When you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network.
Restoring and Building My Dream Rx-7 - 1994 CW Rx-7 Touring
Hello, and welcome to my build thread for my 1994 Mazda Rx-7 Touring. I just wanted to start with a little bit of an intro to kick things off. As with most kids born in the 90’s, I have always idolized and have been into modified cars since I was a kid. The FD Rx-7 was always my favorite 90’s Japanese car, and I even had one painted on my wall as a kid! As I got older, I sorta always figured it would be the unobtainable car that I would always dream of owning one day.
A few years ago, I actually had the opportunity to rescue another white 94 Rx-7 from a local garage find that I stumbled upon. Because of the condition of the body of the car, I decided to part ways with the car later that year, but I always wanted another FD in better condition. Once I was in the position to do so, I set out to find the right car that would be the base for everything I wanted the car to be.
Then, the car I ended up buying was listed for sale on Bring a Trailer, and it was located just over an hour away from me. White with an all black interior and a 5-speed manul transmission; I was very interested. Better yet, the auction was ending on my birthday, so this seemed to be the stars aligning. I ended up going to check over the car in person, and the seller ended up having a lift that I was able to put the car on to really get a good idea of what I was looking at. He even told me that if I won the auction, he’d deliver it to my house in his enclosed trailer, which was a really nice gesture.
After winning the auction, the seller brought the car up to my house and I was able to get it tucked in the garage for the winter. Overall, the car was in great shape for a 1994 with 83k miles on it. The exterior has its fair share of misc dings and a few scratches, but all of the paint is original aside from the passenger mirror and the front bumper cover. The interior is in fantastic condition and is all black, which was a HUGE plus for me, as I would’ve wanted to convert a tan interior car. The car started up and seemed to run perfectly fine, but I was aware that the secondary turbo wasn’t working as intended. This wasn’t a huge deal to me as I knew I was going to refresh the rats nest and solenoids.
My overall vision for the car isn’t going to be anything crazy or different from what others are doing, just a really nice car that really enhances what Mazda originally built. But first, I’m going to start with general Rx-7 maintenance and fixing anything that needs attention on the car.
Once the weather warmed up a bit in Wisconsin, I took the car around my neighborhood for a quick drive just to get a rough feel for the car since I had never driven it before. Overall, the car feels very solid and just needs some typical attention like the rats nest refresh, a pillowball in the rear making some noise, and some squeaky brakes from sitting.
From there, I started with getting everything pulled from under the upper intake manifold to start replacing all of the rock-hard vacuum lines, broken solenoids, and deleting the fuel pulsation dampener. As expected, nothing under the intake manifold had ever been replaced, and many of the plastic nipples broke off of the solenoids while trying to carefully disassemble everything. I got some solenoids and other misc parts ordered from Ray Crowe and I was able to get everything put back together.
On the first drive, I noticed I STILL wasn’t getting any secondary turbo boost kicking in. After doing some general troubleshooting, I realized that I accidentally had two vacuum lines mixed up, and the pressure chamber wasn’t connected to the correct port on the solenoid rack. Once I sorted that out, the turbos worked great!
I spent a bit of time addressing the squeaking brakes and the small clunk in the rear end. The front brakes came apart very easily, and everything was very dry so I cleaned everything up and greased everything that needed grease. Fortunately, this is all that the brakes needed. The rear clunking appears to be one of the pillowballs on the right rear toe arm. I’ll address this at some point in the future, but will likely just replace all of the rear pillowballs as all of them appear to be original.
Last edited by idkiliketurbos; May 5, 2026 at 09:01 PM.
Reason: Attachment issue
Now that everything with the turbos was sorted out, I decided to do my first modification to the car. I have been hoarding parts over winter, but am not going to rush to put everything on at once. I went with the Apexi N1 Evolution catback exhaust for the car. I’ve had a few of their exhausts on other vehicles in the past and have always liked the look of their N1 exhausts, and their build quality is great. I got it on the car and was actually a little surprised at how quiet it is. With some miles, it seems to have gotten a tad louder, but nothing crazy. This is a JASMA approved system, so I figured it would be really quiet. Once I end up doing a pre-cat delete downpipe and a high-flow cat in the midpipe, we’ll see how it sounds. If I’m not thrilled with the volume, I may decide to switch catbacks, but we’ll cross that bridge when we get there.
The next thing I wanted to tackle was getting all of the dings PDR’d. The car did have its fair share of misc dings scattered around the car and I wanted to get them taken care of before I do a paint correction. I scheduled an appointment with someone that I received some recommendations for, and he came out to take care of the car. He did a great job, and was able to get all but 1 of the dings out, which I figured would be the case due to the location.
More updates to come as the parts pile keeps growing and I run out of walking room in my garage!
Looks like a great pick-up and a nice start to a refresh.
It looks like you went with pre-formed factory vacuum hoses, which are expensive but keep a nice OEM look.
It looks like Apexi muffler came with a separate resonator section.
Did the car have compression figures for the auction?
With that mileage, we might expect some readings around 100 PSI based on the FSM methodology.
I actually just did some thick walled silicone hose for all of the vacuum lines. Those were just some before photos before I pulled out the solenoid rack.
The seller claimed to have some compression numbers from a shop that did a pre sale inspection on the car, but I’m assuming they were not done with a rotary compression tester. I wasn’t really too worried about the numbers as the cold and hot start behaved as expected and the car just seemed to run fine. No issues with bubbling from the water neck or anything as well. I figure at some point I will have to refresh the engine as I don’t know if/when it was ever done.
I have connected a boost gauge up to the port on the upper intake manifold and pressure didn’t change at all after installing the catback. However, I DO have a power FC that I plan to install shortly so that I can have a better idea of everyone that’s going on and safely account for any modifications that come in the future.
Love to see another white one being restored. You don't need to worry about the back pressure with the exhaust just doing catback as long as you have the factory cat, especially if you have the pre-cat still. If you do have the pre-cat, get rid of that ASAP. I proved this on the dyno, that canister style may net you a few horsepower after 6500 RPM but nothing at all down low. With the regular style mufflers that aren't the canister style, you don't gain anything. I'll be doing a large downpipe on the dyno in the future to see how that affects it. I'm betting the main cat is the largest restriction, I expect to gain a lot of flow on the low end with not much at all in the top end with the downpipe.
How's the cooling system on the car? That may need to be your next step for restoration/reliability if it is in just as bad condition as the rats nest. Definitely do a coolant spill and fill to make sure its not been rotting out the system for years.
Love to see another white one being restored. You don't need to worry about the back pressure with the exhaust just doing catback as long as you have the factory cat, especially if you have the pre-cat still. If you do have the pre-cat, get rid of that ASAP. I proved this on the dyno, that canister style may net you a few horsepower after 6500 RPM but nothing at all down low. With the regular style mufflers that aren't the canister style, you don't gain anything. I'll be doing a large downpipe on the dyno in the future to see how that affects it. I'm betting the main cat is the largest restriction, I expect to gain a lot of flow on the low end with not much at all in the top end with the downpipe.
How's the cooling system on the car? That may need to be your next step for restoration/reliability if it is in just as bad condition as the rats nest. Definitely do a coolant spill and fill to make sure its not been rotting out the system for years.
I do have a record showing that the coolant was changed not too long ago, and based on the coolant I drained out while removing some of the hoses, it looked very fresh. I will likely go through and replace all of the coolant hoses sooner rather than later as some preventative maintenance.
You can usually just smell it. But since a stinky rotary isn't that unusual, and can occur for a number ofnother reasons, that's less of an obvious sign.
So you can put a vacuum gauge on the intake manifold. Rev the engine just a bit (dont want boost) and quickly let off throttle. If there is no restriction in the exhaust, there will be a bit of vacuum when you drop the gas. If there is a clog you won't get a vacuum.
Great thread! I was bidding on this one too, when I saw your birthday comment I knew I was done for. I'll have to keep an eye out for ya, I've seen one CW around home (Milwaukee) but can't imagine there's many.
Now that I’ve been driving the car a bit, I’ve encountered a random idle issue when the car is hot the RPM’s dip a bit more than usual with the clutch pedal in. This led me to checking out the clutch switches under the dash, where I then found my clutch master cylinder just starting to leak. I am glad that I found this before it failed on my while out driving. I ended up just going with the Exedy unit, but I may pick up an OEM rebuild kit incase this ends up failing on my, like I’ve seen mentioned elsewhere.
Now that the paintless dent removal has been done, I decided to give the car a clay bar and polish, followed by some Wolfgang Si02 paint sealant. I didn’t chase any crazy correction results, I just wanted to clean up the paint a bit and restore some gloss. Some Menzerna 2500 compound on a Lake Country orange pad did the trick and the car looks awesome!
I’ve been making myself hold out on doing many modifications until I had all of the maintenance and exterior refreshing completed, but now that I have all of that taken care of, its time for some modifications! I’m starting out with some coilovers and some new wheels/tires. For the coilovers, I went with the BC Racing DS series. I was fortunate enough to get a solid hookup on the coilovers and I know they’ll make the car feel much better than the floaty 32 year old suspension. As expected, everything went in easy as can be. It is very satisfying working on this car as every suspension bolt comes apart with zero issue.
I spent quite a bit of time going back and forth on which wheels I wanted to get for the car. I landed on a set of Advan TC-4’s in the black gunmetallic finish with the machined lip. I’ve always wanted a car to put these wheels on, and I think the 5-spokes fit the look of the FD Rx-7 very well. I got them in an 18x9.5 +35 in the front and an 18x10 +35 in the rear. For tires, I went with a set of Yokohama Advan Apex V601’s in a 255/35/18 in the front and a 265/35/18 in the rear.
The wheels fit the car perfectly and don’t appear to require too much fender work to avoid any rubbing. I got out the heat gun and rubber mallet and just spent a little bit of time getting the front fender lip to roll upwards to try to avoid the tire catching the edge of it. I’ll spend a bit of time driving the car carefully to figure out any spots that do rub and will likely tweak the ride height slightly to get everything dialed in.
I also put in a set of JDM series 7 / 8 tail lights that I picked up from Ray Crowe. These have always been one of my favorite changes on the later model Rx-7’s so I knew I had to get a set of these.
The parts pile is dwindling, but still have quite a few random things to take care of as time allows. More updates to come!
To continue on with the 99 spec parts, I, of course, had to do the 99+ front bumper swap. Shortly after buying the car, I ordered the front bumper, bumper support, and all of the associated air guides from Ari at Rx7.com. Ray Crowe helped me source all of the OEM U-nuts and bolts to install the front plate, lower splash shield, and front lip. For the decorative front plate, I found it on Etsy for a great deal. My dad owns a small paint and body shop, so we prepped and painted the bumper ourselves, after scanning the paint with the color camera. I let the bumper sit for over a month before I assembled everything, just to let it cure and harden before putting it on the car.
While working on the installation, I was extremely pleased to see how untouched the entire front end of the car was, with zero signs of any sort of front end accident. The OEM front bumper had a weird indent on the front face of it, so I wasn’t sure what to expect there. As expected, everything went together about as easy as could be, and I reused the brackets from the original front bumper.
Overall, I am very happy with the outcome and love how much it updates the front end of the car. The OEM 99+ front lip is also much more aggressive than the 93-95 touring front lip, which is virtually nothing. In the future, I’ll definitely get something like the FEED side skirt extensions to go along with the look of the front lip. After installing the bumper, I realized that I should’ve removed the oil cooler duct, so that’ll be done in the future. I also will end up getting the 99+ front undertray so that it fits better, and my original is cracked near one of the sway bar mounts.
Another thing I’ve been wanting to tackle is getting a modern head unit in the car for all of the obvious reasons. I plan to get rid of the Bose system, as it just sounds terrible. I have a Kenwood DMX7709S head unit that I had in my Corvette, but removed before selling it. To get this installed in the car, I went with the Metra 70-7901 radio harness and the Pioneer ADT-VA133 double DIN installation kit.
Because the car is a touring model, it has the CD player and radio/cassette player in the dash. The Pioneer installation kit included the U-shaped removal tools, which were helpful. However, the factory radio and CD player were EXTREMELY difficult to get out, and required me to remove the glove box and put pressure on the back of the CD player to get that to come loose. THEN I encountered the cable that routes from the CD player to the back of the radio, which was kindly (thanks Mazda) routed around a metal bracket in the dash. Fortunately, I was able to play car twister and contort my hand inside the upper DIN pocket to unplug the cable from the back of the radio. With the CD player out of the way, I was able to unplug everything else from the radio and get that pulled out of the dash. Lastly, I cut out the DIN divider from the dash to be able to put the double DIN unit in.
Once I had the Metra adapter harness wired into the Kenwood harness, I put the cage from the Pioneer installation kit into the dash pocket and pushed in all of the tabs. I was actually shocked at how solid this felt once the tabs were pushed in. From there, the Kenwood head unit dropped right in with the mounting brackets installed in the correct location. To finish it off, I popped on the trim ring that comes with the Pioneer kit. Overall, the installation kit and trim ring fits really well, but leaves just a small gap in a few spots between the trim ring and the climate control panel.
For some speaker upgrades, I’m going to start with just the fronts and then in the future, I’ll get some rear speakers added in the rear quarter panel locations. I went with the cheap PVC 6.5” speaker adapters that can be found on Amazon for the Rx7. I went with a pair of 6.5” Kicker speakers (51KSC6504). The mounting depth worked perfectly with the speaker adapters and everything went together as easy as can be. Considering that theres only 2 functioning speakers in the car, it sounds pretty okay for the time being.
To finish off the last cosmetic item I’ve got for the car, it was time to get my 99 spec OEM spoiler installed on the car. I sourced this brand new from Ray Crowe, and had it painted the factory color. To get the hole patterns aligned onto the hatch, I took a sheet of paper and lightly taped it onto the bottom of the spoiler. I then punched a hole in each of the 4 mounting locations. From there, I put the spoiler onto the hatch in the exact location I wanted it to sit, and then taped the sections of paper that were sticking out past the spoiler uprights to the hatch. I carefully lifted the spoiler off, allowing the paper templates to be left on the hatch, allowing me to mark each hole location for the mounting holes. While it was VERY painful to drill 8 holes into the hatch, I’m in love with the adjustable rear spoiler, so it had to be done. Just like the front end, I’m very happy with how this turned out! I also removed the OEM rear emblem in favor of the newer “flying M” emblem to match the front.
I’ll have some more updates soon as I tackle some more random little things with the car!
Looking great. I know you had to sell some organs for the brand new OEM body conversion parts. Those prices have absolutely skyrocketed these past 10 years.
Beautiful! Love how the 99 spec pieces look (might be slightly biased since I'm in the process of converting mine). The trim ring on the stereo matches the 94-95 interior texture really well.
Looking great. I know you had to sell some organs for the brand new OEM body conversion parts. Those prices have absolutely skyrocketed these past 10 years.
Fortunately, everything can still be bought brand new from Mazda! The fact that you can buy the spoiler, tail lights, and entire front bumper setup all brand new makes it very attainable to do a swap like this, outside of the money aspect. The OEM parts support from Mazda on this platform is pretty great when compared to most other platforms from this era.
