Another t2 build whooooo
 

I GOT A TURBO-II!

Although, this should be old news. I've had this car since May 2014, and it's run for a total of 2 days since.

Yup, that's right. Right at the end my senior year of high school, I decided to buy a black 1987 Turbo-II, checked it out, drove it home, then drove it to school the next day. Or, attempted anyhow, since I lost 3rd, 4th, 5th, and reverse gear three minutes on the way to school. My luck is hilariously shitty sometimes :lol:

In my defense, I thought I was a lucky bastard since I found a Turbo-II.... that was completely and utterly stock. I almost fainted of shock before going and buying the car. Seriously, even the sub zero system was left in the car, with the original sticker still on it. The only thing that was changed was the spark plug wires, which were some yellow Autozone "performance" things.

Anyways, I parked it on the suspicion that I overheated it pootling along in 2nd gear. The car ran rough, but fine. The coolant warning light on the idiot cluster always goes off when it warms up, probably, as I found out later, that it didn't have the oh-so-important cooling undertray. Before I realized this, I ended up sourcing all the parts for clokker's dual-stage electric fan conversion, though with a Nissan Quest fan and shroud. I'll probably leave that modification off until I source a better alternator.

In addition to the cooling woes, I found that the driver's side door lock doesn't work, though only from the outside. You can use the switch from the inside, but to unlock the car, you need to unlock the passenger side and crawl through to unlock the driver's side door. Oh well, more exercise for me I suppose.

The sunroof is also stuck. The tires are almost gone (not saying much, since new Fuzions feel like Kumhos without any tread anyways), the hood was crappily spray painted, as was the passenger side fender, the wiper blades are falling apart, there seems to be a mild exhaust leak, the gas fumes are atrocious, the radio antennae is stuck, the rear hatch tint is more blotchy than the hood is, the A/C doesn't work, the interior plastics are a mess (although thankfully the dash itself is in one piece), the interior smells funky, the car had the notorious ~4500rpm stumble, and the instrument cluster came out of an NA car (so yeah, the 70k miles is complete bullshit).

In the process of pulling out the transmission, I found 99 problems with the engine (though, no female dog), and decided a major tune up/rebuild of everything outside of the shortblock was necessary (no joke, I found a solid sponge of rust clogging one of the auxiliary water passages). Anything rubber, any sort of fluid, any sort of sealant (gasket, crush washer, o-ring, RTV, or otherwise), and any sort of filter in this car is going to be replaced, plus a little more. No, seriously, below is a comprehensive list of everything that is going to be replaced:

-Vacuum hoses, every single one of them
-Heater hoses, every single one of them
-All of the engine-bay fuel hoses, in addition to replacing the hose clamps with FI band clamps
-Coolant hoses, including the hoses that are routed through the intake system
-Fuel filter
-Air filter
-Oil and its filter
-Coolant
-Thermostat
-Water pump
-Water pump housing
-Coolant temperature sensor (I kind of broke this)
-One of the emissions valves (also kind of broke this)
-Engine mounts
-Transmission mounts
-Tires (and wheels)
-Fuel pulsation dampener
-All belts
-As many gaskets as I can get to, especially the leaky oil pan
-Most of the fasteners. Regular grade 8s on the exhaust/turbo hardware, while the rest are getting stainless steel
-And a crap ton more nitpicky stuff that eludes me currently.

That, and everything will be cleaned and slathered in dielectric grease/anti seize. I am an unapologetic clean freak and have an aversion to putting dirty parts back into a car. That, and I have enough footage of myself raging as I pulled apart all the stuck-together crap.

The transmission issues turned out to be a... something being stuck. I can't remember if was the gear or the synchronizer hub, but something crapped out. A new reverse synchronizer ring, bearing, fluid, and sealant, and the transmission should be good to go.

Thus far, I have the car disassembled as far as I'm willing to go. The naked shortblock is sitting in the engine bay. Everything's been duct taped shut since Arizona is dusty as hell (which explains the amount of dust in the engine bay). Over winter, I've had this lazy lull over working on the car, but recently I've gotten the motivation to go back to work. This weekend's accomplishments include the cleaning of the transmission, and the removal of the cruise control module, the sub zero system, and a set of heater hoses. I will eventually upload pictures, but that will not be until late tonight, when I've worn myself out from cleaning the engine bay.

I've got big plans for this car, so if you're not too busy watching the superbowl (I'm not, I'm not bothering with football until the Cardinals get a quarterback that knows how to throw passes instead of interceptions), hope to see you all soon!

So I got back to my dorm at school and promptly went to sleep. Sorry about that.

Alright, pictures!

Attachment 631252

This was when I first picked up the car, which worked beautifully besides all the annoying nuisances. The very next day, the transmission decided to quit, and a couple weeks later, it came out.

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I've been quite lazy about it, and only recently got round to cleaning the exterior of the gearbox. It turned out quite well though!

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My obsession with cleaning during this build was probably triggered by the sheer dirtiness of the engine. I've never dealt with anything that had this much crud caked on everything.

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After burning through several bottles of simple green, lots of paper towels, several harborfreight brushes, and my fingernails, it's mostly clean now.

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My frenzy to purge this car of any offending dirt led to almost everything coming out. Some of the parts are under the car, some of them in the trunk, some taking up every cabinet in garage. I'll need to put this thing back together soon, before they start invading my bedroom.

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Thankfully, all of these parts include the cooling undertray I was missing. I sourced this one from a previous FC.

http://s79.photobucket.com/user/tyra...ml?sort=3&o=16

Which culminates to my current progress, whic is a car which is disassembled as far as I'm willing to go, ready to be reassembled. The parts need servicing (stripping rust, painting, cleaning, and the sort), but it's that much closer to having a finite end to this project.

http://i79.photobucket.com/albums/j1...ps3tm4qsq5.jpg

sweet man, this get me pumped to be getting my tII in two weeks, cant wait!:nod:

Thanks man!

Progress is slow since I got my motivation to work on the car back. Thankfully it's just because I'm incredibly picky about having parts prepped as well as possible before they grace the car. Thus far, this is the work I've managed to complete on the car:

-Pulled 90% of the drivetrain out. The transmission and motor came out at one point or the other, so the only thing that wasn't touched was the diff. Even then, I've drained that as well.
-Cleaned part of the engine bay
-Cleaned the exterior of the engine
-Had the transmission sent to a shop, where they freed the stuck synchronizer hub and partially rebuilt it
-Cleaned the transmission exterior
-Resealed the front cover with RTV and a new o-ring
-Replaced the front cover hardware with stainless steel fasteners
-Replaced the crush washers on the oil cooler lines
-Resealed the oil pan with RTV
-Replaced the oil pan hardware with stainless steel fasteners
-Replaced the thermowax pellet with an Atkins Rotary Solid Pellet
-Cleaned and reinstalled the oil filter pedestal with a fresh oil filter
-Figured out where to install the vacuum block
-Had the intake manifolds sandblasted and powdercoated a shiny silver
-Wire brushed the engine support bracket
-Cleaned and replaced the o-rings on the OMP
-Painted the turbo oil feed tube black
-Painted the clutch vent thingy black
-Partially sanded the AC/PS bracket free of most casting cracks and sharp edges (I have too many scars from cutting my hands on this thing)
-Had the injectors flowbalanced with new fluorescent green o-rings
-Sanded the fuel rails for new paint
-Replaced the fuel pulsation dampener
-Replaced the fuel filter and cleaned its bracket
-Replaced the spark plugs and put a little anti seize on them
-Replaced the exhaust manifold studs (though I put copper anti-seize on them, which I'm reconsidering for reasons below)
-Replaced the ignition wires and loaded up on dielectric grease
-And finally, replaced the engine mounts with solid motor mounts, class 12.9 bolts, and grade 8 steel locking nuts.

...Okay, I need to explain that last one.

Before I bought the Turbo-II, I had a non-functional NA FC that was a total piece of shit. It was very obviously a drift missile in its past life, and restoring it to functional condition was going to cost a fortune. I opted to (partially) part it out, saving the odd goodie here and there like the solid motor/transmission mounts and a billet rotor oil filler cap. Then when the Turbo-II was pulled apart, I lifted the engine to replace the oil pan gasket... Only to find that the motor mount on the driver's side was stretched way too far and the other ripped clean in half. I was in a time crunch earlier since I was borrowing the engine hoist and slapped the solid mounts in before dropping the engine back in and returning the hoist. I hope this car loves red Loctite and lots of split lock washers...

Anyways, as for all the crap I still have to do, I have a 200+ step list of tasks left to reassemble the car. I've ordered some NEO Synthetic 75W-90HD from Baker Precision which is arriving tomorrow. I can only work on the car during weekends, but the general list of tasks I wish to accomplish this coming weekend includes:

-Decide if I want new drain and fill plugs for the transmission (I'd like some magnetic ones with hex heads) or suffer with the rusty old ones
-Fill and install the transmission
-Fill the differential
-Grease the driveshaft slip yoke and install the driveshaft
-Paint over some surface rust near the driver's side engine mount.
-Replace the coolant temperature sensor at the back of the block
-Reinstall the oil pressure sensor with teflon tape
-Paint the engine support bracket
-Wire brush and paint the turbo oil return line
-Wire brush and paint the exhaust manifold black
-Finish cleaning the engine bay
-Finish cleaning the AC/PS bracket
-Clean the emissions rat nest
-Drill holes to mount the vacuum block
-Rearrange the ports on the vacuum block for the new orientation I came up with
-Install the emissions rat nest
-Install the engine support bracket
-Install the fuel filter and bracket with new hoses and clamps
-Clean the oil jets and reinstall them
-Mock up the LIM so I can replace the OMP hoses with some Viton tubing I ordered off Amazon
-Clean the grime off the wiring
-Wire brush and repaint the oil filler tube
-Install a fresh water pump, housing, neck, and thermostat
-And pull the exhaust from out under the car, put the wheels back on, lower the car, and move it temporarily so I can replace a light bulb in the garage ceiling above it.

(phew, what a list)

Other major future hurdles include:

-Reassembling the whole car (no duh)
-Replacing the clutch slave cylinder and bleeding the system (I have yet to get a replacement or the fluid)
-Sourcing a replacement emissions valve
-Replacing the broken plastic connectors on the wiper jets
-Figuring out how to salvage my dodgy wiring
-Finding a place where I can get the intake manifolds ultrasonically cleaned (3rdgensleeper convinced me that the powdercoat shop probably used glass media and rogue beads are going to kill my engine)
-And also rebuilding the turbo. There's not much shaft play in any direction, but it's quite dirty and I forgot to cover the ends while I was sanding and wire brushing stuff right next to it... So, as punishment for my negligence, I'll be living off shitty cafeteria food for the next month so I can save up for the turbo rebuilt kit from GPop. While it's taken apart, I plan on cleaning everything, porting the wastegate, and polishing the compressor housing. I think I'll be running a stock turbo for a while, haha.

Attachment 631235

Final note: The last thing I did on the car was remove the cruise control mechanism and the sub-zero system. The sub zero system has long been established to be useless, and I never used the cruise control on this car (and probably never will). Electrically, will something freak out if I leave them out on reassembly?

Looking good so far man.

I'm in AZ as well.

Haha, thanks! It's rare to see RX7s on the roads in Arizona. Hopefully, once this car is up and running again, it'll help repopulate the streets of Phoenix with the sweet sound of brap. Your RX8 looks pretty sharp, too!

Well anyways, another small update on progress (if you can call it that).
-Hunting down a shop with a large enough ultrasonic cleaner has not gone so well
-I've ordered a slave cylinder rebuild kit, a stainless steel clutch flex hose, the turbo rebuild kit, and the coolant temperature sensor
-The gear oil arrived at my house, so the transmission will finally be able to go back into the car
-And I found out that I've been wrong this whole time, and kept calling the emissions solenoid I need a valve.
-I'm still on the fence about magnetic hex head drain and fill plugs for the transmission. The main problem is that I can't tell what the threading is. Might be M16x1.5, might be M17x2.0, can't remember. The neodymium ones I know work very well and don't have the worrying issue of possibly letting go of the magnetized particles under intensive fluid circulation, but you have to order them online which means actually knowing their specifications ahead of time. If I just take a drain plug to a NAPA or Autozone over the weekend, I can find out fairly easily, but that means I won't be able to get the neodymiums. If I wait to figure it out and order the neodymiums, I can't fill the transmission for another week. Ugh, decisions. I know I have to replace them since I partially rounded both the inspection and drain plugs, which is an instant game over for square heads.

Hopefully dropping my savings into those parts will be a sufficient enough ass-kick to motivate me into finish this car with some alacrity. Not having anything to get my hands dirty with at school is making me jittery. It's only Tuesday, and I've already spent a few hours doing nothing but looking up torque and clearance specifications on the FSM and Haynes Manual. Hopefully, I can find the pictures I took of the engine over the summer. On the interim, I'd show a pretty picture of the OMP fresh from being cleaned, and the oil feed pipe for the turbo after it was painted, but I lost the photo somewhere, so you'll just have to stare at my ricer wheels that I ordered immediately before the car broke.

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*EDIT: MB Weapon Bronze 17x8" (+42? Don't remember) wheels with Bridgestone Potenza S-04 Pole Position 225/45R17 tires in case you were wondering.

Looking good brotha . When you pop that hood and everything is so nice and clean clean lol you'll know all that blood,sweat,tears and money were worth it . If you do the coolant bypass mod I found the perfect hose to run under the t2 uim . Its in my build thread .

Definitely. I always keep photos of the engine bay from when I first bought the car and was tearing it down. When I get round to putting everything back into the car, I'm sure I'll get some shocked looks from people when I let them compare the before pictures to how the car will look then. I suppose that's how dads feel when they show off their kids to their friends, haha. I'll make sure to check out that bypass mod of yours: these emissions components and all of the intake-water piping are proving to be royal PITAs to sort out. Don't get me started on that bastard coolant pipe under the throttle body...

Well, school was particularly busy today, so I couldn't really make any calls for getting the manifolds cleaned, but oh well. I've got one class tomorrow and that's it, so I'll be hauling ass with restoration work tomorrow night. I still can't find any of the flipping pictures I had from my old phone, so here's a picture of some poor sap's car that almost crashed into and set my dorm on fire:

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(Hopefully, that will be the end of the stupid portrait pictures)

Wow man, just getting right into it. I like it.

lol, I saw the crash too. I work at ASU.

Ditch the OMP and go premix. It will seriously save your motor.

I have an account with Full Function too so if you need block off plates, I can get them. The OMP block off plate & housing nuts are $23

Yes sir, no playing around. Not that I have a choice: I can only work on weekends and it won't be long until it's 100 degree weather in Phoenix. :burn:

Hahaha, I think if you had driven your FC to campus, I would have immediately spotted it. Feels weird driving an FC right next to all of the foreign students that have GT-Rs and Evos though.

I would have taken you up on your offer had I not already rebuilt the OMP and replaced the hoses. When this thing is running, I'll start sorting out what I want to do with the car in terms of modifications. I'll be sure to hit you up if I plan on using the FFE plates. :icon_tup:

So today I came back early for a weekend of extra productivity... But immediately ran across two roadblocks. The first was the fact that all the shops I called for ultrasonic cleaning either said they didn't have a cleaner big enough or didn't pick up the phone. The second was the drain and fill plugs for the transmission. The square heads are somewhat rounded as I explained earlier, and I'd like to replace them with hex head plugs. What completely threw me off was the fact that the plugs aren't metric... Or SAE...

Just why the hell did Mazda use 1/2" NPT for the fill/inspection plugs? :scratch:

Even worse, why the hell is the side drain plug a magnetic, tapered thread, square head, 3/8" NPT plug?! I've literally never seen anything like this before.

So after spending an hour and a half at Autozone trying to figure out the flipping correct size, I just said "screw it" and bought the Autozone 1/2" NPT square-head plugs. And now that I'm sitting at home, looking at the old ones again, I've now realized that the upper plugs are also tapered thread and the square head design doesn't allow you to tense it against a washer. And to top it all off, I really do not want to use threadlocker in any sort of aluminum female threading. So basically I'm back to square one.

Whoopity-fking-doo.

SO, the transmission will be going in with the old plugs once I've cleaned them. I'll probably have to get them off with channel locks during the next gear oil change, but hopefully I'll have a replacement solution ready by then. Hopefully it'll involve plugs with hex heads and crush washers.

http://static.summitracing.com/globa...prs-1020_w.jpg
(http://www.summitracing.com/parts/prs-1020/overview/)

http://www.powerslutracing.com/images/F119216380.jpg
(Magnetic Drain Plug - Thread Size 3/8" NPT)

Look at them. What's so hard about sticking something like these in the transmission from the factory? Granted, the 1/2" NPT plugs are $8/each and the 3/8" NPT plug is $17, but the dealership charges that much for their stupid pig-iron, square-head plugs, so what's the difference? The aftermarket ones are both stainless steel, hex head, and the second one has a neodymium magnet to top it all off. Although, better yet, they could have just used some metric threads and avoided this mess of headaches to begin with.

Well anyways, I'll worry about that sort of thing in 30,000 miles, when another transmission fluid change comes around. I'll settle for what I have on the interim. And boy, do I have a lot to work with:

http://i79.photobucket.com/albums/j1...psgryrmqjq.jpg

I'm shooting to get all of this in the car by the end of the weekend. I'll see if I can recruit my redneck friend to help, since all he's doing is just working on his lawnmower. I got what should be the last odd ends that I'll need to put this car back together, excluding the turbo rebuild kit that comes in on Monday. Emphasis on should, considering I just might break something again. Regardless, expect some picture-heavy posts this weekend...

I'm kind of curious to see the condition of the interior. Looks like it's all there and in decent shape.

Kind of-sort of-almost. All of the factory trim is there, but the trim surrounding the center console and the idiot cluster are busted. The dash is slightly peeling, which is probably an indicator that this car sat in the sun a good portion of its life. Excusing the clutter inside the car (I'm running out of storage space everywhere else in the garage) and poor image quality, here are pictures of the interior trim:

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I still think that the factory stereo is the coolest thing about the interior. I'm torn between tossing it or keeping it though, since it didn't exactly work well and I need space for instrumentation and switchgear. I might get some wood that's lying around to make a boombox out of it and the rear speakers though. That would be awesome.

Right now I'm taking a break before I jump back into work. It's been surprisingly slow: a lot slower than I expected, so I don't think I'll be able to finish everything that I had planned earlier in the week. That's fine though, since the schedule got pushed back another weekend from the ultrasonic cleaning fiasco. Between yesterday night and this afternoon, I've managed to:

-Sand, prime, and paint the heater hard line from the passenger side of the engine bay. Fresh heater hoses and clamps are ready to go on once the paint is done hardening.
-Wire brush, prime, and paint the engine support bracket. It's an offensively bright red, but it won't stand out too much with the manifolds, throttle body, intercooler, alternator, and other junk in the way.
-Partially wire brushed the exhaust manifold. This still needs work though.
-Cleaned the emissions rat nest as much as possible
-Picked clean the threading for the transmission inspection holes
-Flushed out any possible junk in the transmission with some sacrificial gear oil
-And installed the transmission mounts.

Attachment 630875

That last task was particularly irritating since I found out that the solid transmission mounts I cannibalized from the previous FC were too short. Instead of resting on the mounts, it was resting on the bolts, which were sitting at an angle.

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After a trip to Ace, I came up with a solution that I hope will hold for a while:

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Basically, I stuck a grade 8 thick hardened washer as a spacer along with another, thinner stainless steel washer. The intention is for the larger washer to do the supporting while the thinner one compresses to conform to any potential sag in the Y-piece. If my bearings get trashed from this hackjob fix, then I'll know that this wasn't the smartest idea.

Attachment 630878

I had to flip which end had the bolt or the nut for it to flip, but all is well.

Anyways, I'm back off to the garage. Hopefully later tonight, I'll have the filled transmission and driveshaft in, the differential filled, the vacuum block mounted, turbo oil feed and oil filler neck painted, the clutch slave cylinder repaired, the new clutch hose installed, and the clutch hydraulics flushed and bled.

So how do you like those solid mount when installed in the last fc ? I realized the other day when I was doing some exhaust work that my passenger side mount is busted . Deciding on If I want to go solid or poly . Vibration doesn't worry me to much . Have window weld in the diff mounts already .

Long time no see! Unfortunately, I haven't got much done in the past week while I was out. Mostly because I fudged up my wrist while getting the transmission installed. You would have thought I would at least be able to manage the transmission when I had a transmission jack of all things, but oh well. Anyways, it's finally back in the car!

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It's beautiful! Of course, there's always a catch: I'm missing one of the 4 transmission mount bolts, missing one of the bell housing bolts, have all of the bell housing bolts in the wrong locations, don't remember what plugs into what for the transmission sensors/switches, and probably dumped half of the transmission fluid on the floor since I forgot that you need the driveshaft to seal the end. :facepalm:

This is, of course, in addition to rounding out the flare fitting on the clutch hose hardline (which the previous owner epoxied to the clutch master cylinder for no explainable reason), finding out that the turbo kit I ordered has snap rings with holes that no pliers can physically fit in, and losing the banjo hose fitting for one of the oil metering port/jet/thingies.

I'm on a roll here.

I'll be hoping that I find the stray bolts and fitting somewhere when I put more stuff back in the car and clear the clutter. Meanwhile, I've been busy doing other odd jobs.

The turbo kit arrived, but I've put off working on it for obvious reasons

Attachment 630353

Heater hose hard line, freshly painted with new hoses and clamps

Attachment 630354

And back in the car (I really need to clean off the dust everywhere else)

Attachment 630355

Freshly rebuilt slave cylinder with the new hose

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Fresh paint on some random items.

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Filler cap polished, everything torqued to spec, assembled, and ready to go into the car.

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Prepping the water pump and housing with a fresh gasket and cleaning (the preservative wax junk is really difficult to scrape off with just your fingernails)

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And a final picture to summarize progress:

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And that's everything so far! I'll be heading back into the garage after dinner, so hopefully things will actually start picking up.

That FC never ran, so I'm not sure how it drives. From what I've heard, it's no where near as bad as a piston engine with solid mounts, but beware of loose screws in your interior trim. I'm putting antiseize with split lock washers or red threadlocker on any non-aluminum female threading wherever I can. I've been having to replace fasteners a lot because of their age (and consequent propensity to break when torqued properly with antiseize). Outside of the vibration, you'll supposedly hear everything with solid motor and transmission mounts. Everything from the starter motor rattling to the fluid sloshing around in the transmission. You're also supposed to match the stiffness of the engine and transmission mounts (so solid with solid or poly with poly) or it might destroy your e-shaft bearings. This is all heresay at this point though, so I'll report back my opinion on the vibrations when this thing is running.

I work in a transmission shop r&ring transmissions everyday . In my eyes anything that rotates and is a bolt on item gets lock tight no if's an's or but's about it . I've seen everything come into this shop that can go wrong and have to fix someone else's f' ups ( jiffy lubes a top one ) . I'm going to give the polys a try first since I have a enough rattles from a gutted interior and dash lol. On a side note my apt shit and so I went with a Ford Taurus alt and must say its a worthy upgrade for sure

It's a good policy for the application, definitely. For mine, not quite, since I know I'll be tearing into this car frequently (there's a huge list of things to-do for me, even when this car is fully pieced together). Hence, the obsession with split lock washers and anti-seize. But yeah, definitely go with the polys, especially if you intend on keeping your interior. I can't tell you how many times I've had to help a friend reinstall all of the bloody interior screws in his Bronco that has massive subs. Also, do you redline your car a lot? I've always wondered about running the Taurus alternator, but I was afraid that it wasn't rated for the same RPMs that the RX7 can.

Anyways, this post is going to be in two parts since it's really picture heavy. There was a lot of stuff done, and I wanted to have some visual notes for myself when I go back to working on the car next weekend.

Below is the slave cylinder in the car. I'd have bled the system already if it weren't for the fact that I rounded the flare fitting on the clutch hard line, and the previous owner epoxied the other end to the master cylinder for no discernible reason. I'm getting a strange case of deja vu, so I probably already ranted about this earlier. The bracket that holds the hose in place isn't bolted in because I'm still deciding if I want to replace the master cylinder as well. Still looks pretty.

Attachment 630241

That also reminds me that the rubber mounts for the AC plumbing is broken. I'll probably bodge a shitty repair job of it with some super glue and call it a day. And I really need to get rid of all the dust on the firewall.

I installed the fuel filter with the new bracket (and had to super glue the rubber mounts for it as well), though only temporarily. The paint on the frame rail is in terrible shape and the rust is becoming surprisingly pervasive. It's not deep, but I'll be checking its extent next weekend and painting over it. Also, I can't find my extra fuel hose and it's driving me insane.

Attachment 630242

Found the starter wiring, and now I need to figure out what goes where since it's been ages since I pulled everything apart. I also need to sort out the stupid starter/bell housing bolts.

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The wiring confusion continues with this random ground on the transmission that I don't remember where it plugs in to.

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I also still need to re-torque the engine mount bolts since they needed to be loosened when the transmission went in. That, and the crossmember needs some cleaning love.

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I'm almost done with the driveline actually. I'm pretty certain I tracked down all of the transmission-related bolts finally (I found the last bolt, but then lost one of the other 3. When I went to take a shower, I found it hiding in my back pocket), I still need to fill the differential, tighten the driveshaft bolts, and grease the slip yoke, but all of the other minor nuisances have been taken care of. Looks more or less complete from here.

Attachment 630246

Instead of being particuarly productive, I spent most of my time organizing all of the stray fasteners in my garage into boxes and cleaning the colossal mess that my garage has degenerated into. I also did some mocking up of the parts so that I could start cutting the OMP hose to length and clear clutter to start finding some lost items. The fresh paint makes everything look amazing. Unfortunately, I still haven't found the water pump housing-to-block gasket and it's just a temporary measure. For a while, I couldn't find the last acorn nut on the water pump, but I did manage to hunt it down, so that crisis has been averted.

Some additional mental notes: using fastener combination of - flat washer, split lock washer, acorn nut. Had to use two split lock washers on some of them before I realized the studs weren't screwed all the way in. The studs are stainless steel threaded rod cut to length and have red threadlocker on the ends. The last bolt on the driver's side also holds the alternator tension bracket, so I'll need to remember to install all of them together. The water pump shims were centered in place with RTV.

Attachment 630247

Continuing the mock up made me think that finishing this car wasn't going to be impossible after all. I still need to remember to clean all of the other parts like the air pump and its bracket. The contrast between the prepped parts and the ones that are still filthy is astounding. I think I'll just outright paint the air pump bracket now that I think about it.

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During the mock up, I also found the stray OMP banjo fitting I was freaking out about... In probably the most annoyingly obvious locations possible.

Attachment 630250

I've thus far this using diagonal cutters to rip off the old metal clamp. It works, but it's a pain in the ass. The viton tubing I got fits perfectly, though the mini hose clamps I'm using aren't particularly snug, so I'll probably crush them inwards to get more sealing action. Also to note is that I probably installed the injectors backwards... No big deal. I also replaced the o-rings for the plastic inserts that go into the block. I forgot what they're called.

I also found out that my alternator won't fit on my new water pump housing... Or, at least, it won't fit with the spacing collar at its pivot point. I'm assuming I'll need to somehow push the insert back without snapping the aluminum.

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While I was fiddling with the pulleys, I found that most were peeling paint and demand some spray can TLC. The outer crank pulley also is extremely particular about its orientation, so it can take some time trying to figure out. I still can't find the water pump pulley though. If I remember correctly, you need to install the water pump pulley before you install the second crank pulley as well. And it just occurred to me that I forgot to fully tighten the crank pulley earlier, but now that the transmission is hooked up, it should be no problem with the handbrake on.

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Another thing I keep forgetting to do is bolt the wiper arm motor back in. Every single time I work on this car, I forget to do it until I notice it at the end and am way too lazy to do it at that point. And again, this firewall needs some cleaning. The AC plumbing could also use some extra black paint.

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I'm still missing my oil cooler as well. It's already weird enough that I can't find so many different things, but even weirder that I managed to lose the oil cooler. How the hell did I manage to do that? :scratch:

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Another mental note: I need to wash it out with some seafoam or some other detergent before it goes back into the car. And also, the rubber mounts that hold it in are a bitch to deal with unless you want to tear out a hundred other little things just to squeeze the oil cooler in.

Final notes regarding the mock up: putting things back in tentatively also helped me sort out which parts of the engine bay I can procrastinate cleaning on. Which is good, since I'm not particularly looking forward to this section

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Again, though, I can't believe it's actually starting to look like there's an engine in this car. Once I find the water pump housing gasket and rebuild the turbo, all of the parts in the mock up can actually go in and stay there-

Just kidding. I still need to get the intake manifolds ultrasonically cleaned. I still can't believe I've managed to put off doing it until now. Good job, me, you're living up to the college stereotype perfectly.

So to sum, I still need to do the following major items before I can start going nuts with throwing stuff back into the car:

-Find the water pump gasket
-Get snap ring pliers for the tiny rings in the turbo kit
-Rebuild the turbo
-Sort out the bolts for the driveline (bell housing, transmission mount, starter, drive shaft, etc.) and torque accordingly
-Grease the slip yoke
-Fill the differential
-Deal with the rust on the driver's side of the car
-Install the exhaust heat shields and exhaust system
-Clean and/or paint a whole bunch of stuff
-Figure out what to do about the rounded clutch hard line (I'm favoring just using teflon and tightening it with channel locks, since that's how I managed to crack it open)
-Finish the OMP lines
-Find the water pump pulley
-Figure out how to install the alternator with its collar without breaking it (shit load of washers as substitute?)
-Find more fuel hose
-Plumb the vacuum routing
-Install the emissions solenoids (and find a replacement for the last one)
-Find the oil cooler
-Bolt in the wiper arms
-Ultrasonic clean the manifolds

That will still be a fair amount of work, so I don't think I'll properly be at this stage any time soon. At the very least, the mock up was an amusing delusion of actual progress and helped me find out that I have even more problems to sort out. Wooooooooo....

Before I threw in the towel for the weekend, I moved some clutter out of the trunk and closed the hatch. It's nice to be reminded of why I'm ultimately dealing with this continuous headache. I'm really excited to see how it looks with the wheels. Anyways, that's it. See you all next weekend!

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Hello everyone! It's been a while. Over a month, in fact. Unfortunately, school came back to bite me in the ass, so I haven't had much in the way of productivity, relative to the time I've spent working on the car. I’ve only just now caught up on physics, but now I gotta work on all of my engineering work... It just never ends. But, I'm taking a breather in the middle, so here's what I've got done.

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I got around to rebuilding the turbo. Between all of the cleaning I had to do and the wastegate porting (Hitachi did a particularly crappy job on my turbo), I ended up breaking a pair of snap ring plier tips on one of the microscopic rings, so on assembly, I tried bodging it with the right-angle ones for the turbine-end. It would only go halfway in, so I tried smashing it in with a screwdriver. Big mistake, I ended up nicking the brand new journal bearing, warping the inner diameter into a d-shape.

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Woooooo. So I've had to sit on my ass waiting for parts to be shipped over from Amazon. While I was at it, I ordered a silicone coupler to replace the rubber one that went between the compressor exit and the tubing that leads to the intercooler. The original one I had to saw off... Yeah. The replacement coupler is made by HPS, has an ID of 2", and a total length of 3" which I'll have to shorten a bit. At the very least, this gave me time to clear the ungodly carbon build-up on all of the parts

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While I waited, I went on a few shopping trips. The first time around, I fetched some stuff for the daily and got an emissions rack from an S5. I made off with 3 usable emissions solenoids, a one way check valve, and that black circular thing that I think is called an oil purge valve. Pretty decent, and I intend on chopping up this rats nest for its fuel lines if I ditch all of the emissions equipment. Afterwards, I dropped by O'Reillys and checked their clearance section. 5 dust masks for $0.17 and 6 quarts of 20W-50 for $3/qt! Best deal I've seen here in Phoenix, Arizona, since we don't have AAP. It's Castrol GTX SynBlend, so I dunno how well it will burn, but oh well.

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Afterwards, I went around asking about the blasting-media-stuck-in-the-manifolds issue. Weirdly enough, every single professional in the media-blasting industry here had never even heard of the problem and suggested I not worry about it. A local who runs a speed shop that I trust suggested I take a power washer to the runners and see if any particles come out. If so, I should worry, otherwise I'd be fine. So, I took a trip to the car wash and got busy drenching my pants. Didn't see anything come out, so I'll be using compressed air to finish up and then install them on the car!

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I also went tool shopping. If there's anything that working on this car has taught me, it's that you can never have enough safety goggles, dremel bits, and brushes. So, I restocked at Harborfreight, picked up a blow gun, went to Sears to get the pliers replaced under warranty, and snagged a sunshade from the O'Reillys clearance section (I'm in love with that corner of the shop).

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The last thing I grabbed was a countersink, which I used to deburr the new holes on the firewall where I'm mounting the vacuum block. It needs fresh paint before I can reinstall the block, plumb everything up, and put all of the hard lines on the firewall back in place. In the process of drilling the holes, I accidentally yanked too hard on the charcoal canister's line, so now I've got this ugly squiggle. Hopefully, I'll get around to depowering my power steering rack and throwing that damn leaky pump in the bin so I've got the space to relocate the canister to the driver's side. I've always thought it was a stupid idea to put it on the side where there was all the radiant heat from the turbo and exhaust.

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Well anyways, until I relocate the charcoal canister, I'll have to deal with the stupid squiggle. To prevent it from rubbing against the vacuum block, I've got those felt pads you put under furniture legs. It's a temporary solution, since I know they're going to fry quickly.

That business taken care of, the boredom continued, so I decided to painted a whole bunch of stuff. The black fetish continues...

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I also remembered to grease the driveshaft slip yoke. I had to put the front wheels back on and tilt the car so that gear oil wouldn't come pouring out again like the last fiasco. So, I put on the new ricer wheels to see how it would look. Not bad, I must say.

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Before I could continue-

A wild distraction appeared!

A friend of mine I haven’t talked to in a while asked me to go junkyard hunting with him. And so, we caught up on life as we ripped 710 injectors out of old Ford 5.0s. Apparently, he’s got this 90s 3.9L V6 Dakota that he’s turning into a budget drag truck. He’s a quirky guy, so I won’t comment on his choice of platform. The fuel injectors are going into this truck, and he plans on doing a bunch of other cheap modifications to it. I honestly doubt he’ll be able to do squat with it, so I challenged him to a drag race in May. Those V6 Dakotas were horribly slow anyways, so I’m certain that as long as I show up with a running RX7, I should be kicking his arse no problem, modifications or not. Did I mention he doesn’t have this truck yet?

I wasn’t completely unproductive while I was at the yard. I found a Mazda badge off a minivan, some silicone hose from the floor, and an alternator off a 3.0L Taurus. Nice to add to the inventory, though irrelevant to the car currently. I also forgot to take pictures of them. Boo.

Anyways, I went back and torqued the driveshaft-to-differential-flange bolts. Then I raised the car back up and decided I liked the wheels-on-the-car look so much, I was going to put them on permanently. So logically, I ripped them off.

I tidied up the brake components, shined the living hell out of the wheel grease cap (it protrudes so much that I can't install the included hub caps), and installed the hubcentric rings. (Thanks for the reminder that I cut my index finger yesterday, Mr. Brake Parts Cleaner)

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Next is torquing down the lug nuts, but that'll have to wait until I can lower the car off the jack stands. My younger brother is a lazy arse and refuses to hold the brake pedal while I get them cranked down, so a little zip with the impact gun will have to do. And now, a glory shot of my hilariously irrelevant $1 valve stem caps from Harborfreight.

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In the process of all this, the garage started to get messy. I decided now would be a good idea to sort through the trash and reorganize all of my fasteners and other little bits for the umpteenth time. Naturally, everything got even messier instead.

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Such is life.

And I still haven't finished cleaning the 4Runner from the last snowboarding trip.

As per the unbeatable life philosophy of structured procrastination, I tried to torque down the bellhousing bolts instead of cleaning the truck. Then I realized I'm still missing a couple bolts, so I hopped on over to Ace’s and torqued the new ones in place. I wrestled with the frame rust, put the fuel filter back in place, cleaned/installed the speedometer cable, slathered dielectric grease on both the starter and transmission sensors' wiring, filled the differential, and installed the exhaust heat shields. And what did I get for all of this? I found out that the driver’s side halfshaft has a busted CV boot. Yay...

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I let Dan handle it, since he was bored and looking to kill some time.

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(I apologize for the portrait picture)

Of course, the moment I let him touch my car, he goes and does something like this:

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ARGHHHHH.

On top of this, I still need to wait for a replacement spindle nut to ship in from Rockauto. Ugh.

With the last emissions solenoid finally in hand, I finally went about cleaning them and installing them with the hoses. Should have done this earlier before the dynamic chamber bracket went on. I wish I would remember to get better pictures, because this is before the main clusterfuck of vacuum hoses went on. Because the silicone replacements are much thicker, they’re absolutely jammed into place. It looks like some sort of plumbing nightmare.

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The bearings and coupler finally came in, so I got back to work on the turbo.

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Tada.

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Of course, I found out AFTER I assembled everything that the stupid turbo assembly doesn’t go in altogether. So, I had to rip it all apart again. And again. And again. For every time I forgot to install something first. Insulator, actuator hard line, lower intake manifold, etc. etc. And a final time to reclock the compressor housing.

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Mercifully, with the turbo in, I could finally install the exhaust system. Note to future T2 owners: do not install the entire turboback in one unit. It does not work like that.

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I also noticed this oddity… Who the hell put a grounding strap to the exhaust system?

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With all of these components finally (and permanently) going back into the car, the clutter cleared up and the oil cooler showed up!

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Cleaning it did not go so well. I completely forgot about the thermostat inside and my attempts to rip off that plug on the bottom did not go so well. I need more sockets for fuck’s sake.

I went back to the front of the car and decided to finish the fuel system. Spontaneously decided to install nitrous while I was at it:

Attachment 627659

Heh.

At some point while doing this, my last flashlight threw in the towel. I decided enough was enough and I needed to replace the bloody garage lights. So, despite not having the spindle nut for the rear left wheel yet, I put on the wheels, dropped the car, and replaced the light. I’m glad I took the time to look back.

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Oh my god.

To be honest, after spending nearly a full year of working on this car, I’ve stopped thinking of it as a car I’ll drive one day and more of a financial and manhour sinkhole. Seeing it sitting on its own wheels is just refreshing in an inexplicable way, and reminds me of why I bother with the trouble.

After cleaning the cumulative junk hiding under the car, I finally ran out of time again. And thus, this post comes full-circle and I'm stuck doing engineering homework like I said I needed to. Hopefully, next weekend I'll have the time (and motivation) to check in again. But in the meanwhile, I'll be stuck wrestling this devilspawn of an educational program.

Offers to help me with this mental torture are currently being accepted.

Looks good man. I'm also in az. Keep the build coming!

And we're back...
 

Holy cow… so it’s certainly been a while. I’m not really certain where to start to catch up this build thread. It’s been what, 2 years? My brain doesn’t have the capacity to recall everything that’s happened since, so I’ll try to give the low fat summary of what insanity has transpired since. Lots have changed, so I'll tackle it chronologically.

School ended up being a giant drain on time as finals swung around, so I couldn’t really focus on the RX7 at all. I managed to sporadically address some small details on weekends and fuck up other things, like the clutch tubing. I am apparently a natural born talent for creating failed double flares, so I pitched that tool in the garbage and bought a new clutch line and master cylinder from the dealership because the clutch line was FUBAR and epoxied straight to the master cylinder.

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Other things I attended to included the doohickey I contrived to substitute the piece that connected the BACV to throttle body hose to the water pump housing to BACV hose, tore down the turbo AGAIN to rebalance it, fashioned myself a custom air intake because the turbo inlet duct was cracked beyond salvaging, made my own stainless steel block off plate for the ASV, made the new MOP lines from the viton hose, painted a bunch of the emissions stuff silver, and destroyed and then rebuilt the throttle body with NA throttle body parts due to local availability. That last item is important and going to come up again later…

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By then, summer break had rolled around and I got shipped off to Washington DC to visit my sister. I got to visit the Air and Space Museum in the process.

https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.rx7...a8af9f2ba0.jpg

By far, my favorite part of wandering DC was randomly encountering the rare siamese rotary trashcan.

https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.rx7...b867bac60c.jpg

(Yes, gasoline, thermal efficiency, and heat are acceptable forms of "General Waste" for a rotary trashcan)

When I got back, I had to tackle-

Well, actually, when I got back, this happened:

https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.rx7...b9dc3c25c9.jpg

Arizona.

But anyways, when I got back, I had to tackle the looming elephant in the room. Vacuum routing and wiring. The green creep of death was pervasive to the wiring on the car and many electrical connectors had crapped the bed, so I had to wire in a few new pigtails. This was an interesting experience for me and I grew a newfound appreciation for anyone capable of navigating the forsaken 80s electronics on this car (DISCO MUSIC INTENSIFIES)

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In the midst of this, I got severely distracted by the introduction of a new RX7 that would consume my life. My friend had picked up a beautiful original example of an ’84 GS in cream and brown. We affectionately named it the Mochaccino, pending whenever he could come up with an appropriate weeb name for the car since that’s how he swung. A set of new tires and fluids later, and she cleaned up really well.

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This car ended up being a royal fiasco. The AC was broken when he bought it and I thought it’d be a simple matter of replacing the o-rings, cleaning it and lubing it appropriately, and R134a converting it so it would work, even if it wasn’t the coldest. Nope. Compressor was royally boned. I have no idea how or why, but it also wouldn’t hold pressure and we couldn’t find where it was leaking despite replacing all of the o-rings. And then, the headlights went out by fault of either the clutch switch or wiring or the body computer. I never figured it out because I couldn’t understand it despite my best efforts. Thanks to this, that semester of school ended up being:

• Structure and Properties of Materials - 3 credit hours
• Programming in MATLAB - 1 credit hour
• Circuits I - 4 credit hours
• Introduction to Java - 3 credit hours
• Digital Design Fundamentals - 3 credit hours
• Bullshit Electives - 6 credit hours
• Series-III RX-7 Electronics - 40 credit hours

In the end, I wired up a separate harness for the headlights to be controlled by a switch on the dash. It still ran, passed emissions flawlessly, and gave us zero problems outside of a coolant level switch that had its wire falling off, so he ended up selling it, after having wasted a good half year of my free time.

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He rolls around in a 5th generation Prelude now and still misses the RX7 dearly. But A/C though. And his parents hated the car. But anyways, with it off my plate, I could focus on my own RX7. I had been very occasionally returning to spare attention to my own car throughout that dark time of AC-spawned hell, so I made barely any progress. Good lord, was it a struggle. I completely forgot everything I was supposed to do, so I had forgotten to torque several bolts properly and just went by what I visually saw was left. Before that summer ended, I marshalled all available resources I had to finish the RX7, but stopped short of being able to start it the weekend before school started. But alas, the car was in one piece finally:

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A few weekends later of school, diagnosing, school, diagnosing, school, diagnosing, I managed to figure out that the dingbat I entrusted to work on the fuel tank (no hard feelings, Tim) switched the feed and return, so the return hose was stiff as a bat and the feed side was totally empty. AGH. That night, after switching them around, I hauled Tim’s ass back to chew him out for it and then made him watch as I started again.


BEAUTIFUL.

It started, idled wonderfully, then died almost immediately afterwards. Turned out to be an iffy connector to the MAF confusing the fuel pump switch into shutting itself off. After I bypassed this switch, I managed to drive it in and out of my driveway, but soon enough, a bunch of random other problems started showing up.

There was vacuum leaks up the wazoo, the cooling fan light would come on when the engine was still at 150*F, there was an oil leak, fuel pissed out the side of the engine somehow, coolant was getting onto the ground somehow, there was smoke appearing to come out of every orifice of this car, and a mysterious idle speed issue plagued it. I’ll try my best to describe what happened, since I don’t understand what was going on, even today.

The vacuum leaks were everywhere. I made both a cap for the air intake I could connect to the turbo or the throttle body elbow to a bicycle pump for boost leak checks, and a ghetto water bong smoker to find the leaks. After fixing leaks at the ACV, BACV, throttle body elbow to throttle body o-ring, some left off hoses, and the LIM to UIM flange, it still idled unusually high. I had screwed the idle speed screw on the BACV way up to keep it idling when the vacuum leaks were present, but then once they were fixed, I couldn’t get it to come down, even when the BACV idle screw was set to the lowest point. WTF? I deleted the AWS, ASV, double checked vacuum leaks, throttle body cable pretension, reset and calibrated the TPS, set the throttle body idle screws, and everything else I could think of but it stayed rather stubbornly at 2200-2500 RPM. Bah.

The fluid leaks were easier. I swapped the crush rings the wrong way around for the FPD and that pissed fuel down the side of the engine, so I had to replace a couple engorged silicone vacuum hoses as well. Oil was just a loose banjo for the oil cooler at the back of the engine and the oil filter pedestal o-rings. Coolant was the o-rings for the coolant passage through the intake manifold not seating right and the radiator drain plug not being tight enough (I was sketched out by the fact that it was a Philips head). A bit of extra torque on the LIM bolts and drain plug solved that.

The extra cancerous pseudo vape smoke was straightforward. Because I was paranoid that the rotor housings would get trashed from a cold start with no lube after sitting for so long, I dumped Marvel’s Mystery Oil into the spark plug chambers and turned the engine over a few times until it felt more like it was puffing and less like it was scraping. Couple that with the amount of VHT I had sprayed all over the engine bay, and it was no wonder it smoked like hell out of the tailpipe and from the engine bay. More runtime solved both of those issues.

The electrical problems were weird. I couldn’t understand the circuit for the cooling fan warning light, why the fan would run when it wasn’t supposed to, why the battery light would freak out when the door was open, and why the coolant temperature gauge wouldn’t work. The door thing was the battery being so shite that it thought it didn’t have enough voltage just from the courtesy lights on the door activating. The sender for the gauge I already replaced, so I didn’t want to think about that too much; the death shriek from the cooling fan warning light was harder to ignore. Chasing problems in the wiring, thermoswitch, AC system, relay, and battery solved nothing. As my coolant temperature gauge didn’t work, I was going to use that light as a warning for when the car got hot, but that would be useless if it went off all the time.

Still, despite all of these troubles, I managed to wrap up most of the critical issues and squeeze in a test drive around the block. It was beautiful. The taste of victory was sweet and I wanted the whole candy bar. So eventually, I decided to ignore the annoying cooling fan chime and install an aftermarket coolant temperature gauge because what the hell, I was done.

This was the beginning of the end.

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The gauge I bought had some adapter fittings that allowed me to screw in an M16x1.5 adapter into the engine, into which I could install the 1/8” NPT gauge sender. A tip off by a friendly forum member notified me of an M16x1.5 hole exposed to the coolant loop in the front iron. Great! Problem solved. Except my engine had other ideas.

(Illustration of the plug)

https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.rx7...2717c3330e.jpg

In the way was an allen head plug. Weathering had made it something between an 8mm and 10mm head, and an 8mm allen socket, despite light application of the torch and a couple days of PB Blaster, led to a partially stripped head. OK, try again. 10mm allen key ground down to fit this “in-between” size, and hammered into place thanks to an interference fit. There should have been zero reason this didn’t work. And it seemed like it, considering my best efforts wouldn’t budge the key or strip it out. But not being able to turn the key and the plug with it wasn’t going to get me anywhere, so I got a cheater bar. Plug stayed put, and just rounded out more. Key wasn’t damaged at all. FUUUUU---------

Whether it was the lack of sleep or an impatience to get my car on the road because it had been over a year of owning the car without having driven it for more than 30 minutes, I was tunnel-visioned into removing this bastard plug. It broke several screw extractors, and finally, after burrowing a large enough hole into the plug, I shoved the largest screw extractor in that I could. Insufficient torque. Rammed it onto a 12 point socket and used a wrench. Insufficient torque. Used a bigger wrench. Insufficient torque. Used a ratchet with a cheater bar. Sufficient torque! I had my friend look at the plug while I was turning it and it turns out, the plug wasn’t turning at all. I was just burrowing the screw extractor further into the plug. Well, never mind that, it would eventually bite enough to remove the plug, right?

The extractor never managed to bite the plug hard enough to turn it and, instead, went straight through and cracked the iron.

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I gave up working on the RX7 for something like a month. The silver lining in this was that my parents took pity for once and let me borrow the motorcycle that my mother was going to use recreationally as a commuter to get to school.

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It’s been interesting getting into the bike world.

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It took a while for me to accept my fate. I was going to have to crack open the engine, to either perform a ghetto fix of welding the hole shut or replace the iron, and then clean out the metal shavings. Over winter break, I put on my big boy pants and pulled apart a rotary for the first time.

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(Here we go again)

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Oh, you remember how I said to remember my bastardization of the throttle body with NA parts, and the mysterious idle issue? Yeah. When I pulled everything apart, I looked at the throttle body a second time and realized that in my attempt to jigger the NA throttle body parts onto the Turbo-II throttle body housing, the blasted cold start cam was on in a janky way that bumped idle up when it got HOT. GENIUS.

https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.rx7...a7cf375b15.jpg

Well, anyways, my original plan to rebuild this engine was a very simple affair of buying new soft seals to close the block, buy a replacement front iron, and get back to rotoring. But then I began eyeing new hard seals because I had the engine open anyways. Plus the extra power couldn’t hurt. But how much more power did I want? Googling found that I could reasonably get boost up enough on a budget to be worried about cracking the rear iron of the S4 block. Agh. But again, the engine was open, so I may as well do myself a favor down the road and replace the rear iron, too, right? But then it turned out those thick landing S5 plates are impossible to find. REW irons would be too much of a hassle to make a mismatched engine out of.

Now what?