Rare Red Find
 

Hey Yall,

Starting this build thread for my 93 Touring FD, Vintage Red, 58K miles and clean title. A little back story on this car and how I came about it. I already owned an FD at the time of finding this car, was pretty deep into the building of that car as well (see thread here: https://www.rx7club.com/build-thread...-dead-1122840/).

A good friend of mine called me randomly, asking how much an RX-7 would be worth if it needed the engine swapped out. I gave the generic answer, need to know miles, condition, title status, etc. He didn't have much info, just that it was for sale by his house and he was interested. fast forward a couple of weeks, and he tells me the owner rejected his low ball offer, and he was no longer looking into it, so I decided to just see what was out there.

Called the owner and asked a few questions, car had no battery, so no way for her to see the miles, she guessed "100-120K" engine was shot, but it would come with a spare freshly rebuilt engine, just needed to be put in. After a few back and forth messages, I took a couple hour drive (with a battery) to take a look at this thing.

As I arrive, I see it sitting near a fence on a field, from a far it doesn't look too bad. (keep in mind the car I already had in the build thread above had basically nothing when I bought it). Upon a good inspection, it was a complete car, no missing parts, nothing had been taken off, no dents, paint was faded due to the cover it was under transferring material to the paint (from rain and sun). it was very dirty, but nothing a good Saturday and elbow grease wouldn't fix.

Under the hood everything was also present (minus the battery), all components were in good condition, and overall was in decent shape. So I pop in my battery and go turn the key to take a look at the miles. To my shock, it reads "58,102" I thought for a second it was missing the "1" in front of the 58, but no, it was the correct mileage. It made a bit of sense given the condition of the interior and all the rubber on the car looked.

After I got home I pulled the carfax, it had a clean title, and a complete service history, all the way up until the last service which was done at 57,345 about a year earlier. when converting with the gal, she informed me it was always taken to the dealer for service, and the engine blew shortly after that last service. So given the price and the condition I could not pass this up (she had no clue what the car was, it was her Ex's car and she got it as he owed her money and she just wanted to get rid of it, good for me!)

Another week later I went back and brought it home:

https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.rx7...298bd00b86.jpg

Since getting the car back in May, I sold the busted engine that was in it (bad rear rotor Apex seals) sold the fresh rebuilt engine that came with it (wanted a non ported engine and that one had a street port) and another spare keg I had at home and purchased a brand new engine from Mazda (really liked it on my previous build, so I went with it again):


https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.rx7...bd1f7c71d3.jpg

Here is a list of items I have taken care of already:

• Eliminated all emissions
• converted to non-sequential (rebuilt set of twins "new")
• Upgraded fuel pump to the Supra TT pump and installed a new fuel filter
• Installed a custom fuel system with ID725’s for primaries and ID 1700’s for secondaries, Aeromotive FPR, and KG Parts fuel rails (already had those, I will probably swap them out for FFE rails in the future, but for now its fine)
• Upgraded motor mounts from IR Performance
• Brand new master and slave cylinders
• ACT Street/Strip Clutch
• Koyo N-Flow Radiator
• FC Thermoswitch
• Replaced the thermostat with a brand new one.
• New drilled/slotted rotors
• New brake pads
• installed speed bleeders all around
• Power FC

I’m sure I am forgetting a couple of things. I'll update if I remember something...

While I worked on the engine, I sent off the tranny to get all new bearings and syncro’s,and got a set of wheels and tires:


https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.rx7...d54f7e1745.jpg

I dropped the engine in, a few weeks ago, and have been working on getting it up to speed and running properly:


https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.rx7...eadd10ce6d.jpg
https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.rx7...83befba654.jpg

https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.rx7...8ec748c2d3.jpg

All that "pink" dust you see there is from me polishing up the hood. it was in real bad shape from the cover that was on the car.


https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.rx7...2da1e5ca09.jpg

I got some 3M rubbing compound and a good buffing pad and spent about 3 hours buffing this thing out and here is the results:


https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.rx7...107046543c.jpg

Not 100% perfect, but a huge improvement, I have to work on the rest of the car to get all of the white spots out, but the hood was the absolute worst, and it came out like this, the rest should shine up pretty well.

And the last bit, I finished off the engine setup, and breaks. installed the wheels and tires today, and this is the as of today:


https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.rx7...59db53ad20.jpg

I'll get some engine bay pictures, and interior on another post. Goals are to get the interior back to basically new (its 80% there, few things need fixing such as the driver seat, and a lot of cleaning). from there, I'll move on to suspension, then single turbo, nothing crazy, wanting to keep it right at 400HP. A nice weekend/summer joy ride of a car. Well, hope you were entertained enough to make it this far, more updates coming soon!

Update #1

So... forgot to mention up there that upon finishing getting everything hooked up and ready to fire, the car wouldn't start... just cranked and cranked. So troubleshooting I went, did all the normal looking and digging, until I ran across the CAS.

I noticed my tac wouldn't bounce while the key was being turned over, so I checked the CAS to find that one of the connectors had the one wire completely broken off... thus no signal to the coils, or ECU... now the harness that came with the car was in pretty bad shape, cracking and some connectors busted off (mainly rats nest, but since I got rid of it I didn't think it would be an issue). Given the CAS broken wires, and the condition of the rest of the harness, I decided to just trash it and get a new harness.

So I went with a Rywire harness, made sure to call them up and ask for the AIC to be added to the harness as it does not come with it. It did however have the option to come with the ID injector plugs pre-wired in, which was awesome. got the harness and was quite impressed by the finish, and how everything was put together and properly labeled, overall very satisfied with that harness.

Put the new harness in, plugged everything in (so much cleaner than the stock harness) and she fired up on the very first try! only to have me find out I didn't properly sit the oil cooler line and it puked about a quart of oil on my garage floor......

So I fixed the oil line, added oil back in, fired it back up and it runs very smoothly. Did some basic settings on the Power FC with the datalog (needs more tweaking) and she should be ready for a cruise this weekend.

nice, congrats!

good to know you had good luck with the rywire harness.

Been talking to Jim about your old chassis and will probably buy it.

That was a tough one for me, because I put so much work into getting it from where it was to the state it was in when I sold it. it was for sure a fun project, but now I have this one to keep me occupied :)

Thanks! definitely a better "starting point". much of everything on the car is in excellent shape so it helps in the "how much work needed" department. got some updates coming later with the interior cleanup and some bay pictures.

What a find! That's the dream for when I get mine