Connorbmx

Hey guys, decided in my spare time that i would start a build thread for anyone interested in this car and also so that I have a log of everything I've done.

Now time for a little backstory on me. (You can skip this if you want) This is technically my first rotary car so if i'm doing something dumb feel free to let me know. My love for cars started a few years ago when I bought a second gen mazdaspeed3. I absolutely love that car and about a year into ownership I decided to put a "big" turbo on it. After it was tuned to 350whp I decided to stop modifying that car, got the boost turned down for better reliability and made it my daily. Now I was on the hunt for an older car that I could play with more without worrying about having to drive the car to work everyday. Ive always loved the first gen rx7 so that was what I decided on buying. I originally bought a clean red 82 that ran and drove but had been sitting for the last 20 years. All it needed was a clutch slave and she drove great. But me being me, I wanted my fun car to be faster then my daily. After lots of looking and researching blowthrough carb setups, I decided that a turbo 12a wasn't for me. I pulled the engine and sold it for way too cheap to someone online. I played with a lot of ideas including an ls1 but then my friend bought an rx8. After driving that once I knew that whatever went back into my car had to be a rotary. Si I made up my mind and started looking for a 13b rew. While looking a different first gen popped up for a crazy good deal with a lot of money in parts into it. I talked to the guy for a while and decided to buy it. Originally I bought it for parts but you'll soon see why I decided to build that shell instead.

So now I drove 6 hours and picked up this car. Of course it wasn't running and had been sitting for 2 years. It is a 1983 rx7 with a 13b re swap out of a cosmo. Im pretty stoked on it especially when I started digging around on the internet. So the car was built as a drift car but that is not what ill be using it for. While it was a drift car it was actually sponsored by Mishimoto, AEM and Techno Toy Tuning. The guy I bought it from said that it stopped running on his way home with it and he hasn't been able to start it since. I was told it made 450whp without water/meth and he claimed it would make an easy 500 with water/meth. I have no idea if that is realistic but he did show me some videos of it when it was running and it definitely looked pretty fast.

Here's a couple pictures of it the second day I had it home.





I generally make it a rule that I don't buy modified cars because I'm always scared that it is hacked together. This car was a little different because it has so much money in parts in it and I was planning on stripping it down and rebuilding the whole car myself anyways. I'm not a mechanic, but I love working on cars and building stuff. That first day I compression tested it to see what it was like. As expected the front rotor was down to 30psi and the rear rotor was 50psi. Pretty much the second day I had the car I pulled everything off the motor, pulled the suspension and pulled the motor. That pretty much brings us to a point where I can make small updates with lots of pictures. If you have any questions or suggestions please leave them because I'm trying to read and learn as much as I can about these cars! I will update lots on parts and stuff because the mod list is too long for me to type out in one sitting, so as things go back together I'll show everything. Probably in the next post I'll strip the motor and see what went wrong in there.

datsun1200

so awesome looking good I have a cosmo swap rx8 and have a 1st gen that needs love

Connorbmx

tommyeflight89

iTrader: (4)

Awesome!!

Super small world.

I have met the original owner of that FB before, and I even bought his entire 12A drivetrain setup from him when he was preparing to swap in the REW.

Super awesome guy.

Looking forward to following your thread.

I remember it to be a pretty clean shell, just dinged up up a bit lol.

diabolical1

iTrader: (3)

Oh, I'm definitely in. This should be good!

Connorbmx

That is crazy! I unfortunately never got to talk to the original owner (Ryan i think?) as he had apparently sold it to a friend and that's who I bought it from. I was wondering if anyone on the forums would recognize the car because I have no idea if he had ever posted anything about it. The shell is surprisingly clean for a car that has obviously been driven. The rear of the car, like from the doors back is in mint condition, but the front looks like someone spray bombed it haha. There are some runs in the fenders and some dents in the hood, but overall its in pretty good shape. I have spare body panels laying around, just need to figure out what colour he had the car painted lol.

Connorbmx

So, after deciding to strip the car down and rebuild the whole thing I set to pulling the motor. It was actually super easy, much easier then the 12a I had pulled previously. Nothing was stuck, so everything came apart without a hitch. Some things, like the motor mounts were scary loose, kinda like they had been forgotten when the car was assembled the first time. Here are some pictures of the motor pull, the hardest part was pulling the exhaust manifold off because the turbo is very much in the way of the one nut. Thank god for ratcheting wrenches haha. I'm pretty sure I'd still be there turning this nut a fraction on a mm before having to reposition the wrench.


Couldn't have pulled the motor this quickly without the help from my Dad.


Now that the motor is out I can see the whole engine bay. God the purple paint is atrocious. I have no idea what caused it to crack like this but it looks horrible. That is for sure on my list of things to fix. The original owner who painted the bay also didn't take anything apart when he painted it so there is overspray on everything. On top of the overspray a lot of the lower parts of the bay never even got painted. I pulled the rest of the stuff from the bay and then pushed it outside to power wash it out. There is so much old undercoat on everything it's insane. I guess thats why it is in as good shape as it is.


This is the first time the car is off the jackstands in a couple weeks, and I forgot how low the car sits lol. My speed3 looks massive compared to it. Now the car is back up on stands and I get to start on the wiring nightmare. The original harness is still in the car and the new standalone harness was just thrown under the passenger carpet. All, those relays could have easily been mounted but I guess the PO was in a rush to get the car to drive. One thing I hate is wiring messes. I don't understand a lot about wiring so the messier it is the more it scares me. Luckily my dad was an electrician and is now a wiring inspector, so I have someone who is super excited to make the wiring all neat and tidy!



Just looking back on that wiring is giving me a headache lol. Thank god I'm past it now. The next update should be the chassis wiring finished and the motor being pulled apart for inspection.

DWNUNDR

iTrader: (1)

nice

Rx7fb spirit r

No problem guy. I can reading on the cars door your father is working as an "safety" electrician .😉 BTW a really cool looking 😎 car.👍

Connorbmx

Well, I forgot to post last week, Christmas was my excuse lol. I did get quite a bit done over the holidays which was super nice. I started by getting the oil pan off the motor and the motor up on my workbench.

I was planning on buying a rotary engine stand adapter for my engine stand but it costs too much to make it worth it. Plus I can't seem to find anywhere in Canada that sells them so I would have to pay an arm and a leg in duty and exchange rate. The table will have to do! After getting the motor up here I pulled the engine apart to see what was wrong with it.

So I immediately found that every corner seal was broken or cracked except for one. Reading on here about that seems like it could be from overheating? The front rotor which made next to no compression had a side seal that was chipped and also was missing a corner seal entirely. I'm going to count myself lucky that my turbo is still in one piece. The missing corner seal caused the side seal to move into the place the seal should have been in and now its about 2 inches shorter then it should be. I think i have some pictures of this stuff. The irons and housings look very nice, no scoring or anything too bad looking. They all look usable which is awesome.



I thought that those 2 corner seals that are in one piece may have been good but as soon as i touched them they both broke apart too lol. Id say that is the cause of the low compression in this motor.

Connorbmx

I also finished up the chassis wiring going to the rear of the car. The front is also finished but it is all piled in the footwell of the drivers side because i wanted to paint the engine bay before running the wires. I also did a little taillight mod that I saw on here a while ago. I think it really updates the look of the rear of the car while costing nothing. I plan to eventually switch to led lights but that's very low priority on this car. I may never end up doing it because it won't make me go faster lol.


I have a bolt in roll bar that will be going back in the car in a little while. It is much easier to work on things without that bar in the way lol/
At this point I couldn't avoid sanding and painting the engine bay any longer. So I spent way too long sanding and etch primering the engine bay. I don't have many pictures of this process except one in the middle of working. Because the purple paint was all cracked I had to basically sand the entire engine bay to bare metal to get it all smooth.


The sanding went very well and last week i got the bay primed and painted. For my first time painting something using a legit gun it turned out way better then I had ever hoped. The colour I went with was Bright Sapphire metallic which is an oem mazda colour.





It's so tough to take pictures of a heavy metallic paint. It looks much nicer in person. The colour is super deep and has a crazy almost colourshift effect.

Qingdao

iTrader: (3)

Never seen corner seals and side seals look like that; that's wild. How do the rotors look?

tommyeflight89

iTrader: (4)

This is wild, so cool to see this car get a second chance at life.

Excellent work.

I have no idea how the motor could grenade like that and still have decent housings and irons. Very lucky! Does it look like the engine was rebuilt previously?

As for engine stand, what does your engine stand look like?

I found I did not need an adapter to mount to my cheap Canadian Tire stand. Search around, it did not take anything special, I think I used some wheel studs and washers. The 13B RE may have a different front iron setup however...

Also attached is a picture of the original Streetport 12A that Ryan sold to me.. that came out of out of your car. I have since had it rebuilt at Chips Motorsports.

Here is what powered your car before the RE swap!

Google search to see pics of how to mount to standard engine stand.

Connorbmx

Connorbmx

delturcious

I think there are a lot of us who wish our first paint jobs will turn out as nice as what yours did!

Connorbmx

Connorbmx

Not too many exciting things to report this time around. I've been doing small wiring things trying to fix the mess the previous owner left. But I accomplished a couple things that I can share.

I installed my sweet lrb speed door panels and most of the interior besides the seats because I'm still waiting on powdercoating on the roll bar. The interior was done with flocking, which i originally saw in a couple rally cars and it looked pretty nice. Mainly it was done to hide the massive crack my dash had in it lol.


Interior is still pretty messy because this picture was taken before I started working on the wiring mess.

The only other notable thing was some porting on the motor. When I bought the motor it was already streetported and made just a bit over 400 at the wheels. I wanted to bump up the power some so I did an aggressive street port to the primaries and secondary's and a half bridge. The porting isn't beautiful by any stretch of the imagination but I think it should work. Just waiting on a couple more motor parts to get here and then it will all be going back together!

tommyeflight89

iTrader: (4)

Awesome work. You are doing work like a pro!

WobblyBobbly

Rock on! Cool project. What are you planning for a transmission?

Connorbmx

Connorbmx

Connorbmx

Been a while since I last updated on the progress. I have been working a lot on the car and just working in general to afford the parts for the car lol. I was going to post a couple weeks ago but decided to wait until I have lots to share. This ones gonna be a long update probably over two posts so that I can post everything I want to.

Ill start out with the least exciting stuff and then move into what everyone probably wants to see. Chassis wiring is fully run and tucked and everything now works. Not one chassis wire can be seen in the engine bay which is what I'm going for. Not really doing a full tuck but I would like the engine bay to look as clean as possible without getting extreme or sacrificing performance or ease of working on the car. I installed an autopower bolt in 4 point roll bar and mocked up my Sparco sprint seat. The sparco brackets took some modifications to be able to mount the seat close enough to the wheel for short people like me lol.



Now we can get into the exciting stuff! The engine is fully assembled, Ill list all the engine modifications after a couple pictures of it assembled.




Here is a basic list of everything done to the motor, for anyone who cares. I may miss a few things, if I do my bad.
13b re block
Aggressive street port primaries
Bridgeport secondaries (half bridge)
20b exhaust sleeves with race exhaust porting
fd rx7 rotors and e shaft
Rotary Aviation super seals apex seals
OEM Mazda apex seal springs
OEM Mazda corner seal springs
OEM Mazda Side seals and side seal springs
Atkins rotary solid corner seals
OEM Mazda gasket kit and o ring set
Turblown stud kit
Oil pan brace (No idea what brand)
Custom aluminum solid motor mounts
Lightweight flywheel (Again not sure what brand)
Act 6 puck unsprung race clutch with the hd pressure plate

Connorbmx

Continuing on, I needed to get the flywheel nut (counterweight nut in my case because of the lightweight flywheel) torqued. I usually like to follow torque values closely so I chose not to do the impact gun method with the lines and an approximate torque value. My friend who lives about an hour away just recently bought a 2018 civic type r and he also happens to have a torque wrench for semi truck wheels that goes well over 400ftlbs. So I loaded the engine in the back of my speed3 and drove out to get the flywheel nut torqued. I had to take a picture of it and send it to all my buddies who say that a big turbo speed3 isn't a practical daily.


It fit in perfectly with my engine stand and the tools I needed. It did rub in the rear the whole way there but it was well worth it for the peace of mind torque values give me haha. So now the next logical step is to mate the engine with my t2 transmission and drop it in the car.





And BOOM she is in! Clutch is hooked up and bled, trans is all wired so that I have my reverse lights and speedo and the starter is wired and turns the car over with the key! Now to just install some more parts lol.

Connorbmx

And apparently I have to make a third post to be able to fit in the last two images lol. Here are a few of the parts that need to be installed still

And leaving off tonight with a beautiful image..........