So i have this friend willing to sell me his GXL it has been sitting in the garage for at least 8 years barried under a bunch of stuff it needs a little body work do to some bad bondo and the bad rust is the door but everything else is solid the interior is good besides a few tears in the seats the apex seals and blown totally and i have ten grand to buy it and build it he is selling it for 2500 it has under 80,000 on it i was gonna buy a used turbo engine and then do a massive tune up with the best products i can find including a cold air intake FMIC then denso plugs optima battery street fire wires and find a descent set of header including and a APEXi N1 evo exhaust and a good set of big breaks, get a nice set of 18s and with nitto rubbers and door shells since im doing the doors im gonna pet a nice set of 90 degree lambo door hinges is that worth a 10 grand including the vehicle purchase.

 

Find a cheaper FC. $2,500 for a car with a blown engine is a rip off. Plus, you're going to replace the engine anyway!!! I bought my 87' GXL running for $700. I have heard of people buying these cars for $400 running. With the "best products" you're probably looking at more than $10k. I am factoring in paint, wheels, TII rebuild, drivetrain, EMS, turbo, brakes, intercooler set-up, etc... That kind of money is a great start, though. Check out some other people's projects, and see what you think.

This site has GREAT resources... Learn as much as you can about TII swaps and the FC in general. See what others recommend parts-wise, too.

My advice: NEVER CUT CORNERS ON YOUR PROJECT. Do things right the first time.

 

There is a rolling shell with body kit, rims, and new paint on the Binghamton, NY craigslist for $1400, looks clean.

 

Bump

 

You need to do far more research.

 

The forum is your best friend research befor anything.

 

Sorry, but I had to


WTF is a massive tune up

 

Hes not a very good friend.. Rip off.

 

[QUOTEMy advice: NEVER CUT CORNERS ON YOUR PROJECT. Do things right the first time.[/QUOTE]

Probably the best advice ever, and I follow that to the T.

 

They see me trollllannnn......

 

 

Consensus agreed with. There are better deals elsewhere, such as in the classifieds here and on Craigslist. Definitely read Aaron Cake's How-Tos on buying a RX-7, you will learn lots.
www.aaroncake.net

My 87 GXL was $1400 and had some bad bondo work done to it. Exhaust was in shitty shape too. But it ran decently, revved all the way to redline and drove solidly. Its only faults were because the previous owner had the IQ of a gerbil and half-assed the bodywork after an accident that gave it a Rebuilt Title and the horribly ghetto exhaust job.

To get an idea of what is possible when approaching the car correctly while being budget-conscious, check out my build thread "12 Days of Rotormas" I've been learning tons from the process at every step, all while keeping things within reasonable cost too. Granted, I've taken two or three shortcuts such as the intake/intercooler plumbing (still not done) and the downpipe (stainless steel flex pipe, will be redone in the spring), but the main points have all been spot-on so far.

$10,000 is a good budget, but fixing previous owner stuff is gonna eat a big chunk of that up. If it spit an apex seal, it probably trashed all 3 cats and the catback. When one part of the exhaust is damaged, its contents work their way back and destroy everything after it. That's what happened to my car before I got it, and the previous owner ghetto-fabbed some garbage together to sell it to the unsuspecting buyer (me).

The most important lesson with a RX-7 is that what you put into it determines what you'll get out of it. If you try and drive with a band-aid on the exhaust after it rusts through (I did this once...), it'll resent you, backfire like a shotgun, ripping the muffler off entirely and take a bigger chunk out of your wallet than if you fixed the problem correctly from the start. As a result, my car got a Racing Beat TII catback and it's one of the best mods I've done. Even with everything in front of it being VERY ghetto and having no cats, the car purred like a kitten at idle and had a nice non-ricer tone all the way to redline. The reason why I used past tense is because my car is undergoing a 20B conversion at the moment. See the build thread for more info.

Though I'm a bit biased toward Racing Beat, my opinion is that Apex'i N1's on a rotary just sound like the obnoxious jackass in a honda... Don't be that guy.

Since Racing Beat's products are proven to be well made, easy to install and hold up very well in the real world, let's use them to illustrate this example.

You'd be sinking $378 for a RB downpipe (to replace precats) and midpipe (to replace main cat), plus another $665 for a RB catback and then $167 more for exhaust hangars to replace all of them. That's $1210 to do exhaust the proper way, not including shipping or wrench time on your part. Or another way to put it is a little over 1/10th of your total budget. The plus side is that it will fit like it was meant to be there all along, not attract unwanted attention and not rust through because they made it correctly.