Ahhhh. The bulb comes on. My badge looks perfect unlike the rest of the horn button. Another possibility for correcting hazed plastic like this is acrylic floor polish. The RC airplane guys use it on clear canopies that have gotten scratched. It fills in the scratches and has a similar refractive index to the plastic used. It is very rugged (it is intended to be walked on) and can be stripped off with an ammonia solution or just reapply more.

I must say the SEM paint intrigues me and I know I will be doing this after I get some other things done. I worked on my center console this weekend and found a paint that is a fair match for the metal finish. It is a little brighter but that was less important since I am repainting all of it. Details later on the what did I do thread.

 

Stilettoman - Atkins has the clear lenses.
79-85 Rx7 Clear Side Marker Lens Set...
and
79-85 Rx7 Clear Side Marker Lens Set...

I have a set on my GSL-SE, don't recall them being quite that expensive when they first came out, but maybe they were. My car part pricing memory can be selective..

 

Details! I bought a new shift boot and surround, and it looks gorgeous! Now the rest of the center console looks like ***. I would have paid the $280 for the whole bit - except you can't buy the ash tray any more! Would suck to have spent so much money and still have it look like ***.

Would love to see the paint you found for it - mine definitely needs a resto. That will be the final piece for the interior (apart from the rear deck carpeting).

The side markers are correct - $60 per pair. The front corner lenses are half what I paid - but I got my old ones from Jose Reyes (is he still around??) who was getting them custom pressed. $112 for the pair.

These days I prefer the stock colors, which I swapped out right after I took that first picture.

 

Details are on the What did I do today page but here is a teaser picture. If you look closer than you ever would in the car you can see it isn't perfect. I only spent a few minutes doing surface prep. Basically just scuffed the face up with a foam sanding block. If you want perfect you would need to do some sort of feather fill and hand sanding. I am more than satisfied with the appearance at arms length. For your purpose you will probably want to paint all of the pieces the same color. With a new shift boot surround I would probably just wipe it with alcohol and then two light coats just to match the color if you feel it is too much. I found that it was almost painless to remove the shift boot from the surround. I was able to gently rock off the clips without breaking anything. This variety of Rust-oleum is specced for plastic and I didn't see any issues.

 

I adjusted the hood, so the latch release gets a real spring action. And discovered my radiator was bone dry after 2 months of sitting in one place.....

 

Ya know - WD-40 did some wonders for my hood latch... And door latch and hatch latch as well lol!

Radiator dry - yikes!!! That shouldn't happen. You running a mixture of coolant and water or just water? I don't know a whole lot about cooling systems but I've never had that happen even after months of garage or outdoor sitting.

 

New Mexico is DRY DRY DRY. From what the Previous Owner said, Smooth had been out in someone's back yard for years (at least part of the time without any hood). No grass, no rust/rot. No moisture and every seal, hose, belt, boot... gone to crap. It will be a tedious recovery, and she's got a beautiful body. I will put a diaper on her radiator next (the reservoir proved leak free last night). I will chase this leak and the others, and the ones yet to come....... Interesting, not what I anticipated.

 

Wow - well honestly almost a blessing in disguise. It's easy to replace hoses. Not so easy to replace sheets of metal Well, for me anyways. 82transam sure seems to be rocking with the body work. not for me thanks! lol! by the time you're done your engine bay will look SUPA fresh!

Here are some more pics of the interior restoration:
---

Door cards before resto - and back-side of rear wheel cover to compare to stock color:


Here they are, restored


For comparison - the indentation part with the holes is the factory OEM color - i did not paint this part - only the visible parts surrounding it. if you look reaaaaly close under juuust the right light you can see that the factory color is a slight red-shift hue


Now that everything else is done - I can come up with no further excuses and its now time to cut fresh carpet liner and re-install carpets:

 

Nice resto on my fav 1st gens, the SE.

Welcome back to RE! I remember your blue one.

 

Nice build man

 

Your interior will look fantastic! i love the haltech making an appearance in on of the photos. have you got all your efi goodies yet?

 

hahaha. good eye, sir, good eye

Waiting on a high pressure fuel pump, 3" throttle body inlet, polished fuel rails & 6port /vdi pots. just got my re-speed CAI radiator support and 3" chrome intake tubing (from an integra CAI kit). so close!

Before I get the EFI system in, however, I'm going to build a standalone 6port / vdi actuation system, as the air pump and smog have been removed. Stay tuned for that little gem! I've been scheming

 

I'm loving it!!! keep up the finer detail work! :-)

 

I love the thermal/acoustic insulation!

 

That attention to detail makes me want to pull the whole interior out of my FB. Great work!

 

Love the project, very nice work.

 

Alright, I'll post again - love the progress so far!

I gotta ask, what are you using to mount the gauges on the A-Pillar? I have 3 gauges for under my single-DIN Kenwood stereo and two more that need to go on the pillar and I can't for the life of me find what people use to mount them. I have a spare aftermarket SN95 dual gauge pod for the Mustang that I might test fit but doubt it will work. Just curious!

Dang, you Sean and I haven't been posting nearly as much as we were for a while there. Must mean all 3 of us are either getting stuff done to our cars right??

 

Thanks man Yeah, I've made a bunch or progress, but its wash car / picture time, and I havent had the time yet. This weekend The car is back together and running quite nicely. The interior is crazy fresh. I've been scheming on a subwoofer box, which is the weekend's major project.

For a-pillar pods, check out Mazdatrix. They have one that looks OEM. Like, unreal match. I just painted it burgundy in the interior refresh and can't wait to put it in! It looks so slick.
Gauges & Gauge Pods

 

Good to hear! I love what you did with the stock unit, that's some bad *** work and I'm thinking of doing something similar to mine now (still worked perfectly and I kept it just in case something like this came up). If I wasn't putting gauges there I'd probably try to recreate what you did with yours.

Make sure to post some pics of what you come up with for a subwoofer box, I know people use the area between the tail lights for small 8" woofers and I've seen some other crazy setups as well - I'll send you the links to em.

Just ordered the dual gauge pod that replaces the entire A-Pillar, for $48 that isn't bad at all! For the SN95 it's like $100+ and I'm sure there's more demand for those which I think would make it cheaper..

Anyways, thanks for the help and I look forward to what you come up with next - always fun to check in and see what you're working on!

 

now that the interior is mostly back together and nearing its completion, i finally have space on the floor to begin scheming the next phase.

This week I should be getting the final pieces to the 13B Injection system from the S5. This will have 4 fuel injectors controlled with a Haltech F9 fuel computer. The ignition will be left stock for now, direct fire or such down the road.





Meanwhile I think my muffler's shot so it sounds pretty lame. Will be trying to source a tie-me-over until I can redo the whole thing down the road. I definitely want to throw at least one catalytic converter in there. call me a hippy - but i dig the smell of exhaust only so much.

Will take some pics of how the interior turned out after I get the subwoofer box built and installed.

 

Had big intentions of building a sub box this past week but the weather was so nice, I had to wash her up, make sure all the new weatherstripping was holding, and take her for a cruise.

Saw this classic Southern Pacific streamliner diesel electric so had to duck in and grab a shot.











Found a gorgeous S5 vert - Had to snap a pic

 

Good looking car. That is a different placement for the front license plate.

I drove my 85 GSL for 3 years without a front plate before I got stopped for not having a front plate. I got off with a warning because I had the plate in the car with the replacement bracket. I hated having to put it on the car.

 

I've been studying up on the Factory Training Manual on how to properly configure the vacumn advance system on the 'SE distributor. It turns out the factory system uses manifold pressure regulated via check valve, which actuates under certain conditions as received by various sensors. Throttle position, coolant temp, and the underlying manifold pressure behind it all.

Then i got curious about how streetable carb setups run with vacuum advance. After quite a long read through lengthy debates about manifold vs. ported pressure, the conclusion was to hook it up to what you've got and see what it does. Any better? good. worse? try the other one.

As i'm still growing accustomed to this Dellorto 48, i've only hooked the advance up to the manifold pressure, and so far so good! The exhaust tone is sounding much better and the lower rpm range is infinitely more drivable.

I may not need a new muffler after all - the setup may just be that out of whack. I know she's way rich right now - she was tuned for sea level, and I'm at 2500-4500 ft in my area. Re-jetting with my buddy and a wideband should do us right.

Here are the threads that led me through lengthy debate and contradiction, starting with the most helpful posts:
https://www.rx7club.com/1st-generati...0/#post7530539
https://www.rx7club.com/1st-generati...0/#post7512505
https://www.rx7club.com/1st-generati...0/#post7513150

More interesting info here, some graphs on the electronic controlled ignitions:
https://www.rx7club.com/1st-generati...2/#post9987018

 

i suggest with the advance to tee a boost/vacuum gauge in the line, and just try a couple different ports. i like manifold vacuum myself, but ymmv!

 

got some new peepers.

b4





after. new h4's and cleaned, prepped, painted headlight buckets