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So are you liking how it turned out, or giving it time to grow on you before you decide?
Hey, Steve. It's certainly a lot better than that bird wing and, while I always used the Efini emblems, I think I like the "7" thing better. Like, perhaps, so many other highly modded FD's, I want to make this more mine. (I have always thought that they should have offered my setup in the first place, but think the engineers did the TT thing, because they could. I argued with some of the guys who designed it about that and they always said a 20b would throw off the weight distribution and handling and add heat. It didn't and I think they were just being defensive.)
Well, hwnd found my entire build thread elsewhere on the internet. I'm just not sure how I could put it here, if it matters. The pictures are just part of a huge scrolling text. It isn't by post. Anybody got any ideas? Should I try to somehow get it back up or not?
Here are some of my engine bay. This is probably one of the only NA 20b's running around. It makes about 400 hp at the wheels at 7000 rpm and is very reliable.
Thanks very much, Zach. That was a major design goal from from the beginning along with as "empty" and engine bay as possible. As you know from your phenomenal current build, it gets crowded in there and that builds and retains heat. I really wanted to reduce the heat as much as possible to increase reliability.
Since my build thread disappeared, I have not been sure what to do. I have the original thread intact, but it's pretty big. I thought I would at least put up the original post that talked about what it was I was trying to do. I started the build in 2006 and started the "end-of-build" thread in January of 2011. I thought I was done or close to done. It took another 6 years to finish. Oh, well. However, I think I always kept to the original "design brief". I never wanted to make it something other than what I originally wanted back in 2006. It just took 11 years. So, here's the first post from the old build thread with some comments in parentheses.
Rx7EvolutionGT20b Rotary Grand Touring Sports Car An End-of-Build-Retrospective ________________________________________
I am finally making it out to Sevenstock this year and am putting together an overview of my car that I’m probably going to put on a poster and have available as printed handouts. (I didn't make it out to Sevenstock that year. I made it out there only last year, where it was voted the best 3rd generation FD. I did put the specifications on a poster and did provide handouts...) So, I’ve decided to summarize and share the things I’ve done to my car over the past 4 years along with the few things remaining in one thread and in an organized way. I am going to talk about why I did the things I did and something about the choices I made. These are my favorite things. Any and all comments and questions welcome. I’ve divided it up by exterior, interior, chassis and suspension, and motor.
The car is not quite done (hehehe) and I’ll post the final changes as updates through till probably the end of February or so, depending on whether I decide to paint it before Deals Gap. Mainly left is some experimentation with the motor and dyno comparisons, a few small cosmetic bits and pieces, like the new emblems, some suspension tuning, and then some performance figures and weight by corner. (Nader Sharif from Built2Apex, one of the best parts engineering firms in the country for Rx7's is making the newest emblems now and they will go on the car in the next few weeks.)
Modifying
There are all kinds of builds and ways of modifying cars based on budget and objectives. I had a very clear idea of what I wanted based on owning another FD for years and a very clear budget. I didn’t make lists of parts, but thought for a long time about what I wanted to end up with and wrote down a lot about each aspect of the car and then about how those pieces all fit together. Then I figured out how I wanted to implement each thing, whether the choice was buying a part or making something or modifying something.
Grand Touring with a 20b-powered car
So, my car has a very stock looking interior and exterior, a naturally aspirated 350 whp 20b motor, and a moderately upgraded suspension. (The motor ended up making close to 400 rear wheel hp and the suspension is stock except for sway bars and those great Ohlins shocks.) It looks stock despite a few external touches that are not even visible in many pictures at all. (The main exterior touches were the aluminum front grill insert, the rear undervalance, and the dual in-bumper exhaust. When I did this originally, maybe half the people on the forum hated it.) The interior looks stock, but every part is essentially custom redone leather, metal, and wool with the result being that its very comfortable and luxurious. Its fine on the track, but is the best on the highways and backroads. Imagine a very quiet interior with some quiet background tunes sitting on some serious leather cushions. Grand Touring.
Evolution
I set out to build a natural evolution of the Rx7 like the evolution of the 911 over time. I wanted the car to evolve into something a bit more exotic, more powerful, more purely rotary, while being more comfortable and having an interior like the best sports cars made. I didn’t want it to jump out at people, but instead be something that they honestly mistake for a factory made car that they just never heard of before. This car could have easily been created by Mazda from parts they had readily available and by simply changing the interior material specification, fit and finish. (This came off pretty well and while I have redone the seats twice, they are just a little nicer than the first versions.)
Balance
The car is all about balance. Not too much horsepower, not too stiff spring rates, not too big wheels, not too many cosmetic changes, but an attempt to upgrade each major aspect of the original car’s specification and performance to the same level or extent as all the others and where no one aspect of the car overwhelms any other or the chassis. The original car had remarkable balance and so should mine.
Budgeting
It’s also about balance in terms of costs. No 20b conversion is an inexpensive undertaking and mine was no exception. So, in each separate area of the car I may not have done whatever the ultimate might have been. Had I done so, it would have doubled the cost and not really been a factory evolution at all, but obviously a very, very special one off show car. I wanted to build a car that Mazda could build today for the same time-value-adjusted-dollars as the cars cost when introduced. (While the car ended up being the "evolution" I had wanted, the costs went through the roof, because of having to redo so many things more than once. If I started over today, I could do it for a much more reasonable cost. Again, oh, well.)
I’m not about giving advice, but can’t help but emphasize something I just said. In every area of your car, there are aftermarket pieces that cost three or more times the average price for that piece. Take Ianetti seals at, what, $1500 whereas other “very good” seals are $600 or so. If you try to find and buy the “best” piece everywhere, your build is going to cost you a fortune. If you can make it a rule never to buy the most expensive pieces, but to try to buy at the top of the middle, you can control your ultimate costs much better. At the same time, this budget control helps ensure you don’t end up with a build where one or two things are great, but there was clearly not enough money left over for some areas and they suffered.
These were taken at the end of the Lehigh Valley Cars & Coffee last Sunday at Steel Stacks in Bethlehem, Pa. My car, Eric Zuo's, Jio Paras', Jeff Bottiger, and Kyle Sanders perfect GSL-SE. Two really nice CYM's.
By the way, I think these pictures really show the difference that my aluminum grill makes to the look of the front end. It really emphasizes the opening and let's you see it in the black paint.
In addition to the fundamental header and exhaust design, I spent a long time designing exhaust outlets that I really liked. I wanted it to look right and not cost me any power and it couldn't cause heat-problems at the back, since it is so close to the gas tank. I wanted something that would look "factory", since that was pretty much a major design criteria for everything I have done. It was a lot more difficult than I thought it would be. Here are some pictures of the ideas I had when I started for how it might look. I picked the one that seemed most factory. I actually liked the 2nd design a lot and was torn between it and the more commonplace simple round tips I ended up going with.
Actually making the exhaust work where the tips came out through the bumper took a fair amount of thought and I had to start over a few times to get it right. The first idea was to run the pipe from the muffler(s) into a "box" that would be "inserted" into the middle of the (cut) aluminum crossmember. That generated way too much heat. So, the second phase was to just have a pipe going into the bumper area and have it Y-off fairly simply. That was a simple solution, but it cost me some power and was not a really elegant solution.
Here is the final version which is sort of a cross between the 2 previous approaches and it works well and looks good and doesn't have any heat-related issues. You can see that I added a couple of small 5 inch Vibrant mufflers right where it splits off.
The holes in the bumper were located to be about in the middle of the space between the back up lights and the license plate opening just like they were in the drawing above. I bought polished stainless tips with rolled ends from somewhere in England. I then played with the tips sticking them through the raw opening in the bumper to see how far I wanted them to stick out and then measured the distance from the bumper skin when it was in place to the end of the exhaust pipe, cut the tips and TIG-welded them on. The holes in the bumper were sized so that they would fit a 3 inch exhaust tip and there would still be about 1/2inch around the tips so that heat wasn't transfered from the tips to the fiberglass bumper. I bought another set of tips with rolled ends that was 4 inch diameter. These fit into the bumper holes and created both a trimming to the edge of the fiberglass and more protection against heat. The problem I had when I first did it was that the bumper would flex where the trim rings met the fiberglass. So, I devised a way to push the fiberglass tight against the trim rings. That's what the pictures above show.
As most of the people here know, I have tried to keep my car looking pretty stock, but have made a few minor enhancements. One of the most controversial for reasons I have never understood is the aluminum grill I had made many back in maybe 2006 by an English metalworker named Victor Yordy, who passed away several years ago. Vixtor was a real artisan with metal and worked the English wheel and still had all his fingers. Anyway. Back in the 60's many exotic sports cars had aluminum grills to set them off. A little jewelry. The Ferrari GTO, which is the most expensive car in the world, had an aluminum grill. The 1993 grill on the FD is very much like the GTO grill and I wanted to make it pop. So, I found Victor and sent him a front bumper to work from. I wanted the grille to be as deep as the stock bumper grill opening and to retain the rotor-shaped dimple in the middle. I never posted a lot of the work he did, but it was really something to see. It took him months to finish, but I love it. Below are some pictures of him making it.
06-16-18, 04:36 PM
So, here's the first post from the old build thread with some comments in parentheses.
