well after a failed attempt at building my 2nd gen due to it having the "cancer" (rust) my wife told me that i was not allowed to have any more 2nd gens..... then after losing my job in KY i had to move to NY for my wife to work.... blah blah blah.... i was sitting in the garage the other day bored out of my mind (still not having a job),looking at my parts collection from the previous countless rx7's i have had and had an epiphany..... she said no 2nd gen..... so one day while she was slaving away at work i snuck out and bought a 1ST GEN!!!!!!!!!!! muuuuuuahahahahahahaaaaaaaa

so for now the plan is to get this turd going.... thus far i have plumbed the fuel with a holley "blue" and fpr... i have an s5 13b to drop in it with a DHLA 48, header and some other stuff...

my wife was surprisingly ok with this and has actually helped a little lol!!!!

i was gonna wait till i had more done, but boredom got the best of me once again....

i've got the 12a out, and cleaned up the engine bay, and of course plumbed the fuel.... much much much more to come... i have a gsl-se oil cooler with an e-fan covering it and the radiator.... i can't remember what i pulled the e-fan from.... i wanna say a fiero..... i installed my short shifter... and now i am waiting for a delivery from racing beat and my gsl-se oil pan before i can get into the fun stuff.... enjoy the pic's thus far....

SOME OF THE GOODIES (please excuse the clutter):

 

also forgot to mention that i have all the HVAC out and the battery relocated now (pics of that to come after the sound deadening is removed)

engine pull + before and after on engine bay clean up:






http://s9.photobucket.com/albums/a72...t=DSC05516.jpg

HAD TO THROW THIS ONE IN OF THE WIFEY HELPING!!!!!!!!

 

Looking good, now is the time to address the rust you do have in the engine bay. Have you checked the rear wheel wells and pulled the bins to check there for rust? With the rust in the engine bay, I bet you have other rust issues.

 

yeah this one just has some surface rust in the engine bay which will be addressed, also the rears do have the classic wheel well rust, but it is very very minor.... i won't lose this one to the rust battle lol.....im trying to decide now whether to make it look good this year ( i.e. paint and body) and bolt on what i do have or go ahead and rebuild the 13b (100k on it) and make it crazy fast....

i was just gonna get it running with the dhla 48 on the 12a cause the carb was trash and do the suspension and body, but now that i have decided on the 13b i kinda threw all that out the window.... i have some beautiful FC vert BBS's i wanna put on it (w/re-speed BB kit) but i think that will have to wait till next year now..... soooo many idea's... i need a job lol...

oh btw... it will be in the classifieds section soon, but once i get confirmation on its actual rebuild and such, the 12a is said to be rebuilt by ludwig motorsports with only 10k on it.... it is stock port, but will not have the waterpump or front cover... will have the stock carb and some sort of make shift header from the previous owner... $250 for any who is interested

 

Awesome. You not only snuck an fb into the garage, but you got her to work on it too. lol

 

outstanding find and build idea! you've got an excellent start on the project. plan on painting the car?

 

where did you get your short-shifter from?

 

i'll paint the car and get the body/rust all taken care of probably late summer (when the weather in NY is better for painting) i don't know what color yet though... i just bought some old toyota fender mounted mirrors from ebay for 20 bucks and if they look as good as i hope then i'll probably paint it a crazy bright color

idk on the shifter... i bought it off a guy 3 years ago for my 2nd gen that claimed it was mazdaspeed, but when i received it there was nothing proving this... but i got for 30 bucks and it doesn't do the shitty rattling that cheap ones tend to do so i'm happy...... if your looking for a cheap short shifter get a miata one on ebay... i bought one for my old 2nd gen vert for like 35 shipped a year ago and it worked great

 

My advice would be to finish 100% of the mechanical work before you do the paint. Otherwise, you stand a good chance of messing up the paint while working on the car (leaning on fenders, dropped wrenches, etc.).

Good luck with your new love!



.

 

i started tucking the wires inside the car because it will be without interior and i just wanted it to look clean.... everything tucked beautifully up to the door's.... now that i am at the door there isnt any place large enough to get the plugs and loom through to hide it till it gets to the dash.... will it noticeably hurt the rigidity of the car if i drill a hole into the cavity that runs the length of the door?

i havent seen much wire tucking going on for the interior.... well... for the engine bay either, i'll probably be pulling a fender later this week to see where i can tuck the wires for the engine bay.....

 

pulled the dash back out tonight to have a better view of things... i think i am going to try to run the wires through the speaker whole in it, there is an opening there in the chassis that i think will allow me to run the wires through that door cavity without cutting holes....

a side note.... i am having the garage finally wired to run my welder so i can do crazy things now

 

Sweet.

screw the job, that's less time to work on the car

 

haven't done much in the last couple weeks do to a 3rd degree burn to the hand.... but hopefully this weekend ill get the 13b put together and in the car .... possibly get it ready for a 1st start..... pics and maybe a video to come.....

 

well finally got back on the car this weekend... lastnight and today i cleaned up the body a little, got the glue from the rub strips of, and removed the pin strips... still needs a bath though.... i cut down the side marker lenses in an attempt to get them to mount a little more flush, managed to take about an 1/8th in. off of it so it looks much better than before....got the front cover, waterpump, oil pan, etc. put on the engine and the engine in the car... rebuilt the carb and got it all ready to go on, gotta get some gaskets to mount it all up...only thing left is to hook up a few more things, get the engine mount drilled out, and see if it starts!!!!!!!

just need to wait for the weather to let up a little bit so i can make my final trip to pep-boys to pick vacuum lines, oil, coolant, etc.

 

Nice project. I'd say fix the rust but just give it a rattle can paint job until all the mechanical stuff is taken care of. Then you can have it looking decent without worrying about scratching it up.

 

yeah i was going to go ahead and handle the rust and what not, but spring is too close now lol.... this upcoming winter i'll be taking it down to the shell and busting out the welder to fix it all and repaint it, and do some bridgreport action, right now i just wanna drive it and get the suspension set on it

 

IT'S ALIVE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

got everything together late lastnight and got her running today....

1st attempt i had the fuel pressure set at 4lbs by accident so she kept flooding out

http://www.facebook.com/video/video....v=382111397341

second try she fired right up and ran great..... everything is still roughly tuned, i dont have a timing light so i advanced it just a hair from tdc, and the carb isn't adjusted much other than the idle is sitting at about 1000k right now.....

http://www.facebook.com/video/video....v=382114092341

now i have to get together the exhaust for it... figure out why the temp sensor is not working, and get this thing tuned so i can start beating the **** out of it!!!!!!

 

I love how clean a n/a engine bay looks with a sidedraft. Hell, combine that with an alternator relocation and it gets even sweeter. Body looks tolerable, clean off the side molding goo and polish it a bit for the summer and enjoy the old girl.

 

lol... yeah she still has a long way to go, i just couldnt leave her in pieces for summer, so i just got the engine going till winter again

 

seems like it runs really well! any plans to clean up or replace the wheels and add the side moulding?

 

you may have noticed the 2nd gen behind it in the video...... the plan is to take the brakes off of it and do the re-speed BB kit to it so i can run a set of vert BBS wheels that i have... as for the moldings, i'll probably leave them off and when i get the car painted just paint the bumpers white again so it's all clean

 

Good Times..

 

well i had dome trouble with the bracket for the throttle cable flexing a bunch, also i decided not to use the filter assembly with it, im gonna put intake socks on i think...... so today in the fashion of boredom i hacked up an old rusty saw blade and built my own bracket... NOW NO FLEX!!!!!!

 

Saw blade bracketry = full of win. clean that baby up and it'll be a great conversation starter among the observant.

Chris

 

while waiting on the RB presilencer, and all the senders for my gauges i decided to take advantage of the weather and clean up the car.... took me 4 hours, and eventually i said screw it and rubbed the car down with mineral spirits (thats how bad it was!!!!!!!)... im gonna wax her when the sun starts to go down a bit and ill post up some pics later today