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Well my rotary journey started over 20 years ago now...
As a 14 year old kid, I saw a CYM FD (beside a red mkiv Supra) on the street near my high school. I was always interested in cars and engines, but this discovery made me realize I didn't want a muscle car anymore.
Rotary engine? wut that? WAIT.. WHATTT? - THATS SO COOL!! I quickly knew I now wanted an import, and more specifically: an RX-7.
I was lucky to grow up in a "DIY" family. My dad was supportive of my interest in cars and bought me an early 80's Celica to play around with. I learned a ton but that car didn't do much beyond burnouts in my backyard. I did tear down the 22RE though, which was my first taste of engine work.
When I finally got my license @ 16, I was given a hand-me-down '87 Toyota Tercel. I wrecked it 12 hours in, and was honestly lucky to survive. Got hit on the drivers side and my door was pushed half way over the seat. It was a mess, I woke up battered but without a single cut/slice.. despite glass in my mouth.. Incredible, really.
I was obviously inexperienced, yet my awesome and supportive parents helped me replace that Tercel... with an FB! I still remember the day I first laid eyes on it. A silver 85 GSL purchased for $600 that would kick start my obsession. I remember my dad later telling me he thought it was going to be junk, might even have been humoring me a bit, but once we saw it he knew I needed to have it. I guess the look of excitement on your childs face really is priceless, haha.
I had that car for a few years until it was rear ended. I was never too fond of the FC, so I kept buying all the FBs I could afford. I bought another 10-12 over the years, had a blast beating on them, then bought 2 JDM FD parts cars so I could build my 13B-REW FB monster.
I kept dreaming of an FD but as the years went on it got further and further out of reach. My FB has gotten better and better but it never quite checked all the boxes.
Fast forward to this fall: an RX-7 pops up on Kijiji. Its financially out of reach but still one of the cheaper ones I've seen lately. Goes through a round or two of price drops and I impulsively reach out. I foolishly ask the seller to meet me outside my bank to have a look and the rest is history!
I've finally got my FD!
The car has 98,000km, was apparently rebuilt @ REC (no documentation). Runs/drives, no rust, clean title, but is pretty beat up.
My plan is to keep it stock body, but the rest is yet to be determined. I suspect it will take me a LONG time to get it where I want, so this likely wont be a hot and exciting build thread, but will track my adventures wherever they take me.
Thanks for reading, and thanks to all who helped me in my journey thus far.
One funny aspect to this build is the parts cars I had purchased 10+ years ago.
I'm a bit of a parts hoarder and have moved twice since I had the FD parts cars. I knew I had some parts so I started to dig through my stuff. Wasn't sure what I kept.. I'm only part way through now..
YIKES, I HAVE THIS MUCH FD JUNK?
Hope to sort through the rest in the next week or two and come up with a rough plan for stage 1.
The UIM, LIM and TB have likely retained value. Much of the other stuff not much. Watch for various spare sensors, such as TPS, MAP, Dual Solenoids (the green pair), ISC valves, coils. New-in-box examples of such can be $400-600.
Yeah, I'm not really looking to sell anything, just surprised at how much survived the moves! I also have no idea how I ended up with 4 sets of turbos..
I packed up most of the valuable sensors/solenoids/switches in little puzzle boxes, still have a "wall" of those to go through. I now wish I had kept more of the interior, as that is where the car needs the most love. One of the previous owners must have genuinely enjoyed breaking interior panels, haha.
Good luck with your build. it seems like a good base to start.
I think we all had a similar experience when we first came across the fd and the wtf is this engine without pistons and only 1.3L!!! i still remember the first montego blue i saw. in the mid 90s, first impression was about the door handles and the overall look!
Finally moved things around and got the car up on the lift. Pleasantly surprised with the undercarriage, the car clearly hasn't been driven in poor conditions here! Needs a PS pump / lines though.
You could somewhat see it from above, but that is definitely a painted iron.. Hopefully a good sign!
Started going through what was needed for the interior, got discouraged pretty quick. Its a lot..
Found some more electronics, might have to put these up as a trade for interior parts, haha
Having a hard time deciding if I want to run twins (BNR) or an 8374, good thing I will have time to think about it
Thanks all for the kind words! It is a decent starting point and I'm pretty thrilled overall. The car was priced appropriately, so I'm okay with some interior work.
Thanks for the offer Redbul, I will definitely reach out once I have a proper list. You just let me know if you need any solenoids.
Couldn't pass up at least one black Friday deal! Picked up an Elite 1500 so I can de-funk whatever is going on with this thing.
Didn't even want to consider running it on the stock ECU once I saw the FPR, seems like a previous owner thought it was a good idea to turn up the fuel to cheat some of the mods? Also no boost gauge...
PNP, too, what a joy! This is the first platform I've owned where you can buy nearly anything you can dream up, and it plugs right in or bolts right up. So sweet, can save the annoying fab jobs for the FB, haha.
Had a bit of free time at work yesterday so I made a plug for the non existant A/C lines. Nothing fancy but has a nice OEM look. Just wanted to keep things reversible in case I can manage to restore the A/C one day.
Slow progress over the winter but now that its warming up I'm back on it! I hope to go over the whole car before its put back on the road.
Ran all new brake lines due to the previously deleted ABS (glad I did, they were horrible and single flared). Added a proportioning vale - what a novel idea, lol. Painted up the intakes, y-pipe, and uim:
Discovered a nearly new clutch:
Was very surprised to see brass fittings, resistors and every vac line zip tied. Personally not a fan of the zip ties, but someone seems to have put in some effort:
Realized my skills are starting to fall behind so decided to teach myself some basic CAD design:
Once she's all back together and on the road I hope to design some new/unique parts. I have a couple ideas but gotta hone the skills first!
Thanks for the heads up! Very limited on time or I would post all my extra stuff for sale. I just want to use my free time on the car! haha
We're still getting snow here so I've just been plugging away on a few silly projects. Cant really afford to replace all the broken parts yet, so I've been doing some temporary repairs on the bad stuff:
A little further along under the hood:
Getting pretty close to a safety inspection. Anyone in Canada have a pair of sun visors they would sell me cheap? Don't have to be pretty.
Really hoping I find someone who doesn't ding me on everything like DOT brake lines and seat belts. If you're from Winnipeg and know someone - pm me, haha. Car seems to have skirted some of the rules as it was insured here previously.
Doesn't look like too much, but made some excellent progress today.
Engine bay is nearly done, needs a few small odds and ends but it is almost completely de-funked! Far more confident in it now.
Changed the oil (I think it was about 40% fuel), and then installed the Haltech. I was super nervous about the PNP adapter due to issues with certain legacy ecu's but it went so smoothly! I basically calibrated the TPS and it fired right up. Didn't have to adjust anything, and she was purring like a kitten. The idle on the base map is just fantastic, rock solid. I've yet to install the wideband so it was a short run but I'm pretty thrilled with it. Absolutely would not hesitate to recommend the PNP adapter for Elite ECUs!
Took a break from the garage and ordered some Tein Flex Z's because I cant bring myself to shell out for the Ohlins just yet. We'll get it on the road and work our way towards that, who knows what else might need attention.
Got a new Momo Montecarlo wrapped in alcantara coming too.
Few more weeks and I hope to take it for a safety inspection! The coilovers are probably going to be the only holdup there, not sure of the ETA on those yet.
I'm pretty interested in the new SX-R turbos from Borg, strongly considering an S258SX-R once I refill the piggybank.
Got a nice little 14psi street tune dialed in on the Haltech, installed some Tein Mono Sports, and then got it re-plated as collector status. Life is good! Time to enjoy the FD for a bit while I get back into working on the FB:
Hi, I owned this for 2 years and have a ton of info on the car as well as the car vx for it. The car was imported @79,000km.
The door card was cut for a roll cage in Japan. The engine was not rebuilt by rec but does have turblown 10mm studs with a new rear main seal, clutch, water pump housing gasket, lower intake manifold gasket and steel braided omp lines @ 96,000km. The engine bay and headlight covers were rattle canned by the owner before me. There was a rust hole under the driver side back seat and holes in the floor pan that were also welded up by the owner before me. I had this car on a Haltech 2500 but found the engine harness was in poor condition, specifically the twin turbo solenoid wiring/connections to the harness. Lots of other little things were done as well, but it's hard to remember the little things as it was a few years ago. Glad to see this car finally getting the love it deserves ! looking forward to following the build.
Neat to see some history on it. I couldn't bring myself to buy the VX report as I was pretty sure what I would find, and it is just as expected lol. Crashed, quick **** repair and export.
The front end still needs work, I plan to buy a new rad cradle and headlight shrouds to fix it properly one day. Looks like it was crashed in Japan and then possibly again here in the same spot, lol. The hood has some CYM popping through on the underside, most certainly a hodge-podge of replacement parts.
The pictures from Japan are super cool though! It never even crossed my mind that the door card could have been cut for a roll bar. I thought someone was trying to get the panel off to unlock the door as it would lock easily and then not unlock when I bought it. Needed a new inner door handle and a lot of messing with the lock rod. Really cool to see it as it was with the rollbar and white TE's, classic Japanese shitbox, haha.
Since I'm on the Elite 1500, I had to shift some of the wiring around to make it work as sequential. I didn't have any issues with the solenoid wiring, but both the IAT and Water Temp wiring was garbage. I unplugged both water temp senders and it still fed the ECU a temperature reading, never figured that out so I just re-wired the IAT and Temp sender for safety. It'll get a new harness once I eventually go single turbo so hopefully okay enough for now. Sequential control seems to be working well at the moment!
Interesting that it is studded, bit of a bummer if someone just rattle canned the irons when it was out. Engine looks pretty clean though, no leaks and runs well, so I'm happy.
If you think of anything else interesting or note worthy: feel free to post it here or PM me. Its great to have a bit more of the backstory.
At least in pics
