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Little late on making a build thread but here we go(Like a year late..). first a little background about myself, I'm a 20 year old college student who's background is mostly in BMWs. Before this I've had zero rotary experience but I've built plenty of piston engines during my time as a fleet service tech. I bought the car off of my friend a year ago, who purchased it, tore it apart, machined the motor and never put it back together. The irons were lapped, street ported and the housings refinished. The car itself was repainted a black with a TON of blue flakes in it. It had roughly 140k with original motor, and a later S5 turbo. The car also came with a safc and avcr boost controller.
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The interior isn't the best but hey at least the seats are comfy. Eventually I 3D printed new vents for the corners and made a plate to cover the radio and hold the safc and avcr.
Bought an Akins rebuild kit with Mazda OEM seals and the Akins rebuild DVD to walk myself through it. After a few hours and lots and lots of Vaseline I had myself a short block.
After that I made some OMP hardlines to replace the old worn plastic ones. The plan was always to premix, so the OMP linkage remains disconnected. My thought process is the OMP will give it the oil it needs during decel, plus the hardlines were fun to make.
Spot my wonderful strap job... yeah not my best work. Anyways long story short, I dropped the motor in, blew the turbo on a roadtrip few months later, rebuilt the turbo and that brings us to today.
After driving around with the stock ECU, fighting little problems like A/C idle, annoying safc tunning, and CRUSTY wiring I decided to pony up and buy an Haltech elite 750 with premium flying lead and connectors. Btw LMS efi is the best to get all your rx7 connectors! Since the haltech needs a full range TPS and the S4 doesn't have one I tried to 3D print a new TPS cam. Somebody made this cam profile on here but I cant remember who, sorry!
I did a real quick and dirty print to see if this idea worked. Shockingly it did work, I was concerned about the strength of the part but with enough infill (80%+) it holds up pretty good. The end plan was to CNC it out of aluminum, but my TB is pretty crusty and fc TPS can be finicky so I decided to go a different route. Though if anybody wants the STL to print themselves to give it a test, send me a pm. The TPS has to be rotated up so you can only fit one bolt in, but it holds up pretty well.
After shopping around on the forums I got an fd TB with tps and upper for a hella good deal! Always reply to dead threads in the for sale section! I also got a god speed aluminium radiator and the injectors cleaned and serviced. Now I've got to come up with a intake elbow that fits around the fc power streering and a front mount setup. More posts coming this weekend!
Hey howdy it's been awhile, I've got allot to catch up on. So a couple plans have changed since my last post. The godspeed radiator I got awhile ago didn't really hold up. So I bought a koyo instead! (also all of these pictures were taken at wayyy different times)
I decided to be one of the big kids and order a Haltech Elite 750 from LMS efi. I immediately noticed the huge gap around the base of the ECU. Thankfully Chris at LMS funneled me through the right channels at Haltech to get it taken care of.
I've also cobbled together my ebay piping kit and got a greddy BOV. Surprisingly I didn't mess up on making the harness, all the sensors read and work just fine. I got a stock location air temp and coolant temp for my fd upper and fc waterneck. I'm also running D585 LS coils, I've heard some scary stuff with them auto discharging. If anybody has any suggestions on the D585 coils I'd love to hear it. I know it has something to do with the dwell timing....Maybe I should just upgrade to ign1a coils.
Picked up this pretty sweet tiny battery! I had to relocate the battery because of the intercooler piping. Most people move it to one of the two bins, I really really like my bins. So I stuffed my battery in the spare tire well.
Right now I'm waiting on the dyno at my local shop to be installed, so I can start tunning this thing. I've also been considering upgrading to the FFE trigger kit, though I might save my money for something else. I'll update here again.....eventually
Hey howdy it's been awhile, I've got allot to catch up on. So a couple plans have changed since my last post. The godspeed radiator I got awhile ago didn't really hold up. So I bought a koyo instead! (also all of these pictures were taken at wayyy different times)
I decided to be one of the big kids and order a Haltech Elite 750 from LMS efi. I immediately noticed the huge gap around the base of the ECU. Thankfully Chris at LMS funneled me through the right channels at Haltech to get it taken care of.
I've also cobbled together my ebay piping kit and got a greddy BOV. Surprisingly I didn't mess up on making the harness, all the sensors read and work just fine. I got a stock location air temp and coolant temp for my fd upper and fc waterneck. I'm also running D585 LS coils, I've heard some scary stuff with them auto discharging. If anybody has any suggestions on the D585 coils I'd love to hear it. I know it has something to do with the dwell timing....Maybe I should just upgrade to ign1a coils.
Picked up this pretty sweet tiny battery! I had to relocate the battery because of the intercooler piping. Most people move it to one of the two bins, I really really like my bins. So I stuffed my battery in the spare tire well.
Right now I'm waiting on the dyno at my local shop to be installed, so I can start tunning this thing. I've also been considering upgrading to the FFE trigger kit, though I might save my money for something else. I'll update here again.....eventually
I can relate too much with your thread, I just turned 20, also another broke college kid that isn't great with money whatsoever. Love the thread, to speak on the coils, I'd only run Stock Ignition Coils or IGN-1As, I just wired up a Link ECU in my FC and the most ideal option was to actually modify my trailing coils to be on a dual igniter setup and no modifications are required for the leading coils.
Welllp I decided to get the igna1 coils!
Picked up 4 from summit racing along with some pigtails. The pigtails were a bit pricey but it made the harness a breeze. I also accidentally ordered a male coil harness connector, but I just reused the female from the d585 coils. A buddy from my local rotary club gifted me these lightly used sake bomb plug wires! Always get in touch with your local rotary buddies! Using some all thread and some random angle alluminum and I fabbed up a mount.
Remember always paint your nasty fabs... It'll help hide those sawzall cuts.
After talking to some people I decided my old setup was going to be a bit inadequate. I also hated how far forward I mounted the old cooler.
I spent an afternoon playing arts and crafts making cardboard intercoolers. After messing with a few different sizes and trying to copy others I came to this intercooler size.
The mishimoto g line cooler seems to fit quite nicely between the rails while still seeming to give the radiator enough air. This also means I gotta junk all my old piping.... That's probably for the best since my welds were junk. I'm kinda copying the cxracing kit design, least for the hot side piping.
The Intercooler does completely restrict airflow to the oil cooler, which is concerning. I'm definitely going to get an oil temp sensor for my haltech, but I've got an emergency oil cooling solution. Awhile ago I had a goofy project to turbo my scout 800, eventually that project fell apart. But from that project I bought two rx8 oil coolers. I plan to mount one of these coolers under the driver headlight to assist the fc oil cooler.
I'm not sure if I'll need to run the extra cooler, but if I do I'll need to get an external oil thermostat. I'll also have to remove and plug the thermostats in the oil cooler.
While waiting on my Intercooler I did the start of some duct work. Though I can't make the undertray until I get the intercooler. I decided to make my own radiator cooling panel. After making my cardboard template I went to go find some metal in the garage.... No metal... And I really want to make it that night....
So I made it out of polycarb! It feels sturdy enough to hold up to regular use! I'm not in love with how it looks but maybe some cut vac tube around the edge might help. Plus I'll get to see my pretty intercooler! I've also got some small sheet alluminum to help keep air flowing out the oil cooler.When testing one day I noticed fuel pressure dropped and my car made a nice HISSSSSS. Turns out my fuel return rusted straight through. Thankfully all of my brake lines are mint, my fuel lines are toast. Again from my best friend summit racing I ordered some parts to replace my lines. Decided to use aluminum 5/16 line, compression fittings and barb fittings. That way when I upgrade to AN in the engine bay it'll be an easy change over.
Really have been trying to take it slow with the car recently. I did get some rad goodies after my last update. FFE Trigger wheel, Banzai 2kw starter, Banzai oil cooler lines, and some front suspension bits. First of these was the FFE trigger wheel, I had some troubles installing it. My factory flying lead from Haltech was mis-pinned with trigger + and home +. FFE support is GREAT! FFE even sent me out a new sensor before susing out the harness. From Banzai I got the 2kw starter and oil cooler lines. The 2kw starter is an absolute dream and makes it sound cool while cranking. I went with Banzai for the oil cooler lines since theirs came pre assembled and I didn't want to destroy $250 in AN fittings. I also found this cool flexable intake piping from Viper performance in the UK.
I also reworked all of my aluminum ducting both on top and underneath. The intercooler hangs a little lower than I would like but I don't plan on lowering the car anytime soon. You can also see my new pilot sport 4 tires, I have the older pilot sport a/3s + on the rear. 235 rear and 215 front.
I also refreshed the front suspension some with new ball joints and tie rod ends. Still need to get a real alignment but I was pretty proud of my driveway alignment.
I still need to figure out my headlight issue and hopefully I'll be getting it tuned after that. Future plans for this car is poly bushings, brakes, coilovers or shocks and springs, and rear subframe refresh. I'm on the fence about electric power steering, but I'll be needing to replace my alternator soon anyways.
09-19-19, 10:32 AM
