Picked up this arctic silver one-family owned turbo back in September. It had popped up on Craigslist and my brother sent me the link, called right away and offered full price and booked a flight to North Carolina.

car had remained stock outside of a reaching beat cat-back and some rear shocks for the most part.

the mans father had purchased the car from a dealership in Arizona when he got out of the Army, it spent its life between Arizona, Florida, Vermont, and North Carolina on trading hands from father to Son. He was moving back to Vermont and no longer wanted the vehicle, h offered it to other family members but none were interested.

plans for the car are to sort out the issues with the broken radio/antenna, replace missing parts like the battery cover, update the suspension as it’s gotten a bit soft over time. OEM parts are not totally available so some aftermarket will be used. The car drives great and just want to enjoy it.

I’ll update here with pics as I go along.

 

When I picked it up on the farm.

Can’t get over it.

Somewhere in Virginia on the 800 miles trip back home.

Safe and sound in downtown Chicago.

 

Thought it felt a bit sluggish...

Thankfully the filter was a true hero and held on.

Feels sooo much better now. That could have been bad.

 

Cleaning up the loose ends, replaced battery box lid that was missing, swapped out the rotary shaped oil cap for a stock one. Replaced the broken hood prop latch.

Just need to replace the one side of sound deadening that mice got into. Bastards.

 

Super clean car! Nice find!

 

After the third attempt at finding a stock stereo replacement I located one that works well. The unit I had was shot and was unable to find anyone to attempt to repair it.

Had a minor crack in the surround, I knew it was coming. New oem replacement is on the way, will probably swap out the faded ash tray for new as well

 

Could not find oem replacement shocks or springs but was happy to find a NOS set of blues on here with racing beat springs. New oem spring seats and rubber thanks to Mazdatrix, new bellows and kyb strut mounts from rock auto.

 

Nice find! Congrats on finding a clean, unmolested one.
What is it about RX-7 battery box lids? I see so many sub-40K mile FDs that look absolutely perfect, but are missing that lid.

 

was just talking about that the other day.. right now on eBay there is a 9k miles gxl mint and stock MISSING the lid. A really clean gxl on BAT now.. missing as well. It’s bizarre.

 

Picked up a really cheap set of vert wheels on eBay, and a set of center caps from a member on here. Going to clean them up, polish the lip and I MIGHT paint the mesh Arctic silver.

Started cleaning off the horrid paint. Wheels have no rash at all. The stock wheels are solid but the clear needs to be refinished. I plan on having them refinished and the vert wheels will be a good cheap option in the meantime.

 

Making progress, need to polish the Lip and then decide on a color. Will either go body-color or a bronze. Any input? I was able to find an example of gold center on arctic silver and didn’t care for it.

 

hey man.

glad o see you started a build thread. 800 miles with all that crap sitting on top of the air filter ... that's nuts. the gods have definitely shown you favor.

if these are the choices, i say body color.

 

I'd go for body color personally. Do you still have the radio? I'd be interested in taking a look at it

 

If you're looking for wheels at some point, I have 17in BBS RS 3 piece for sale. Lemme know

 

As I said in your into thread, what an incredible car!! You're absolutely doing all of the right things and the car is definitely in great hands! Did the original owner provide any purchase paperwork, window sticker or receipts when you picked the car up?

 

This thing is amazing! So few arctic silver t2s out there, thank you forceaving this one!

 

Really, my heart sank when I saw it... soooo lucky.

Still have it, going to mess with it a bit myself, can easily swap out parts and see what the weak link is when I get the time.

I'll keep that in mind.

Thank you! The owner was adamant about it going to an enthusiast, it was honestly a straight up bargain and he held if for me until I was able to fly out and pick it up. Unfortunately the window sticker is missing, he is pretty sure what records and the sticker are in a box somewhere but he had moved a bit and wasn't sure. I just have the owners manual with the card from where the car was purchased, his dad was a military work on your car yourself kinda guy so probably not much anyways outside of that.


Thanks man, much appreciated

 

New goodies from Mazdatrix.

The little crack around the radio bothered me and didn’t want everything to look out of place. So new OEM surround, lighter, ash tray, shift surround, and shift boot. Honestly wasn’t THAT expensive so figured it was worth it on this car.

Previous owner let me keep his plates. His dad is now passed away and felt like that should stick with the car.

I still stare at it all the times, it’s amazing how many compliments I get, almost daily in traffic. I love downtown Chicago off Michigan ave so it really does stand out.

 

Somehow my girlfriend doesn’t mind having a living room full of rx-7 parts and 2/3rds of a Vincent motorcycle sitting there.

 

The most minor of updates but important to me. When I bought my first 88 turbo 2 back in 2003 for 1500 bucks it came with that gold TURBO license plate frame, managed to keep it all these years and finally popped it on. Troubleshooting the stereo, one of my rear speaker amps is broken so have a replacement unit on the way, drivers front speaker is a bit touchy so have to check out the connection a bit more and then also purchased a working antenna motor to swap out.

 

Very cool plate frame!! I'm not allowed to keep car parts in the house anymore haha. I'm restoring my Porsche and all of the parts that have been coming for it are in the garage with the car. My wife got tired of tripping over the boxes and the kids were getting into them.

The car does look fantastic and I'm amazed at how clean it is.. you just don't see them like that much anymore.

 

The crappy part about Chicago is I pay 550 per month for 2 parking spots and they both do not allow to store or work on anything, drives me nuts.

we’re looking at moving to Arizona and She’s already laying down some ground rules with it, I’ll never complain, ha.

 

3 of 4 lips polished, spent way too much time doing that by hand but happy with how they’ve turned out so far.

 

Silver is a good color on that car. Very nice.

 

More boring wheel updates


Decided to keep the polished look instead of painting. I may be an idiot for doing it all by hand but I really like how they’ve turned out.