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Financial Crisis to Financial Disaster, ballad of a fantasizer (94CW)
Hopefully this thread will help/inspire others as well as help me as I continue down this path. (plus, its adds to the credibility of the car if/when it goes for sale!)
Warning: Many decisions were made that will induce face palming. Please be mindful that this is just a car. The experience, memories, the good times and bad is what matters.
A special thanks to all in Rx7club.com for keeping it going. It has been an invaluable resource for inspiration, help, and expense of my time and money.
P.S. This thread might start off as a FC thread... but I promise there is a FD in there.
TL: DR;
Fresh outta college, bought a FC(POS) as first car… bought another FC(rebuilt) and than a FD(unicorn).
Pic of FD when first bought:
Aug_13_2015:
current state as of Nov_4_2018:
Thank you for your interest in this thread, I will be updating from when I first got into rx7’s till now and hopefully on going.
Its been little less than a year since I finished college. I had job and I wanted to spend my saved-up money on a car. I had my Tacoma for 6 years, it was a 2.4L manual. It served its utilitarian purpose for moving from dorm rooms, and provide necessary cargo space to help finish some college projects. I yearned for something with some excitement, a sports car. In high school I drove a Suburban with a giant mudflap across the bumper. So I never really drove any “sports” car, most I drove was a honda civic coupe auto ex.
During the college years I was a religious follower of the Toyota gt86 from concept till it first went on sale in 2012. I couldn’t afford a new car, so I scanned the internet for a similar sporty car. I was heavily influenced by the drifting crowd, one of my best friends from college was from japan and he would tell me stories of how he owned and raced s13’s, S14’s, R32’s,R34’s,300zx’s,AE86’s. I pretty much had my heart set for a S13 240sx at the time, but clean ones demanded top dollar, and affordable ones were beat up.
After a couple months of searching, my friends told me to open my eye to a car that is not Nissan or Toyota, He told me about the FC. I didn’t know what an “FC” was back then. He showed me pictures of different FC’s, and I was stunned that I looked so similar to a 240sx and I was surprised I never heard of it. It was than I realized that this is a 2nd Gen Rx7. I always thought there was only one gen of Rx7's, the one’s from fast n furious and Tokyo drift. I was of course sceptical because of tales about the finicky rotary engine, until I came across these pictures on the internet.
On Feb 03 2013, I signed up on the rx7club.com website, made my first posts and lurked the forums for any and every information about rotary. I still remember misterstyx69 replying a welcome into the forum. RIP
Bought a Haynes manual, Rotary Aviation engine build DVD, and a FC! FC is a 89 gtus that has been sitting in someone’s backyard for some time. It started and ran, but owner said it spits out white smoke and need to fill it up with water every now and than. With all the monster garage, and American choppers TV training that I have obtained as a kid, I fantasized about building it into a work of art and bought the car with no worry of the warnings. It made it to the house, and never started again.
Current residence is grandma’s winter vacation home, while I work and pay off debt etc. family is not informed of purchase.
Car is stripped, Kitchen/dining is quarantined into a engine build room complete with parts washer. Also discovered that the car brought some friends so now I find them everywhere including on the ceiling.
Family is coming up Nov_20_2013 to stay for the winter.
When I was not working on my car I been playing Need for speed:Shift 2 to keep the fantasy alive.
To summarize what happened in 7 months I was pressured to sell the white FC chassis, but kept what I thought was important . I also quit my warehouse job and decided to go back to school for Mechanical Engineering.
Picked up a Red FC gtus that had a better body, Frankenstein the engine and finally had a running FC with the enlisted help of a shop. This was of course a comprise but was happy that I had my “sports” car to drive.
At the shop I encountered my first FD, and was surprised how much smaller it was.
The FC was my daily, I tried many new things for the first time with this car, brake, coilovers, catbacks, electronic trouble shooting (damn cold solders), broken OMP lines etc. Every problem I found I was able to solve with a little help of the rx7club forum and Haynes manual. Through my lurker of the web, the FD kept on coming up and my interest grew. A YouTube video I kept on returning to watch did not help my desire for a FD
Sakebomb Garage did a group buy for FC FD bi xenon headlights. I bought both….. and made a spread sheet and started looking at FD’s for fun, I couldn’t afford it and had no space, but It was a great escape in between school classes and a new job.
Since Kelly blue book is hardly a good resource to judge value of these FD’s I had to come up with a unconventional means for me to give a rating for any FD I came across for sale.
My dilemma was a low mileage FD for a high price, or a high mileage FD for lower price with money left over to fix etc.
I came up with a point system that helped put a numerical value on these cars.
My preferred FD of choice was a yellow 95 with no moon roof (I know the didn’t make OEM yellow for 95)
Every 10000 miles was 1 point
Every $1000 was a point
Moon roof was 1 point
Years: 93 = 2 points, 94 = 1 point, 95 = 0 points
Color Code: yellow = 0, white = 1, silver = 2, red = 3 etc.
Add up all the points, and the lower the number the better the value.
I also tried to keep the list up to only FD's that are for sale or have been sold within the year.
Obvious there is other things to factor, like engine rebuild, mods, etc. but this was a tool to help gauge and keep history of FD’s going for sale.
After a few months since I started looking for FDs' I found one on a local craigslist posting, this one seemed too good to be true; a 94 CW manual with 19k miles and low price. I got a hold of the owner to meet with him and inspect his FD. The test drive was immediate smiles, the turbos pushing the car, and the air whooshing as it accelerated. I was very surprised how quiet the car was, and was totally intoxicated with it.
Pros:
One owner
Original paint
no modifications
clean title
dealership papers from when he bough it
starts up, test drove and runs with no apparent problems
Cons:
Big dent in rear quarter panel from a pipe wrench
AC not working (fans work though)
original tires
oil change 5+ years ago (what he told me)
battery 10+ years old, (but still works, he uses a battery tender)
diff/transmission/coolant hasn't been changed
has a Sirius XM portable radio screwed into the interior
Broken fog light
meh tint
Viper alarm
real dirty engine bay
never red lined (I am not sure if this a good thing, I always thought its good to red line the engine once in a while)
did not check compression
This wasn't my "dream" Yellow R1/R2 FD, but I have seen a lot of FD's during my search, even went to LA a few times to inspect some and this was the cleanest body and interior that I have seen. The listing had been only up for 12 hours, I didn't even try to haggle, I just paid his asking price the next day with a line of credit from the bank. It immediately went to storage facility near me, because I didn't have the space/time to deal with the FD.
The reality that I didn’t have any time or money to support two rx7s hit me and I didn’t want to believe it. It has been about 1 year since I purchased the FD, I have a 2nd job at the university which helped paid off the line of credit.
The FD also moved out of storage, to my GF’s house where I agreed to pay the alarm bill (which I had installed) in exchange for a parking space in the garage.
I had already sold my Tacoma, but the GTUs also had to go. My time with the GTUs was short and I knew I was going to regret letting it go, but the FD was getting neglected because of it.
I finally have a break, and my next semester of classes seem to be a light load. My initial plan was just to replace all rubbers/filters/fluids etc. and have some preventive “mods” to keep the car happy. I have been hoarding a lot of FD stuff even before owning a FD, I realize I have a problem, especially when I sleep on the couch because the bed has car parts on it. Here is a list of what’s currently planned to go in.
Spirit R type A rims
99 spec taillights and center
fuel filter / Spark plugs
Efini Y pipe
Ceramic coated downpipe
Apexi Power FC & datalogit
Sakebomb IGN-1A coils
Sakebomb Serab Dual oil coolers
Autosport Patch Harness
Greddy V-Mount (Needed to replace radiator…. might as well upgrade intercooler lol)
Block off plates from banzai racing
HPS Silicone water houses/ oil filters and FC thermoswitch
New OEM gaskets for turbo and intake manifold
Replacement fuel lines/clamps and silicone vacuum hoses
From my past experiences with my 2 FCs’, when I take things apart I tend to end up with extra hardware. Even though I took hundreds of pictures while tweaking away on my FCs’, I would look back at my pictures and ask myself “what the hell did I do here?” To solve this issue, I bought a GoPro session and headband and recorded as much as I can while I work on the FD.
I now have close to 300 GB of raw footage. I have very little experience with editing, it was more used as a tool to help document how things go together. I am entertaining the idea of posting it, just not sure if anyone wants to see me breathing and cursing as I remove a gauge cluster etc.
12-23-18, 12:13 AM
