, but it was actually just a task for me to just get IN to my engine bay! The hood latch release worked when I bought the car in Texas (I looked over the engine bay the night I bought it), but I couldn't get it open when I stopped on my drive back to Tucson--a bit concerning considering some things were beeping at me on the drive and I couldn't even check my oil or coolant levels. The warnings ended up going away and I luckily was able to make it to Tucson without anything bad happening (at least that I know of lol).
Getting the hood latch released with a clothes hangar took me way too long to figure out how but I finally got it... now I can do it in a few minutes. It doesn't hurt that my bumper is basically falling off and there's a decent gap in between it and the hood. :/ Once I got into the engine bay, I replaced the hood latch cable.
Success!! So happy when it finally popped..
First peak back in the engine bay since I bought the car! Starting to wonder about owning a car with a vented hood in Oregon..
At this point in time, I took the time to snap a few pictures of a few random things in the engine bay.
These didn't last long..
Cool Tanabe strut tower bar.. faded to pink on the outsides haha.
Thought this looked a bit strange. Not a big fan of how this is routed.. eventually I'll probably go with a BOV on the TB elbow.
Later I cleaned up the interior to document it in advance of some new interior components set to soon arrive....
Pretty happy with the shape of the interior when I bought it!
Bonus picture:
This is me half-freaking out in my car before my initial snow-drive in the rx-7. They said there was a chance it might snow a little bit late in the day, but it ended up snowing quite a bit more in the morning and afternoon and I had driven the FD out that morning... I've hardly driven in snow at all, let alone in a RWD sports car so I was a bit nervous about it. A few other cars got stuck in front of me on my way home (FWD cars, no less), but I was able to roll through the spots that would have been trouble. Upon rolling into my driveway, I vowed to never drive the FD again if I even hear of a feint whisper of a chance for snow lol. I don't care if i run off the road or somebody hits me in my pickup, but if the FD (two weeks old to me then) got banged up I would have been a sad sad boy.
Alright, this post will go over some of the first things I did to the car--I started pretty small and took the time to take decent pictures with my actual camera (Sony NEX-7)... now that I've started to do bigger things I'm realize I've just been hastily taking pictures with my phone. Looking back at these has inspired me to bust out my camera a bit more again.
My very first fix on the car was replacing the driver side exterior door handle assembly. The handle was broken off, so I had to unlock and open door through passenger side... it was super annoying, so I had to fix it right away. I actually ordered the handle assemblies the day I got back from buying the car!
The second fix was soldering in new capacitors in the FD01 box. The seatbelt warning alarm would always go off. Again, very annoying (sensing a theme with my priorities?). I've done basic soldering stuff before so I was pretty comfortable tackling this right away.
makeshift solder station on an old, modified tanker desk I got off CL.
You can see some of the capacitor legs are in pretty bad shape!
I'm somewhat sad to list this on here, but it was actually just a task for me to just get IN to my engine bay! The hood latch release worked when I bought the car in Texas (I looked over the engine bay the night I bought it), but I couldn't get it open when I stopped on my drive back to Tucson--a bit concerning considering some things were beeping at me on the drive and I couldn't even check my oil or coolant levels. The warnings ended up going away and I luckily was able to make it to Tucson without anything bad happening (at least that I know of lol).
Getting the hood latch released with a clothes hangar took me way too long to figure out how but I finally got it... now I can do it in a few minutes. It doesn't hurt that my bumper is basically falling off and there's a decent gap in between it and the hood. :/ Once I got into the engine bay, I replaced the hood latch cable.
Success!! So happy when it finally popped..
First peak back in the engine bay since I bought the car! Starting to wonder about owning a car with a vented hood in Oregon..
At this point in time, I took the time to snap a few pictures of a few random things in the engine bay.
These didn't last long..
Cool Tanabe strut tower bar.. faded to pink on the outsides haha.
Thought this looked a bit strange. Not a big fan of how this is routed.. eventually I'll probably go with a BOV on the TB elbow.
Later I cleaned up the interior to document it in advance of some new interior components set to soon arrive....
Pretty happy with the shape of the interior when I bought it!
Bonus picture:
This is me half-freaking out in my car before my initial snow-drive in the rx-7. They said there was a chance it might snow a little bit late in the day, but it ended up snowing quite a bit more in the morning and afternoon and I had driven the FD out that morning... I've hardly driven in snow at all, let alone in a RWD sports car so I was a bit nervous about it. A few other cars got stuck in front of me on my way home (FWD cars, no less), but I was able to roll through the spots that would have been trouble. Upon rolling into my driveway, I vowed to never drive the FD again if I even hear of a feint whisper of a chance for snow lol. I don't care if i run off the road or somebody hits me in my pickup, but if the FD (two weeks old to me then) got banged up I would have been a sad sad boy.
06-15-16, 11:18 PM
#6
Nice car. Quite the adventure thus far. Seems like you're on the right track with the fixes and de-mods. It's tough to do the right mods and easy to do the wrong ones w/ rx7s. It's tough to fit an aftermarket BOX in the stock-ish intake configuration, it'll def fit better on the elbow if you don't have to worry about the fuzz staring at your engine bay.
Trending Topics
06-16-16, 11:39 AM
#8
Nice car. Quite the adventure thus far. Seems like you're on the right track with the fixes and de-mods. It's tough to do the right mods and easy to do the wrong ones w/ rx7s. It's tough to fit an aftermarket BOX in the stock-ish intake configuration, it'll def fit better on the elbow if you don't have to worry about the fuzz staring at your engine bay.
I'm still working out which direction I want to go, here's my general plan:
- Clean interior: OEM-quality, "stock-ish" looking. I don't need everything to be OEM parts but I want it to be of that quality and have a nice, clean look. That means not a ton of gauges or gauge pods everywhere, clean stereo that looks not terribly out of place, etc. Eventually, I want to go with the JDM seats to get rid of my scuffed-up bins.
- Improve ride quality: Car came with very stiff coilovers that made going over even minor road bumps terrible! And if I missed dodging a larger pot-hole, it felt like something on my car would break. I want to enjoy driving this thing to work every now and then and not be paranoid about driving on all the crappy roads out here in PDX!
- Update the look of the exterior: I appreciate the looks of a well-sorted S6 FD but have always been more about the 99 spec look or really liked some of the exterior parts put out by some of the Japanese tuner shops. But I want to have a balance between aggressive and clean--a somewhat updated look but not something that tries to make the car something its not. I'm still trying to figure out what that will be, but the good news is I plan to have this car for a long time so I'll probably have time to go through a few iterations until I'm satisfied.
- Do the reliability mods to improve cooling, etc.
- Upgrade fuel/computer so I can eventually run BNR twins... I think I enjoy the twins so much that I wouldn't want to get rid of them. I see fixing and maintaining the sequential system as kind of a challenge that I want to take on.
- Different rims/tires/paint job
Who makes that hood?
Bonus story:
My first oil change [ever].
This is the filter I picked up... what is everybody using?
Working on the side of the road because that's all the space I had. My dad was helping me out, showing me how to jack up the car without killing myself (always nice). We had to remove the bumper to get the jack in enough to go under the front crossmember haha.
The oil change was easy enough, except when I powered it back up it was stumbling like crazy, wouldn't idle and the whole car would shake! I swear I thought I already somehow blew up the engine and was ready to swear off the whole 'working on the car thing' if I screwed it up so bad after just an oil change haha. Luckily, I had gone to a couple rotary meets the month before and met a few guys that actually know what they're doing with these things and soon got the 'make sure the MAP sensor hose is plugged in' advice before I lost too much sleep over it.
Needless to say, my dad was also relieved and I suppose I gained a bit more confidence to keep working on this thing (at least until I really blow it up..).
Last edited by photoresistor; 06-16-16 at 11:51 AM.
06-16-16, 01:00 PM
#10
OMG
Get some jack stands and jack from the side enough to get a stand under it. If the jack won't fit on the side, get a low profile jack. The FSM details where you should jack from (believe there's also some threads on this)
This is way easier than removing the bumper
06-17-16, 12:37 AM
#11
I was just happy mine wasn't red, that was pretty much the only color I didn't want to get.
OMG
Get some jack stands and jack from the side enough to get a stand under it. If the jack won't fit on the side, get a low profile jack. The FSM details where you should jack from (believe there's also some threads on this)
This is way easier than removing the bumper
Get some jack stands and jack from the side enough to get a stand under it. If the jack won't fit on the side, get a low profile jack. The FSM details where you should jack from (believe there's also some threads on this)
This is way easier than removing the bumper
06-17-16, 11:01 PM
#12
Something I picked up from the classifieds... So well packed! Take note, forum-sellers!!
Nardi wheel, apparently off a Miata (I think the only difference is the hole pattern on the backside.. it was already modified to go right on the FD).
I really like the flying M logo. I already have plans on flushin' those toilet-bowl badges away and switching the car to this. I just need to get to an autocross so I can join the Mazdaspeed group and not have to pay like $70 for the right-size badge to go on the rear bumper!
I had one job... set the focus on the Nardi badge... didn't quite get it!
Have to say I was a bit nervous soldering the airbag connector on.. I realize nothing should happen, buuuutttt you never really know, do you?? (it'd probably help if I really knew how it worked)
I'd never used this liquid electrical tape stuff before... pretty cool! Still getting the hang of it, but I usually coat the joint with this, let it dry and then wrap in electrical tape as well and then (if I remember to put it on before-hand) heat-shrink.
I'd never taken a steering wheel off before... there's firsts going on everywhere! Of course I realized later that I didn't quite get it on perfectly straight, I think I'm off by one gear tooth, ugh! Gotta take it back off sometime to fix this, it's gonna drive me crazy!!
New wheel in! Ignore the apparently long time lapse between removing the old wheel and installing the new one.. I took a break! Really! ...
Never looked so good!
I did lose the cruise control, but I never really used it anyways. I think losing the 90's school-bus steering wheel was worth it! I'm also thinking of installing a wheel hub so I could swap between this for street and then a D-shaped Nardi wheel for the track. I wouldn't have the airbag but I figure I'd be wearing a helmet on the track... plus the D-shape would give me a bit more maneuvering room to work the pedals.So I ended up getting it in alright, minus it being slightly off-center. Just recently, I started to get some beeping when I put the key in the ignition. It's five beeps in a row, which I think is supposed to be the airbag? I think it started happening after I started going through the engine bay and re-doing/improving ground wires. I probably have to take off the airbag and see if a connection is loose or something. Anyone have any thoughts on this?
Bonus pic--sneak peak of next post's update:
What a cool build thread, eh? Get to play 'whats in the box' with part giveaways and all! Five star rating here I come...
06-19-16, 06:01 PM
#15
Originally Posted by Deacon_Frost
I am guessing pink packing nuts!
I'll give the hint that its another item I bought off the forum, though, and it set me back more than a few hundred...
Gosh, I need to keep posting updates and catch up to where I'm at now, cuz I'm gonna be in a place soon where I could def use some feedback from ya'll (starting to do a little bit more serious stuff)!
06-20-16, 03:23 PM
#17
Junior Member
Join Date: Jun 2016
Location: Houston, Tx.
Posts: 10
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
I might have to pick one of these up myself. Looks a lot better than the stock wheel.
Last edited by GoodfellaFD3S; 06-21-16 at 10:51 AM.
