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Hey guys, decided it was about time to make a build thread, anyways back in September I bought myself a 1991 Mazda RX7 NA with a JDM S5 T2 bolted in. Little did I realize when I bought this car, but I was way in over my head, it taught me a ton about these fine cars but at the same time it's been a bitch. It came with boxes filled with crap in the back.
so luckily for me, i took tons of pictures throughout my build. also there will be plenty of pictures posted throughout this build! anyways, back to the build. got the car home and placed it in the garage, started by taking off the hood and front fenders to help with access and working on the engine bay
alright, so the first thing i ended up doing on the car was re-running the wiring harness, since the motor is jdm, the harness was much shorter. i ran it under the intake manifold like so
i ended up having to take a break from working on my car due to the fact that i moved and had to transport it over to my new place, once i got the car back apart and up on the jack stands. first thing first in the pursuit of finishing this car was to strip down the motor and build back up the way i wanted it and find out what parts i needed to acquire. i ordered and installed a purple silicone kit, durning the time of the silicone hose installation i also removed all the emissions crap, all the stuff i didnt need
After a very long break from both my car and this forum, some general work on the car has begun. To catch up the forum, I replaced the stock fuel pump with a warlboro 255. Getting the access door to the pump was the biggest hurdle. Ended up getting 4/8 of the screws with out any screwing around (no pun intended) the other four, however, were an absolute bitch. Ended up stripping out the heads so I had to get out the grinder and notch a little channel in the head so I could hit them with the impact gun. Also can't forget to mention that liquid wrench helped a ton with those. Once all screws were out and the fuel pump was replaced, I replaced all the screw with brand new ones from mazada. Sorry about the lack of pictures, phone wiped it's self and I lost all the photos.
While I was tackling the emission control and working on blocking off the appropriate nipples on the motor/ uim/ lim, I left a vacuum line open on the rear of the uim where there's the three nipples. From there I used a 1cm vacuum line to a T connector. From the T connector I ran a line through the fire wall to right under the stereo face plate for the boost gauge. At a later point in time I'm going to get a 1/8" plate cut to size of half that opening for all my aftermarket gauges. The other vacuum line a routed tucked away to the pressure sensor.
Since I've pretty stripped the entire engine bay down to just the 13b block I decided to strip all the wiring harness off the old electrical tape and cracked looms. I spent a few days perfectly wrapping these and making sure everything reached the right stops. I also had to replace a few of the connectors with some i pulled off my spare wiring harnesses I have. Once I was done with my wiring harness, and they were tucked away and waiting for their moment, I ended up doing the good old power steering pump bracket mod, easy enough, cut the bracket in half, make sure the belts are going to run straight, and then mark your holes and drill! Boom! That easy! And it really cleans up the engine bay, also leaves a decent amount of space to run that fmic piping through the engine bay!
Nice to see you're back at work on the car. These JDM motor swaps can be a pain because of the obvious issue with harness lengths and in most cases, the harnesses are cut before shipping.
Looking forward to seeing some more pics of the build.
Yea, it's taken it's fair share of time. My problem is previous owners picking random parts off the car and selling it as a complete package that is 'ready to run with plug and play' but no amount of stress can strip me of my prize possession.
And I may have to do a rebuild due to low compression on one face of the rear rotor, but that'll get covered in my build at a later point in time, if I don't just find another motor from someone to drop in for now
Up until this point I have been recalling my build from memory, that also is partially the reason for no pictures LoL but now as we get to the current work going on I can now go over what's being done (thoroughly) so with that being said, what I have done in the engine bay and to the motor is as far as I'm going right now, I'm still slowly working on some things In the engine bay, just to make less work for when I acquire either a new motor or get mine rebuilt. Any ways, back to my build! I was working vigorously on the car last night, once I can upload the pictures off my camera I will post them to the thread. My choice of work last night was the brakes, at this point in time I don't have the funding to spend on new rotors, however I wish I did. That will be covered at a later point. My challenge was getting the seize/ rusted on pads and callipers off the old brake rotors. The front two weren't that much of a trouble. If you car has seen is fair share of weather, the only trouble there will be is disconnecting the brake line right where it comes through the wheel well and joins to the brakes at the bracket. After having some issues with the first one I went ahead and pre-soaked all the bolts I would be removing on the other brakes with PB blaster. After roughly an hour, a can of PB blaster and some good wrenching I had the front two callipers off and the old rust pads out. Now the fun, the rear ones. The rear right has given me plenty of issues and so did the left side. I'll start with left. The car came with the rear left disconnected from the rotor, but the problem was that the pads were rusted shut inside of the callipers and the ebrake bracket that holds the line on the brake was rusted together. I ended up using a punch and rubber mallet to break the pads apart. Once the pads were removed I went to my trusty bolt bin and found the two bolts that mount the calliper to the rotor, I mounted it and then used a 14mm socket, 6" socket extension to a 2' breaker bar, I positioned the extension so it pointed in towards the car (towards the diff) from there I went underneath the car and slipped the breaker bar in (I could have done this in the wheel well but I've had my far share of bolts breaking free and me smashing/ ripping up my knuckles on the metal objects around me, so underneath the car where I could freely pull the bar down without punching anything was my prime choice) after a good deal of torque was put into that bolt I finally got it to brake free. The driver rear rotor now removed made use to run the bolts through the wire wheel to clean up the threads. I sent the rotors aside for when the brake pads come in and I can re-install them. The passenger rear brake was hell. I did not enjoy a second of that and frankly I'm not even done getting it off. Those bolts where beyond rusted and one of the two bolts (the one on top) ended up breaking on me. At this point I'm waiting for a friend to come over to help me drill out the bolt and hopefully safely remove it without causing too much damage to the threads. Take my word and be very cautious when removing these rusted bolts! They can go from being a pain to a real problem in a blink of an eye!
So it's been quite some time since I've checked into my build thread or given any update so I figured today I would. After basically stripping the engine bay down to just a keg I walked away from the car. With a stuck side seal (what I think it is) and low compression on one rear rotor face (thanks to the poor man's puff-puff-puff test) I felt the car to sit as a nice garage ornament. I was scowering the internet for answers on carbon build up and read the aft trick and so on and so forth I decided to try some of these since I was at rock bottom anyways. Over a few month period I've been putting aft in each face of the rear rotor and letting it sit. Each time I check on it with no success. I read on a stickied post of na-t2 swap that the guys motor came with a stuck side seal and they used mmo, but as my searches turned up they don't sell it here in Canada. So i went to the old Canadian tire and picked up the next best thing; seafoam deep creep. Again spraying a tablespoon or so on each side of the rotor I left the motor sit and slowly turned over and repeated. This weekend I decided I would try doing my poor man's test again, still not expecting much I turned the motor over with a socket and hear six nice strong puffs. The first time I've heard six strong puffs in my entire ownership of this car. At this point in time I'm not going to let myself get excited with compression on everyface. I have an helper coming over some time with week so we can jump the starter and do a real compression test. Hopefully if all goes well I can get a external gasket kit and embark on making my build thread and putting the car back together for the first time ever. That seems like a nice little update for now. Hopefully ill be back soon with some promising news
Good luck brotha . I've was able in the past to get a seize motor to run after been sitting for years . Motor ran hard enough I swapped it in to my 2nd fc and pull good amount of miles on it before I sold it for my 3rd (current one I Own . Have owned 4 total so far lol
I have been using MMO for some time on a stuck seal on a spare turbo keg. But I will try the sea foam stuff for giggles. 5 strong puffs, and 1 stuck for me. Good to hear yours loosened up. Granted what I have planned for my spare warrants a tear down and rebuild anyhow.
Well it's been damn near a week since my last post and unfortunately I haven't been able to do a compression Test yet, need to dedicate a night to throwing half of the engine hardware back on so I can fill the block with oil. In the meantime however I was able to (and lucky enough to find) a mercury villager at the pick n pull, the year was a 1997 and with only two ten mil bolts on the top pulling it wasn't so bad. Got home and it fitted like a dream on my Rad. After numerous cuts and test fitting (still may have to cut a wee bit off on the bottom for the heater line) it looks damn good. Still have to find some weather stripping for it and then figure out how exactly I'm going to secure it to the rad but the rough in looks good
05-26-13, 05:14 PM
