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Just starting a working log on my latest FC that I picked up as my new daily driver. The car is near 100% stock and i plan on keeping it that way, or at least very close to it. I have my 88 6-port turbo for a project car, so this one will be solely for a nice daily driver.
Here's the lowdown on the car:
Purchased from the original owner(Non-smoker who took fantastic care of his car)
1989 GTU Harbor Blue Metallic
minus some very light sun-fading, near perfect blue interior
5-speed
143K miles
a couple minor accidents over it's life that were very well repaired.
Never driven in winter, always kept covered, no rot, just a few bubbles of rust around the 3rd brake light. the sunroof panel is pretty bubbled, but the car came with a replacement.
Sitting the past 3 years
The only non-stock parts are RTEK 1.0, tokiko blue shocks with stock springs and speakers.
The original owner got tired of replacing omp's and ecu's partway through it's life and ended up switching to premix, the rtek and unplugging the omp.
It does need a little bit of work before hitting the road
seized and leaking rear caliper
leaky master cylinder
possible bad brake booster
exhaust gaskets
tires
Thermowax coolant leak
Also:
the sunroof is non-functioning, but at least doesn't leak
The AC doesnt blow, but hasnt been charged since new
The previous owner was having some issues with cold starts and spec'd out the thermowax assembly, but failed to tighten it adequately we noticed it leaking out the side when i bought the car and i figured no big deal. Now it would appear it has been forcing coolant into the throttle-body around the secondary throttle plate rod for a long time now, presumably since he put it back on. This caused the coolant to destroy the rubber seal of the throttle-plate rod, and bind it up, as well as a good amount of corrosion/residue build-up within the throttle-body itself. I got everything cleaned/freed up, stole a seal out of a spare throttle-body I had and put it back together. It's still leaking a bit at the gasket but nothing a little rtv wont take care of. The car cold starts flawlessly now too.
Next ill be replacing the brake master cylinder/booster, converting to tii brakes all around, new spark plugs (NGK BUREQP of course), new NTK o2 sensor, K&N drop in air filter, oil/coolant/trans fluid change, replacing all of the exhaust gaskets except manifold to block and getting some new tires, probably on tii wheels since the 15" tire market is pretty poor.
Possible future plans for the car:
Revert back to the stock ecu and OMP (continuing premixing)
Add tii hood, sideskirts, front lip and shine rear bumper corners
Toss on some nice wheels
Convert to power windows (If i can find some nice blue s5 power door panels)
Nice lil find . My turbo 6 port eats gas like crazy . Be nice to have another Rex to have a nice na build for the street . My dd now when not driving my 7 is my 94 5.0 swapped ranger which eats tires like crazy lol
Yeah the 6port turbo gets a solid 18 mpg, my truck gets 19 and my accord gets 29. I'm Expecting around 24 from this car as I've seen that with other NA's.. It'll be worth losing 5 mpgs to daily an FC
Managed to sneak in a little work on the car tonight.
I pulled the downpipe, precat and main cat off the car, 3 of 4 gaskets were nearly nonexistent. It was a nice change working on this car, no rust in my eyes, didnt break any bolts, underbody isn't covered in oil.. I could get used to this! Just waiting on my new gaskets to come in to put it back together.
Also got the new o2 sensor in, that was not so easy, took 3 feet of leverage to break it free, no issues after that at least.
Pulled the throttle body back off and slapped some silicone on the thermowax gasket, hopefully it holds this time around.
Replaced and tensioned belts
And an oil change!
Definitely playing catch up on maintenance, but it will be well worth it!
Today:
Got the exhaust back together, here's to hoping the new gaskets last atleast long enough to pass inspection!
Installed the new brake booster and master cylinder. Old booster was actually like 1/4 full of brake fluid. I'm surprised the brakes were working at all.
And got the the AC working. Looks like so far all it needed was a recharge.
Ran out of daylight and tomorrow is rain so I won't have the new brakes on until next weekend. Should be 100% ready for the road then though!
I've been too busy with school to touch the car, but with the semester finally over I got a little more done.
I rebuilt the bad rear brake caliper, bled the system and took the car for it's first real test drive. It runs and drives great! However, now it seems I have a frozen front caliper and my new booster isn't working, it's possible i put the check valve in backwards. tii brakes will be going on all around soon anyways.
I had forgotten how quiet a stock non-turbo is! kind of sounds like a vacuum cleaner!
Got the stock brakes all sorted out, the booster I put in was junk, that's what I get for replacing it with a used one.
Did about an hour of driving around home, everything went good, so I put the car though its paces on a 350 miles drive though the mountains, a lot of which was near a 100 mph pace. The old girl didn't skip a beat and averaged 20 mpg, not bad considering.
The car runs perfect, I put a couple thousand miles on her already.
I'm finally getting around to fixing the sunroof assembly, one of the the guide cables was corroded solid in it's sheath, should be back together this weekend.
got a new brake booster in and the brakes work flawless
installed some aftermarket headlight housings and 6k HID's. Stock lighting is simply inadequate.
soon ill be installing pineapple racing 6-port sleeves and a full exhaust (Racing beat header into a Racing beat TII presilencer and catback)
tossing on some 10ae wheels for the time being until I find a reasonably priced set of wheels I like.
I'm leaning toward installing a set of tii sideskirts, tii hood, shine rear bumper corners, shine front lip and a tasteful aftermarket spoiler. I just have to convince myself to spend the money on the lip, spoiler and paint.
You may, of course, do as you wish with your car, but I am going to chime in here with some forward lighting advice...
I imagine you replaced the headlamps with housings that utilize an H4 style bulb base. I'll assume you have also used a drop -in HID kit into these housings.
These are bad ideas.
Unless you purchased some retrofitted projector housings, the beam optics that come from any of those aftermarket h6054 h4 housings will be loosely accurate in regards to adequate collection of the light and the projection of the beam pattern onto the road ahead of you. Then you take a drop -in xenon kit to them and you effectively push the optics completely out of focus, causing glare and poor distribution of light.
This happens because the focal point of the light emission is going to be in a different location compared to a standard h4 halogen. I really don't care what x or y company says about their HID kits, they're all the same and non of them are appropriate for on road use.
Sure, standing in front of the car at night it will look like you've got an insane amount of light, but little of it is effective and it translates into glare for other road users.
Some of this perceived 'extra light' is an eye trick.. The color temperature of the bulbs causes an involuntary squinting reaction of the pupils and the contrast will have you thinking you're doing well, but you aren't.
You have essentially three options..
One, you live with the dated beam optics of the traditional sealed beams
Two, you spend a lot of money on properly retrofitted projector housings
Three, you purchase Hella or cibie semi-sealed beam E-code headlamp housings and use good halogen blend bulbs.
Options two and three are the best ones..
Option three is the best bang for your buck and brings your forward lighting well into this century.
I personally have the Hella E-codes in my car with osram hyper halogen blend bulbs. My forward lighting at night is as crisp and clean as any modern day European car and produces less glare than DOT approved sealed beams. Glare is basically non existent.
We need to stop the trend of terrible and dangerous forward lighting 'mods'.
It's a comfortable, air conditioned bandwagon... So hop on!
You called it, good ol' ebay housings and aftermarket HID's! Unfortunately as shitty as i realized these housings are, I cant justify to myself the price of the sakebomb projector housings(only ones i know of). I also cant stand the garbage light output of factory. For the added brightness, I personally can handle the other people who might get glare from my headlights, especially considering how many factory vehicles blind me constantly due to how low these cars are.
I do have a set of higher quality h4 housings with high quality halogens in one of my other vehicles and the light output is good, but still not quite as good as the HID's.
I picked up a new pair of Alpine 10" subwoofers, amp and head unit for the car too. What a difference a nice stereo makes!
On another note I finally got my 6-port sleeves and full exhaust installed! The entire intake system looked to have never been apart, which was nice. Unfortunately one of the exhaust manifold studs was broken, well, it was apparently holding on by a hair of material and broke when i removed the manifold. so now I have the worst exhaust leak i have ever heard on an rx7. Time to either get really creative drilling and tapping the stud in the car, or pull the motor and do it right when i find the time, until then its daily driver status is revoked.
It broke slightly below the surface. I think I'm going to try to weld the inside of a nut to the stud. I really don't want to have to pull this engine..
Update! For those curious, the nut welded to the broken exhaust stud worked perfectly.
Car made it to Deals Gap and back from New Hampshire last year with no problems other than a bad fuel pump.
HIDs were swapped out for some high wattage halogens in Hella housings with uprated wiring and the result is great.
New wheels and tires. 17x8.5 +30, 225/45 all around.
New RB stainless header - old one rotted out.
Innovate lc2 wideband and Apexi AFC neo, both mounted in a 3D printed holder I designed, sold by Performance MRP.
Front and rear big brakes i designed, also sold by Performance MRP.
high amp Ebay alternator, working great, having belt slip issues now though.
Alpine deck, amp and 10" subwoofers - still need to.fab brackets to stop the box from sliding around the hatch.
Had a radiator hose fail so I replaced every coolant line on the motor.
Yesterday the coolant seals went at 152k. Today I pulled the motor.
Atkins master rebuild kit, exedy stage 1 clutch, competition motor/trans mounts, Banzai alternator bracket & dual alternator pulley all on the way.
Planning on a streetport and turbo exhaust sleeves to liven it up a little.
The fun begins! Gotta love such a nice stock car, but it sure Is a lot more work to pull apart. My grandfather giving me a hand The failed seal groove. My girlfriend helping with the tear down and parts cleaning.
Tii exhaust sleeves in! Used the Pineapple racing ep3 template, but didnt raise the closing. Beginning of assembly, small streetport i believe mazdatrix template and went a little larger. More assembly! Kept the clearances on the new side seals under .002" basically only enough clearance to not bind the corner seals. Streetported tii center iron, i used the pineapple racing bridgeport template here and skipped the bridge. More assembly Keg assembled! Ready to go back in Back in on the mounts!
Motor is back in and runs great. Just over 100 miles on it so far ! It is fairly louder between the tii exhaust sleeves and all of the porting. Keeping it under 4k until the 500 mile mark, then progressively higher to redline until 1000 miles. Want to make sure I dont break any side seals with the tight clearancing. This motor makes loads more power down low, I'm not sure if the freshen up is to thank or the porting, but either way great results!
I made new omp lines following a writeup on the forum, even though the omp is currently unused due to the rtek. No pictures of them, but it was surprisingly easy and only cost ~$40 of materials from MSC. I would like to go back to a stock ecu with functioning omp just for safety sake should someone forget to premix the car.
Replaced the clutch master and slave cylinders with new exedy units, both were leaking. Replaced the original cracked clutch line with a braided stainless one. Between this and the exedy stage 1 clutch the pedal feel is significantly heavier and more grabby. Surprisingly pretty comparable to my ACT HD sprung 6 puck in my turbo FC.
Also following a writeup on the forum for getting the AC changed over to r152a. I cleaned out the compressor and refilled it with pag oil, have a new dryer ready to go in, just need a couple cans of keyboard cleaner and to rent a vacuum pump and AC manifold from the local parts store. Will report back on how well it works!
I haven't run into any alternator belt slippage yet with the banzai tensioner and aluminum dual belt pulley with one belt, but I still plan to reroute the air pump belt up to the alternator off from the waterpump.
Will report back with compression numbers after the 1st 1000 miles. Maybe even a dyno run if I can sneak one in at Synaptic3 during all of this corona.virus craziness.
04-25-16, 03:28 AM
89' GTU daily driver working log
