I'm almost ready to start on my project, so I figured if I made a build thread, I'd be forced to.

I purchased my first and only FD in the fall of 2010. I bought it as non-running, with intentions on pulling the rotary and dropping in a 1J. I changed my mind, and decided to keep it rotary as soon as I took possession of the car. Off the bat, I wanted to see if I could get her running before starting to tear her down.



The car is a 93 R1 with ~82,000 miles on the odometer. I assumed it hadn't been driven in a while since the oil change sticker said to change the oil at 83,000 miles or May of 2003 (whichever came first). So I started off by draining the gas, replacing the fuel filter, replacing plugs, & putting in a new battery.


That, combined with a little ATF magic and some patience (*edit: and some fresh gas), and I got it started. I took it around the block, which probably wasn't a great idea, but I had to do it. At this time I had pulled the power steering pump since it was missing the pulley anyway. (which led to a nice trail of ps fluid wherever I had turned the steering wheel) There was a lot of smoke, and some oil leakage as well.


My intentions no matter what, were to have the motor rebuilt. But first things first, I needed to do something about my "garage".

 

Fast-forward to the winter of 2011.

My garage has always been a pit. I wasn't going to start this project until I had a proper place to work on it. My current car had always been worked on at the last minute, or the weekend before a track event. Things always seemed rushed with that, so I wanted to do it different this time. The idea being to not be in a hurry so I could actually enjoy working on the car as opposed to always fighting time and hating working on cars.

so my garage looked like this:









then this happened:


then it looked like this:



with all of my junk in a storage pod:

 

Still not good enough. I really wanted a garage that I enjoyed working in.

So I made a checklist of the necessities:
-OSB walls & ceiling
-floored attic
-lighting, GOOD lighting
-heat
-220V
-cable
-epoxy floor?

I found the right guys for the job, and the garage project started.



new electric:



upgraded my windows:



new service door:







and then up went the OSB.



we have heat! (well, a heater)

 

All of the sudden, my garage seemed huge, and all I wanted to do was build a mini skate park in it. The OSB walls were awesome, and it smelled great, haha.















More to come soon. I'm fighting a hangover right now...

 

Went a little overboard on lighting with some T5HO fixtures. the pics don't do them much justice.





Floor originally was pretty bad, cracked and uneven, etc. The epoxy/flake did a decent job hiding it. Not perfect, but an inexpensive huge improvement.



Walls and ceiling, etc. were painted



Pretty pumped for how this work bench turned out. Put another T5HO fixture above it.





and a nice sheet of stainless steel to work on.



Leila:



this guy came to party

 

I love what you did with the garage man. Outstanding job. Nothing like a nice clean place to work on your car.

 

test fitted my daily driver in the new garage!



goodbye to the old garage door



new door, brought in some shelving I had



and this is the part where things get worse. the 3 months I budgeted with the storage pod were up, so back came my junk.





too add to the chaos, my mom moved out of her house, so I had to bring all of my dad's old stuff (he had a LOT of stuff that you couldn't just throw out)





forgot to mention, I put up some tire racks!



so for most of 2012, it was half a garage for my track car and my olds



then I finally put the olds in storage, and started to go through all of the ****. which almost brings us up to date.
it's hard to find time to go through all of this stuff with everything else going on in my life, combined with some back issues i've been having. i'm finally dedicating the time to get it done so I can move the RX-7 in soon.

 

Garage build thread > Car build thread

I did not see the authentic GTC bumper hiding in any of those pictures... I assume you still have it? Looking forward to more!

 

^ Agreed, Garage looks great

 

thanks guys.

John, don't worry, that bumper's still around here somewhere...

spent more time in the garage today. I hope none of you mind me using you all as motivation/inspiration to get this damn garage cleaned out so we can get to the fun stuff.

 

update:

 

The only thing better then car builds, are car builds with garage builds integrated into them!!!

If you feel like the 7 isnt sucking out enough money from you, and you dare to adventure into deep garage building, modding, and tool whoring, Check out this forum (if you havent already).......

The Garage Journal Board - Powered by vBulletin

Fair warning, browsing through that site will cause you to want a 1500+ sq ft garage, machinery, duplicates upon duplicates of the same tools, and to reorganize everything in your garage. I think my tool/garage building addiction has surpassed my 7....

 

Wish my garage look like that. Awesome job

 

oh god damnit bubbles why did you post this?!?!

 

yeah, garage journal is the ****. definitely what inspired me. some of those garage builds are amazing. i've come to terms with the fact that mine will not look like some of those "showroom" looking garages, simply because i have too much stuff(junk).

 

same... but theres nothing more satisfying working on your car in your garage and everything u need is where you want it and everything is convenient and easily accessible

 

^yeah, i've never had that, EVER.

SO looking forward to it!

 

haha that part was funny. it's like you wiggled you nose and "POOF! all that stuff was gone! great place to work..I'm jealous.

 

Amazing, makes me want to clean up my garage.

 

and two hours later...



the garage isn't 100% ready for it, but we're getting a foot of snow tomorrow, and i wanted it in by this weekend.

i can't imagine working on an engine bay with all of this lighting!

 

Awesome shop, looks great

 

That's a great garage heat and everything damn

 

Nice garage looks great! Hope the build is as nice

 

i intend to make my build more exciting than my garage, we'll get there.

 

Thanks Gordon. Eventually, I'll get pics up on GJ.