I realized I should of said not on a 20B. One of the main reason for us going bottom mount is to utilize the higher mounting of 20B (to clear FD steering rack) and put the turbo weight more down at the bottom vs. already higher 20B. Not sure if we would of done bottom mount if 20B was in similar location of where REW sits in an FD.

Here is a picture of the Twin Turbo bottom mount set up.


See below for what the 20B manifold my friend Walker made..

December 22nd, 2011 - I went over to MPFab to check out the manifold progress and lend a hand if needed (not that I can do much). We also wanted to test fit the turbo and get some measurements and clearance.. But in order to finish everything up, I need to get the new steering rack.

Anyhow, here are some Walker Morgan's handy work (www.MPFab.com)

 

Damn Phil, you aren't playing games are ya ?

 

Rich, As I call this project, "Herblenny's Last RX-7 Project"... After this gets build, I just want to hang out and enjoy driving my MB FD, which I'm turning it back to more street driven car

 

sorry if I missed it...but are you going to rebuild the motor? I love your mb fd btw!

 

Motor is already built.

 

Motor has been built. Its a "D" series motor (except 1 x 20B rotor housing) built by whom I consider one of the best rotary builder whom people have never heard of, Luis Canizales. For several years, he rarely built motors for people and over the years he has built 2 motors for me and couple of more for other rotary guys I know. He recently built a Renesis for a guy in ATL, GA and this is what the guy in ATL said after running the motors for several months (Luis' first Renesis build)..

Every engine Luis builds go on an engine stand to get fired and heat cycles for few days. Only time he will not do this if by request by customer. He has build some fast rotaries for race teams (drag and track) and he definitely knows what he is doing. He recently decided to build more rotaries and if any of you are interested, please give him a call: 256-399-6199
He is in my mind reasonable for what you get especially when its cranked on a stand. Also, he takes time specing every little things. He has been building engines for over 30 years and you definitely get his experience in every engine he builds. I was mind blown by what he was able to find out through building my 20B motor.

He also built his own lapping table (which I have seen one Rich Engman in ATL has and I consider Luis' better than Rick's), can balance rotating assemblies (which is done by Luis and his friend who balanced piston engines for various Nascar and other pro race teams), and builds amazing engines to spec!

 

December 26th, 2011 - After a full day at work, I decided to take the dash apart and get it ready to get it recovered by my interior guy tomorrow..

Here are some pics of the stripped dash..



re-enforcement bar and wires..



I'm also re doing the center tunnel and door panels.. Should take about a month..

 

Right on!! Thats pretty damn sweet man! I'm getting ready to pull my dash as well. I had planned on leaving it and the junk tan carpet in for a while.. but I already have it halfway stripped and I'm going to put my body through the dash as well to clean some things up in my engine bay

Also, did you ever sell that exedy twin you had? or did you just keep it?

 

Oh and by the way... I LOVE your manifold.. I'll be doing a similar 13B design.. dual synapse gates for my time attack/drift/street queen =-)

A lot of people have their opinions on long runner mani's but all the research i've done has said it always leads to great mid range power bands = the funnest cars to drive!!

 

Manifold is sexy.

 

Thanks guys! Hope all turns out ok..

Anyhow....

December 30th, 2011 - Not much update on the car... but in a rotary related thing, I had a chance to go see some rare historical rotary cars in Nashville, TN.

Thanks to Founder/Director of Lane Motor Museum, I had a chance to see, hear, and touch some historical and super rare rotary cars.

Here are some pics from my private tour.

1967 NSU Spider - This is the first production rotary car with single rotor, rear mounted engine.







Another Rare NSU Ro-80 - A Birotor sedan








Citroen GS Birotor - I knew about the NSU, but did not know about this Citroen vehicle.





And finally a super rare Citroen M35 Prototype single rotor vehicle... This is the only one in USA.

 

sweet pics....

 

The steering wheel on the Citroen GS bi-rotor is really something. Grasping for ways to be different. Reminds me of mazdas steering track that slid around a fixed wheel. I think they had it on a 2nd gen concept in the mid 80s.

 

Lane's Motor Museum is a really cool little place. Nice pics Phil.

 

+ 1 on the turbo manifold

 

The fabrication and welding on that manifold if very nice, good choice on the design. That flange looks familiar ....

Happy New Year....

 

January 4th, 2012 - Happy New Year!!!
Well, not much have been done to the car as I was busy at work... Also, I'm about to trade this shell for an R1 shell without the sunroof. Hoping to do that this weekend.
Anyhow, the little time I had, I stripped out the dash and refinished the rusty metal dash frame.



I sanded it down to bare metal, treated with rust inhibitor, and primed it.

I then sprayed with gloss black then quick shot of gunmetal and clear the whole thing.. Shouldn't rust again



I'm heading to my fabricator's shop (www.MPFab.com) to pull the engine out and get it ready for this weekend's shell swap.

 

Good call on the dash bar, I did the same when mine was out:

 

Nice, yup i did the same thing on my gold digger, sand blast, epoxy primer, black and then clear coat...

Looking good...

 

January 5th, 2012 - My clutch for the 20B came in today from my favorite clutch company, EXEDY CLUTCH!! Here are few pics

 

pure sex

 

I hope you dont mind...but when I get another 7 I will be asking u a lot of questions I will appologize from now....lol.

 

LOL! Sounds good!

More Updates....

January 10th, 2012 - Well, I would of made an earlier update but I had to put 14 hour day at work yesterday and didn't have much time to tell you all what happened to my trip.

Well, last week I was running around town trying to get my shell ready for a swap with an R1 shell (without sunroof) that a friend of mine had in GA. So, I had to pull the 20B out, get the hatch from my friend's shop (which I was going to paint it and put on my MB FD), find a trailer, and a friend to help me tow it. Because my fabricator does not come in on saturday, I also had to go there day early to pull the car out so I can load it day after.

Saturday morning (Jan. 7th) - We loaded up the car and got to my friend's place in GA. We started taking stuff off of his car and started to transfer to my shell.



During this process, the car smelled really bad and we found some crazy stuff. Like dead mouse





I guess the car was sitting outside for awhile and a mouse made a nice home out of this RX-7.

Since I was going to strip this car to bare metal, I didn't really care about the smell or the dead mouse.... but I did care about what I found next, a bent frame that lead to bent head light assembly mounting points. This is a bad sign as when headlights are mounted and pop ups go up and down, the geometry is messed up so the lights might not line up. At this point, I was quite upset.. Just because I asked my friend to check the car as he knew the car was in an accident before. Also because my car was on hold for 2-3 weeks as my fabricator couldn't cut anything on the shell because of this swap. And I wasted my weekend, other people's time, etc just because my friend didn't take 10 mins to check over the car carefully and to see where the accident was. But he's a friend and he feels bad and going to help me out later so I cant be mad at him.

Anyhow, we loaded the car back up and drove it back to my fabricator.



Hopefully, I'll have more fabrication updates later this week!

 

LOL @ the mummified mouse! I hope it didn't leave any weird smells behind...

So glad you're doing another build. Maybe when you're done with this one you'll be forced to sell that cosmo...TO ME!!!

 

another build..how does he do it!!!