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After selling my previous time attack FC 4 years ago, I decided to take some time away from the track. That never really happened as I was fortunate enough to be thrown the keys to an FD RX7 and a Subaru Spec C STi to get my fix. I absolutely appreiated it so much, but I'm sure you all know that being behind the wheel of someone else's pride & joy can make you a bit nervous if anything was to go wrong.
The obvious solution was to get myself another car. The less sensible part of that solution was that I was hell-bent on it being a convertible, and I somehow picked one that doesn't even have an engine in it. I guess this is the start of a long and stressful journey.
For a bit of an introdution:
I live in New Zealand, and compete in a time attack series. Occasional drag days or autocross if friends are going along and I want to be social, but time attack is what I enjoy most and I also help out with coordinating and organising things at the track. I'm not particularly mechanical, so there will be some steep learning curves ahead.
The car is a black 1989 FC, it's been more than 6 years since it was last driven on public roads. I don't know a lot about it's history and will no doubt be discovering bits and pieces as I go along.
I'll be posting videos as I go, so here is the first one:
I bought the car after hearing of it through the grapevine. I asked if it was manual (yes) and if it still had a live road registration (yes) - so I put money in the account and organised to drive 8+ hours to pick it up. In hindsight I should have asked a lot more questions!
and once I got some daylight hours to have a good look over the car I was pretty happy with the state of the panels, and interior (still deciding if the interior stays till I get the car road legal or if I start ripping it out soon - I feel like there is benefit to having the car looking very standard when it gets inspected for road use, but also that while I'm still working out what to do about the engine, this is dead time that I should be doing something with and maybe that's a good thing to spend time on now?). The car is, I think, a good starting point - I can work with this as a rolling body.
Looking over the internals has been really depressing. I was under the impression that the car was complete (but in parts) and could just be put back together - obviously I was expecting some wear items and seals to have to be replaced... then the seller said actually the front plate is no good. Oh well, not to matter, it's one part, I can work with that.
You can see here that it's actually the entire front of the engine that needs replacing, and the rest of it either needs work or to be replaced as well (especially in terms of keeping things matched to each other).
Parts in NZ are getting quite hard to find - there are still a lot of rotaries and rotary engines around... but actual second hand parts? Most stuff is just toast. New FD parts can still be had from Mazda - but that's quite an expensive option.
I'm at the point now of needing to sit down and look at my options:
1. buy a running second hand engine and cross my fingers that it lasts a season and has usable bits when we need to tear it down and rebuild.
2. buy a new FD engine ($$) and then also have the hassle and time involved in mating that to the FC.
3. Look overseas for an FC engine.
4. Keep leaning on people to see if I can find anyone who is willing to sell parts at a semi reasonable price.
I didn't expect to hit this much of a roadblock this soon. Which I guess was a bit silly of me - projects usually go this way!
Yesterday it was sunny so the car got dragged out of the garage for a waterblast and to fit up the spare front guard... which didn't fit, also meaning my spare/old bumper won't fit. So the existing matte black guard and bumper are off to the paint shop today to see if they can be colour matched to the car.
In better news, chucked a battery in and confirmed the roof works!
To me the most inexpensive way is to order used parts from the US, but a new engine would last a long time i guess. Is it not possible to buy new s4/s5 parts from mazda? i think i saw new side housings for sale in rhdjapan.. if they have those maybe mazda also has some?
Mazdatrix shows new side plates are still available. They are just reselling factory Mazda plates so maybe give a Mazda Dealer a try. I imagine they are expensive.
Thanks! That's a super price.
Ive got an offer on a fresh engine here so I'll see how that goes but thankyou for the links, it's great to know new parts are still available even if it means looking offshore
I don't know about shipping to NZ, but I still need to try and rebox/lighten a shipment of interior parts to someone in Aus. Aus is the most expensive to ship to in the world, even if not from the US, it's just what it is. Like twice over on the shipping to what I want for the parts. The guy I'm dealing with says Japan isn't really any cheaper. I don't know, find out and let us all know. Best of luck to you and I will be following the thread.
I edited to say I really don't know if they are new, kinda assuming. Maybe they're just refurbished? You should contact them if interested.
I've found an engine! Plan is to pick it up tomorrow night. It's an FC engine, and is only 2 or 3 hours drive from where I live. It is above my initial budget (from when the intention was to rebuild with existing parts, before finding out they were trash) but it will mean one very big item on the list is ticked off!
The latest video is extremely boring, and more a record for me to look back on - it's just me babbling on about my goals for the project and the order I want to get things done. I'm sure I'll re-watch it in 6 months and will have done something completely different, but that's part of the fun. For the moment the idea is to:
-get the car running
-make it driveable and a bit more tidy
-sort the rollcage / seats / harnesses
-do a whole lot of paperwork to get it road legal
Picked up the engine on Friday night and had a look at it on Saturday - it actually looks very tidy. There is still a fair bit of work to be done putting it all together (as it was just the block). I'd been convinced to go NA to get the build done faster, but looking at what we've got I've been assured I can go turbo and it's not going to take any more time - which makes me happy. Only going with the stock series 5 turbo, so won't be big power, but it still makes a difference (and almost all of the tracks I race at favour a bit of power). Buying this engine has wiped out my entire budget, as it just wasn't expected / factored in at all. I'm not sure what that means for the other things I want to get done, for the moment I'll just focus on the small purchases that need to happen to get it ready for tuning (gaskets, fabrication, radiator - bits and pieces but they do all add up).
No real progress this week - at least nothing on the engine. But I did get the front guard and the bumper back from the paint shop and got them onto the car, as well as fitting up my gold wheels. The car looks so high, like a tractor - but I need to get the engine sorted first, so I'm trying to put it out of my mind and stick to the plan! It feels so good to have it looking a bit more tidy and to drag it out of the garage so I can have a proper perve at it with the roof down.
I can't wait to get it into my garage - the one it's in now is our spare garage and it's not that well lit and doesn't have much room to move around. I'm trying very hard to vacate the corolla from my garage so I can just fiddle away at little things on the car at night with some good lighting - I want to check if the exhausts I bought will fit without scraping and just little tasks like that.
I can confirm Mazdatrix ship parts to NZ as i just ordered a bunch of suspension parts for my FC.
I'll be following this build with interest as im also from your neck of the woods, and just purchased a 1990 Black FC about 1 month ago from New Plymouth.
Awesome - I look forward to seeing some pics of your new purchase!
They're 17" simmons... they do look bigger, it's that massive wheel gap. I need to sort that out - while I'm not a "stance" person, I also have no love for rolling around in something that looks like it's more suited to the back of a farm - I have a proper 4x4 for that.
Yeah the reason I asked about those Simmons wheels is that I just bought a brand new set in 18s painted gunmetal grey all round for my fc. There's no accounting for good taste right?? They're arriving in 2 weeks can't wait! Here's a quick pic of my car I don't want to hijack your thread so I will start my own build thread soon
its got rebuilt 13b running Garrett turbo, link computer 244kw at 12psi
nice man!
I love my simmons way too much - every time I do anything with them I remember that they're heavy as sin too. But I've tried before to buy track wheels and hated using them because seeing the simmons on my car makes me happy. I kept them when I sold my old FC, and I used to run them on the FD for a while. It's pretty much any rx7 I have, these wheels immediately go on haha.
244kw is alright - who did your tune? My Link Storm arrived last week so I gotta start thinking about who is gonna be tuning for me. I will be going for a very conservative tune, it's not gonna be a fast car - I've done my dash with that. This one is just for fun.
Darryl @ Efi & Turbo in Palmerston North installed the Link and did the tune.
I would highly recommend him he knows the FC's inside out, and is an extremely professional great guy all round, with fair pricing! I also prefer to opt for a conservative tune to preserve the motor for as long as possible, and to be honest 250kw in a fresh rebuild in an RX7 is ******* savage enough as it is!
I also love the Simmons wheels too, i got rid of the chrome lip on mine as im not a fan of the chrome on black FC's.
Damnit if i had of seen this thread one week sooner you could have had my spare KTS coilovers for cheap for your vert. Ended up selling them to a guy in the Bay for 300!!
I will for sure keep you in mind for any parts off the car in the future
Have got some new bits for the car recently:
-gillies (because noise)
-water pump and some gaskets (exceedingly boring)
-ecu (yesssssss)
-mufflers (second hand buy through facebook)
-injectors (another second hand buy - through a mate)
haven't actually done anything with them yet - just starting to build a stash of bits and bobs that I will need.
Next on the list is radiator and battery I think. I've been looking at PWR radiators - it's $1100 nz dollars (about 800 'merican bucks) for a dual pass, plus shipping from aussie to get it here. I also want to look into the Koyo radiators as it seems a lot of people run them on FCs.
Progress seems to be at about the same speed as continental drift at the moment. Blanked off the emissions, bought a few hose fittings... really that's about it. Sort of depressing but I am actually still on target - just feels like nothing exciting is happening.
I did end up ordering a radiator though! I went with the Koyo N-flo as it seemed to have really good reviews on this site. It also came in at about $500 less than the comparable PWR radiator - and while I'm sure the PWR is better, I'm not running a crazy engine - and that little extra money saved will mean that I can buy a battery and a few other small items shortly.
I talked to my wiring guy, and he's got me penciled in for November 12th, possibly November 6th if he can clear a little extra work in the next few weeks. So that is awesome. Guess I should start to make some proper decisions on tuning...
In the meantime, here is a short boring video of no progress on the car haha - but there is a pretty sunset near the start, so I guess that's something:
Nothing new with the engine - but the second hand headlights I bought turned up, so I could replace the passenger one (it had the incorrect bulb and a bunch of missing plastic/trim). Unfortunately they're gunmetal rather than black, but it's not actually that noticeable so I might just leave it, or possibly vinyl over it?
and I got my entry in and processed for the time attack series I'm intending to do - so let's hope the build actually gets done in time... it's about 46 days till the first round, 45 if you take into account the day of towing to get there... stress stress stress haha, but I did get my garage spot back, which is a much nicer / warmer / better lit garage than the one the car has been in. Happy times.
We've been super busy lately and just making zero progress on the car - which was really getting me down. So over the weekend I finally managed to get the old fuelpump out and replaced with a new one. It's such a tiny thing, but some progress feels good after weeks of nothing. Need to make a move on the engine itself - it didn't come with the clutch to flywheel bolts and they seem to be an odd thread - calling Mazda today to see if they have any in stock.
But the big news was the 14 hour day spent in the workshop on Saturday. Got so much done, including finally getting the engine dropped in. Heaps to do yet, of course, but this feels really good. I'm currently 18 days from my first event - no idea if I'm going to make it but keeping on keeping on! Got to try
Have been a bit let down by the wiring guy - was booked in for today - and now he thinks he won't look at it till the 14th. Am trying to not think about the delays and instead keep plugging away on little bits that don't require the car running (like sorting some new brakes as the discs are really rusted).
09-03-17, 06:23 PM
89 vert build for street & track -NZ (videos)
