Here you go, the Edwards brothers are freaking awesome and their work is absolutely top notch, Austin and Alex are working on something for me right now, involving the words "Spirit" and "R"

RX7Club.com - View Profile: ESH Upholstering

Mike, all is looking good my friend. Not a bad idea to replace that rubber gasket under the fuel cover. You can order it from Ray Crowe in about one week's time

 

Awesome, thanks chap

 

Finished up the Fuel Hanger install, all wired up and new 40a relay all installed and it's ready to move on to under the hood. First here is the new R1 Carpet from ESH Upholstering installed.
Thanks Austin.


Here are some nice items I picked up from GoodfellaFD3S last weekend when I was up shooting his car. Also thanks Nick for driving my Range Rover while I took the photos.

First is this brand new Hatch Privacy cover. I was going to buy one that ESH Uphostering is making.. Yes they make a lot of nice stuff and re cover stock seats as well as RZ and Spirit R seats.


These Mint R1 seats were hard for him to part with so a big thanks to Rich for these. There are as nice as I've seen in any car.


Lastly he hooked me up with a real nice R1 strut bar. As you know my car is a Base. It's close to being equipped like an R1 now. GoodfellaFD3S always has the nicest parts.
R1 Strut bar for Mazda RX-7 by -mik3ymomo-

Lastly another part from Rich. A rear tow hook. I am afraid to go see him as Its like an RX-7 parts gold mine. Thanks Buddy! These parts are a big help getting the car to the next level.

 

Nice my man, glad to see the parts are being put to good use

 

Just getting the hatch all put back together and I end up getting these from Matt Gold. Authentic 99 spec tail lights.
Pretty nice shape, will try to get some small swirls and scratches out with some wet sand or plastic polish or something. Will show the process once I figure out how I am going to go about it. I am open to suggestions if anyone has done it before.

 

Yeah wet sand with 2000 grit then 2500 grit then a plastic polish will do the trick.

 

Cool thanks for the tip!

 

Mini update.

"Fortyounce" came by Monday and helped me sort out what I can get rid of under the plenum. He ended up taking the bull by the horns and engineered some custom mounts for the FPR and the Dampener. He is a regular Michael Angelo with a Dremel. Also did some other custom work to secure the coils under the plenum with a spacer after removing the hard lines.

I spent most of the day handing him tools, getting him bottles of water and watching him work.
It's not quite up and running but I got the fuel system to pressurize today. Just need to fix one small leak. Set screw needs some Teflon tape on the dampener. Will set the static fuel pressure and change the injector sizes in the map and see if it will start.

Thanks for helping me button up the fuel system and sort through a few items Jehan.




This is just KEY ON priming pressure to check for leaks. Luckily I'm only seeing one and it's the easiest type to fix.
Ordered some parts from Mazda Motorsports Development and will post pics once they arrive next week. Lots of little things. Stay tuned.

 

Looking good Mike. Not many OGs left, so we have to help each other out. You don't have much left on the to do list. When its up and running, bring it over to the Poco Brothers Performance shop for the water injection install.

 

good to hear u only have one leak.

if u had to do it all over again when you have upgraded as much stuff as you did?

 

Mike, lookin' great indeed dude

Are you running that coolant line to the back of the WP (seen in last photo) from the rear iron (preferred) or via the hardline and through the TB as per the OEM routing?

Consider having a custom (proper length) oil feed line made up at your friendly local hydraulic fitting shop. That super long one is one of the many compromises made on that turbo kit..... fix that **** with a quickness

Tom and I have a new 'OG-R' T-Shirt in the works made for guys like you two...... stay tuned

 

If I had to do it again I would keep the big projects for the winter and make sure I put in the time to finish by spring so I don't miss out on using the car during the best weather. I still have several projects ahead but they will wait until winter.

I want to get it running and start tuning it soon. Very little left to do. Fuel Leak is fixed and I've changed the injector sizes and lag times via the Datalogit in the power FC for the new ID injectors. Everything is working and the Walboro 485 is super quiet.

Going to set the static fuel pressure, install the new Wideband and start logging and adjusting the fuel map.

Huge box arrived from Mazda Motorsports Development.



More details on that later. Time for bed.

 

Yeah, Jehan has an extra oil line for the GT35R. It's probably easier if I order one off eBay. I kinda want to keep putting the car back together and save the additional projects for after the nice weather. I'm missing some good driving weather right now. Want to get it out and enjoy it. I will make a list of the 101 things to do over the winter. It should be epic.

 

Bumping this up ^ for those needing fasteners. I'm all for supporting Ray Crowe and Mazda, but you can't beat these prices with a baseball bat, that's for sure

 

Another Update.

I have been cleaning the engine bay while putting engine bay back together and someone here on the forum happened to want to buy my M2 large IC. At the same time another member was selling a new in the Box Greddy V Mount Kit.

Yeah, I went ahead and set my timeline back and am also going to order the Sakebomb dual oil coolers that they are having a group buy on right now. I should get those done while the nose of the car is off. Sure why not?
Luckily I have help. FourtyOunce is making another trip down to my garage and we will knock out the install. Hopefully once he is back from his globe trotting. I plan to get more pics posted once I have some time.

I've pulled my wideband thru the firewall and have my Datalogit set up with the Turbojeff Mount. Will be a perm and Stealth install.

Pics will soon follow.

 

^^ Big baller over here. Thankfully you're going to get rid of those awful stickers on that duct

 

I have a feeling you may have been the previous owner of the car at some point? Lol

 

Will try to get you caught up a little bit. I have made progress but like so many things... You don't stop to take photos of the entire process as you are trying to knock out a project you feel has taken too long.
When I got the car it was missing the privacy hatch cover, Along with that it was missing the hardware to properly install one. Luckily I have great resources and GoodfellaFD3S has all those things. He has been extremely helpful on my build with giving me part numbers and good advice on the mods to do and not do. I have even been able to raid his private stash of rare and elusive parts.
If not for him and a few others it would probably be destined for a V8 swap. While that's never completely out of the question; I am committed to giving the motor in the car a chance. A reliable rotary is preferred if possible for my power levels.

I do plan to do some roll racing, road racing and maybe a 1/2 mile event and see how the car does. I put in an Apexi 3 bar map sensor and do plan to get it up to around 18psi or whatever this A-Spec GT35R Kit will be efficient to. I'm learning as much as I can about tuning the Power FC. Going to take it slow and tune idle and vacuum and see how it works out. I'm able to bounce questions off a legitimate tuner so I'm not doing this blindly.

Moving on...
So you always see these JDM arm rests. I have a Mazda Motorsports Development account and they have these in stock. $70 brand new. I see people selling these used for much higher. If you race you should consider getting an account.

 

Here are the pieces for the hatch that you hang the privacy cover via the strings that lift the privacy cover as you lift the hatch.

Just push them into these holes in the hatch.


Nuts for the elbow and throttle body

 

Throttle body has a rubber O-Ring that seals the TB to elbow. Mine was hard and flat. Picked up a new one. Fits in the groove on elbow side of TB.

 

The Apexi 3 bar map sensor is a direct swap with the factory 2 bar map and factory harness. You will need to make the change in the Power FC to rescale your map for this new range. It can be done in the commander or with Datalogit. I won't outline it here but there is plenty of info online or elsewhere on the forum on how to do this.

 

No sir. But I'm liking what you're doing with the car now

 

I appreciate that. I will try to post pics by end of week of where I ran the wideband and Datalogit for my stealth install.

 

Ok so I took some photos of the wideband install and its progress as well as the Datalogit and how it will be set up.
So here I ran it from the engine bay where it will plug into the downpipe thru the firewall where the main harness passes thru under the wiper motor and behind the ABS.



Here are the power and ground for the wideband heading back to the battery in the bins under the center console. Also the USB for the Datalogit which will plug into the laptop via the USB adapter I picked up here on the forum.


Link is a few pages back if you want one but here it is installed.

Will allow you just to plug in the laptop via this USB to Datalog or tune without pulling kick panel out. It's going to all be secured in this Turbojeff mount.


The display for the wideband will be in the glovebox. I don't like a lot of gauges on display. This will be hidden in glovebox except when I want to read it and I will just open the glovebox.

 

While working on wideband I noticed my heater hose was rubbing (and melting) on the downpipe. That titanium insulation wrap and that insulation on the heater hose is good for up to 2500 degrees Fahrenheit radiant heat but only will withstand 400 degrees direct contact.
Well I will need to do something to get that completely away without any contact or it will melt and dump my coolant. Also when the car is on track it will melt those heater hoses in quick order.


My friends have been engine bay shaming me on how dirty it is so I've been trying to clean it as I work around it. It's made me squeeze my hands in places they shouldn't fit. But the results are starting to get more respectable. I still have a long way to go. But it's a start.