'89 Vert Daily Driver
 

Hi everyone, Adam from the UK here, been on here a little while lurking mostly but thought I'd start a thread about my 7. Its mostly copied over from another forum I'm on

Bought the car in December as I needed a new daily driver, I'd previously had a BMW E38 750i which I'd sold and a Saab 9-3 Aero which was falling apart!

I'd been looking at RX8s but saw this 7 come up, took a train ride to look at it, was instantly sold and drove it back

First fill

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The car was in good nick, had been a summer car for a guy and kept under a cover the rest of the time. It had an engine rebuild around 100k miles and was only on 113k when I bought it so was pretty happy with that!

Its all mostly stock, there was an aftermarket steering wheel and gearknob which I changed and someone had painted the rear badges red which I didn't like.

The car itself is an original UK spec TurboII convertible, leather seats, no AC, no front fogs but with cruise control. The electric roof operation wasn't working and is still on the list of things to fix!


Shot at a local meet next to an FD

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First job was a full service including all the aux belts

Then fitted the touch screen head unit from my Saab

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Fitted a new clutch master, slave and braided hose

also gave under the seats a good clean



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Looks pretty smart in there

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Painted the boot badges black

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(The manky old numberplates got replaced with new ones)

Got a windscreen crack (still due to be replaced)

Then I picked up a second hand Racing Beat exhaust

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Took the car for a drive round Wales with some mates

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Meanwhile I got to cleaning up the RB exhaust

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Broken stud in the pre silencer got replaced

So thats just waiting on me cleaning up the Y pipe then it will be ready to fit! Also need to get some new exhaust hangers and a turbo outlet gasket, both of which are annoyingly expensive here !

Recently I replaced the cheapy steering wheel with a MOMO


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Also my current stock exhaust has been giving me signs that its days are numbered..

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So I've got a fuel cut defender to allow me to run the RB exhaust for the time being. Going forwards I'd like to get some form of fuel control to be able to run the potential extra boost safely, I've been looking at the rtek chips


For the meantime at least, I've got some AEM gauges to help me keep an eye on whats going on under the bonnet

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They'll be going in a single DIN gauge holder where the head unit currently is. The touch screen will have to go and be replaced by whatever single DIN radio I have kicking about

And thats it just about up to date!

I'm eyeing up a couple more mods to do, but ultimately my plans for this car are lightly tuned daily driver. It currently shares daily duties with my BMW E34 520i Touring, but as thats been having rust repaired over the past few weeks, its been all RX7 and its been a perfectly fine daily driver

Any comments welcome, I may have to ask some questions about roof fixes and how to run the RB exhaust/more boost safely, despite feeling like I've read every thread on the subject!

Nice vert there brotha . Pretty cool seeing people outside the states building there rides . Your taillights make me want to paint my passenger reverse light red to mimic the euro tails ( have s5 vert tails on s4 coupe ) as for the exhaust I myself just got a full t2 racing beat exhaust system new still in the wrapping in trade for getting my friends vert running ( came with the vert but had 3" dual n1's ready ) . The exhaust is so nice and quieter then my 3" straight piping single . I'm running a 6 port turbo with haltech so kinda hard to tell you what to do since I ditch the stock ecu awhile back . I can tell you that the rtek is a nice deal . I had 1.8 for my s4 t2 ecu and had no complaints. Just upgraded the turbo ( holset hx52 ) so out grew the rtek . Keep up the work brotha

Cheers! Theres a few FC's being modded in the UK but they're a lot rarer here, getting parts can be a bit of a pain..

I didn't even realise the taillights were different on the US models until I looked around here haha, did you not get rear foglights at all over there then?

Ah sweet, I think once I've sorted out getting the exhaust fitted I'll look into the rtek a bit more, I just need to get another bung welded into my exhaust for my wideband gauge and it should be good to go!

Been buying some more stuff for the Vert as I found a Japanese import car being broken for parts here

Got some coilovers

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Fronts are Mazdaspeed dampers with Buddy Club springs and camber adjustable top mounts, rears are Ohlins dampers with generic springs as far as I can see.

Also got this front lip which I think was on JDM versions, not sure if it was available in the US as an option as well?

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It needed a bit of work..

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But I've already got on with that, firstly gluing up the crack then fibreglassing across it to add some strength. It'll get fitted in place of the standard front rubbing strip sometime this week

Also got some original RX7 mats which I gave a quick clean up

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Stuff like this is nigh on impossible to find here and the pattern copy mats I had in the car were pretty nasty, the OEM mats feel very quality

I've also got a little gauge holder for the gauges so they should be able to go in soon as well :)

Time to update this a bit, I got on with glueing and fibreglassing the lip where it had broken

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Also got a single DIN holder for the gauges

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The outer holes needed elongating a bit to be able to fit all the gauges in, but they're ready to go in the car soon

Meantime, I got the lip fitted up

Before

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During

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After

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Then I made a start on changing the rear struts over

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I'm going to have get a bit inventive over the bottom mount though as the crush tube on the new struts isn't as long as the old ones, but I've got a plan so hopefully that'll get sorted tomorrow

Got a bit more work done over the weekend, finished off fitting the coilovers

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Eventually it'll just need some lower offset, larger diameter wheels to complete the look, I need to save for a bit though so I'll just keep my eye out and see what cool wheels come up for cheap

While I had the back of the interior apart to get to the top of the rear struts, I had a look at the non-functioning roof motors

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I first determined that both the motors were turning, then I undid the screws which were holding the roof in manual mode. Sure enough the roof did retract electrically, but it wouldn't close. No motor sound, no buzzer, nothing. So my next job is to poke around with the multimeter to see what power I'm getting at the motors and go from there


I then tried out an initial fitting of my gauges and new head unit

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I still need to do a bit of trimming to make the gauges fit, but it looks like it will all fit nicely all being well. Need to sort the wiring out as well!

I also got to the bottom of why the car has two aerial wires behind the dash, someone had run a second aerial in the car at some point, presumably because the motor on the original had packed up. So I took the extra one out, and will get the original aerial motor working

Solved the problem with the roof, the microswitch on the left hand motor needed replacing

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Only cost me a couple of quid and now the roof goes up and down as it should, so that was a great value for money fix :D

Took it for a little drive to celebrate and took some pics

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Its got its MOT roadworthiness test this weekend, which I'm a little worried about as there is a little sill rust, but any issues that come up will get sorted.

After that I've got a nice little list of jobs to sort: the gauges need wiring in, radio wiring needs fixing, old non working alarm can go, new wheels, and the racing beat exhaust needs to get fitted along with FCD and air pump delete

Bit of an overdue update! The Vert went in for its MOT test and passed with only a couple of advisory issues to worry about, which I'll get round to sorting over the coming months

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After that I got on with painting up some of the rusty bits of my RB RevII exhaust ready for when I finally get round to fitting it

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I do still need to get a second bung welded in for the wideband sensor though..

Recently I've been getting into wiring and sorting some of the bodge jobs that have appeared on the car over the past 25 years or so. One of the main things is its got an aftermarket alarm/immobiliser which has been bypassed as it no longer works, so I've started the painstaking process of carefully removing the wires and restoring the OEM wires where they've been cut.

The other thing that had been hacked about was the stereo wiring, wires for the original head unit plugs had been cut and poorly crimped to bullet connectors for an ISO harness, the original plugs were still in there and I was able to remove the pins and solder the wires back where they should be

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I then used a 3 quid adapter harness to make it fit my head unit. Doing this also brought the electric aerial back to life!

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I bought some BBS RG ii's to go on once I've decided on a colour

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And I also removed a random second lighter socket which a previous owner had bodged into the wiring for the factory socket

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And last but not least, I got my AEM gauges wired up. Just need to run the pressure sensor for the boost gauge and fit the wideband once the exhaust is on

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Woah been a while since I updated this!

So after my last update, I got into quite a bit of a wiring job on the car which saw me remove an old alarm system which was no longer functioning

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I took it to a show or two over summer

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Went for a drive with my mate in the blue BMW and got some cool shots as well

Then the latest job has been to remove the exhaust which is pretty rotten after 27 odd years of service

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Most of the exhaust is off, the only bit I'm currently stuck on is the bottom of the 3 turbo to downpipe nuts, access is very poor!

I've also been doing some other work to the car as supporting mods for the turbo back exhaust

I've fitted a banzai racing double alternator pulley and belts, fitted silicone rad hoses, removed the air pump, ACV and associated solenoids, removed the AWS solenoid as well. I've also fitted 750cc secondary injectors, have an Aeromotive stealth pump ready to go on and have an Rtek 1.7 chip to solder into the ECU

So with all that lot it should be back on the road and sounding good!

Then I'll probably look into some sort of boost control to replace the factory Boost controller

I've also got a brake job to do as the discs are pretty grotty and beyond saving

Aaand I've got the BBS wheels which I'm part way through refurbing so plenty to keep me busy!

Been a long while since I kept this updated but I have made some progress on the Vert!

I moved house recently but had to get the car running before I could move so I fitted the Rtek 1.7 chip

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Fitted the Aeromotive Stealth pump

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And got the exhaust fitted up to the car

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Now it does just about run and I managed to limp it over to the new house which wasn't far thankfully, but there are a couple of issues..

Firstly it idles around 2.5k rpm, which I think is down to a big air leak from me throwing the intake stuff together in a rush, so I'll go back and check everything for leaks

The other thing I've noticed is that with the key turned to ignition, I can hear a lot of clicking from the front end of the car, I'm guessing there must be some sort of fuel pump relay under the bonnet? I'll have to get a video of it as I'm not sure its meant to be making that sound lol

The car has been sat for a few weeks now as I've not been able to drive it, and its been getting damp inside.. So I'm taking some of the interior out and trying to dehumidify it as best I can!