So after being in the hunt for a 1st gen for awhile, I finally found one that seemed to be in proper shape. I grew up working on a TII racecar with my dad (Carl Byck) and this car was always a dream of mine.

I have been working on cars my whole life and I'm an aircraft mechanic by trade so I figured what better way to expand my horizons and learn something new!


She made the 2 hour drive home in heavy traffic and the temp gauge never got to the halfway mark. (Maybe it's broken?!)

I got this car for less than 6k due to the missing interior and what seems to be a bad steering box. I plan to go over all of the components in the engine bay and check all the wiring. Several connectors seem to have no place to go. I assume that is due to the full RB exhaust. Maybe other parts are missing as well. I'm not too sure as I will have to familiarize myself with what all is supposed to be there.



All the major vacuum lines seem to have been replaced. New coils, plugs, wires, and dizzy as well. If you see something wrong here feel free to point it out. This is all very new to me.



I can't get over how good this car looks!

Originally a darker metallic brown. I think the color code was U2. I'll have to double check. But it has had a cheapo black respray that will have to be addressed when the car inevitablly gets taken apart in the future.

Interior has seen better days. Need to source almost a full interior for the car.

Unfortunately there is nothing in the back either. I do have the original door cards. Somewhere under that mess is a 4 foot bar the previous owner said would stiffen up the solid rear end. Has a slight curve to it.

My current problems that require immediate attention is the deafening backfire when letting off the gas for a few seconds and engine braking or even coasting for that matter. It shakes the entire car and sounds like a shotgun went off right next to you. As well as the 4 inches of steering slop. Not sure if or how I could service the steering box.

She idles at 800-900 after warming up for about 30 sec to a minute. Car was supposedly recently rebuilt by Atkins in WA but no receipt or known mileage since the rebuild.

So starts our journey!

 

Welcome to the forum!! Definitely a great car to restore as it appears to be solid and straight. Color code can be found on the vin plate on the right side of the firewall.

The A/C compressor appears to be long gone which is a shame. Also, the air box lid appears to have been drilled and taped. May want to source a new lid.

You'll want to check the exhaust system and make sure the split air tube is in good shape and attached at both ends. The dynamic effect intake system relies on exhaust backpressure to open the 5th and 6th ports. Without the backpressure, the system will not operate and the car will be slower.

I would clean up the spark plug wires and route them accordingly. Keep an eye on the red fusible link.. make sure its a proper fusible link and not just a home made wiring loop.

 

Thanks for the input! I think that those are just wires. No fuseable links. I'll take a look at that stuff though.

 

Welcome, i remember seeing this one on FB marketplace out in the peninsula. Looked like a great deal!

 

Fixed the steering play today. Removed the locknut which required an impact on low and a 1 5/8 socked due to it being damaged from a prior owner. Got the dead zone from 3+ inches down to less than half an inch. All said and done it feels like a totally different car! I found that the e brake was improperly set and it was partially engaged while fully down but that was an easy enough fix as well.


Quite a poor design if you ask me. New locknut will be on my list of things to order for this car. Ended up tightening the center adjustment cap by 1 1/2 turns.

Another productive day on the books!

 

Apologies if I am telling you things you already know about.

If you just happened to tighten the different adjusters and it now seems better, then make sure you go over some of the excellent threads here on adjusting the box. The crux is to make sure not to overtighten things...initially the steering can can seem much better but quickly it gets sloppy again due to progressive damage to the teeth on the ball nut to sector shaft mesh or to the bearing races. In these scenarios, there's no amount of adjustment that can fix it and you'd need a "new" box.

Here are some threads:

This is a very detailed how-to with lots of good information: https://www.rx7club.com/1st-generati...7-gsl-1114116/
And this is my short take on the steps: https://www.rx7club.com/1st-generati.../#post12486422

And here's my drawing what it looks like inside there (this is the dual adjustment preload and gear mesh manual box, like you've got:

 

That's is a good reference actually. Thank you. I was not able to fully remove the steering box at the time of adjustment. It was tightened by about a full turn then the wheel was checked lock to lock. I will have to pull it out soon and do it properly.

 

Weekly update:

I've just finished setting the ignition timing up properly. Took some troubleshooting as the timing was off when I matched the crank angle sensor and the pulley tdc up. I had to manually advance about 2 teeth on the sensor and I was able to get it on the timing pin on the front cover for the leading ignition. For the trailing timing I was able to get it close but not all the way to that pin. It was slightly retarded training timing. Not sure if that will cause me problems in the future. I would say that the trailing timing is about a half inch off. But that was the closest I could get it. As of now there hasn't been any massive backfires. Just a few small ones. I'll have to take it on a lengthy drive in the near future to test it out.

3 days later:
Took it to a local rotary shop today. They said that I got the timing really close but they went ahead and made it to spec for me. They also said I only had about 15lbs of vacuum when there should be 20? Not sure how to diagnose that problem. The variable resistor for idle mixture is shot as well. That was unplugged as my understanding is that it defaults to fill rich if it's unplugged. Not entirely sure about that though. I'll have to do some more digging.

They didn't say that they found any exhaust leaks however they did say that if I can chase down all the problems relating the the car running rich than that should solve my backfire issue. I took off the BAC today and inspected it. It was clean as far as I saw. I believe there is supposed to be an adjustment screw that goes into the side but mine just has another "red cap" and when I pull it off it creates a vacuum leak.

Feels like I'm going in circles.

I'm getting pretty close to just pulling all to the accessories off this engine and reinstalling everything one at a time and properly. Just intimidating considering I don't really have a solid reference point or something to directly compare to.

They also pointed out that there was a jumper on some test connection that had the fuel pump always running. Not sure why that was done but I removed the jumper and the car still runs fine. They apparently set my tps but that caused some weird low idle issue now that I have to solve.

 

FWIW, you don't need to pull it out to adjust it, but if you are pulling it out that's a really good time to do the adjustment. The whole idea is to adjust the preload independent of the gearlash and you can get a really good feel for that by disconnecting the pitman from the drag link.

Good luck with it, it's gonna be great

 

Wondering if you made any progress on the car recently.

 

I remember Carl and his car!
How's he doing? Is he still racing?

 

My original compressor on my GSL-SE recently died and as we all know original equipment compressors are almost non-existent.
I have a friend who's a fabricator and does a lot of custom a/c installs on hot rods. He suggested I get a kit from Summit and he would install it for me. It turns out Summit sells the same brand compressor - Sanden - and it is very similar to the original unit. It's close but not quite a bolt in, had to tweak the arm a little and needed a some spacers (or you could stack some washers). The kit comes with a variety of hose fittings and connectors so plumbing is not too difficult. It works very well with my original system, cold on the hottest days and I've logged a lot of miles since the install. (Also converted to R-134.) This is just FYI... Enjoy your Seven!