Coinshark's 89 RX-7 GXL Restoration/"Build"
 

Let me start by saying hello to everyone. My name is Chris. It's been a dream of mine for a very long time to own a 2nd generation RX-7. Partly because of Initial D, but more so because I would drive by one that was for sale almost every day and thought, "wow that car is sexy". Well, after two mazdaspeed proteges, I finally managed to nab one up. It seems to be in remarkable condition for being 26 years old. All of the electronic buttons and switches work apart from the turn signals. The underside is rust free apart from a few brackets and other things, nothing on the shell though. The sunroof has some spots and the hood was extremely poorly painted. The exhaust needs to be replaced, you'll see in the pictures below. I would like to keep it very original yet tastefully "upgrade" or modify it to run better with perhaps a tiny bit more power. I had parted out my last mazdaspeed protege and kept my wheels, brakes and some other items that I knew fit the RX-7. So, here we go and enjoy!

PS: any advice, help, comments are always welcome :)

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Welcome to the worst decision of your life hahaha. Good find though I love the red with black interior combo. as for exhaust if you don't have a plan I thoroughly enjoy the sound and look of the racing beat full exhaust on my '89.

Thank you!

I was planning on welding up my own stainless exhaust. 2.5" pipe with twin vibrant TPV mufflers. If I needed to I would add in a resonator later.

Looks like it will be a fun car! Looks good! Subbed.

Right, the first order of business is to fix any and all rust and plastics. So, I started this weekend by taking out the headliner and sunroof assembly. (I probably didn't need to take it ALL out, but whatever). Taking the assembly out caused me to accidentally break the a pillars just by looking at them. Sanded down the rusted areas on the panel and it slowly started pitting and disintegrating. I ended up cutting out the big rust spot and spot welded in new metal. It was way to cold to body work it though. Recommended temperature is 45*F for mixing and good adhesion, but it was 37*F. I ordered a new cluster bezel since mine has almost every mounting tab for accessories broken and also order some mazda red paint to repaint the sunroof, headlights and hood.

Edit: So, I found my mazdaspeed membership has perks. Found the A pillars there. Kinda pricey, but at least I was able to find some :)

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I received the first of the A pillars yesterday as well as some sherwin williams clearcoat. Started doing some body work on the sunroof while it was warm enough, but still need to sand and smooth. Ready with the primer and clear though I am waiting on the color still. Hopefully that will be here soon even though it's supposed to snow more this weekend. Mother nature doesn't know if she wants to turn into spring or not yet. Also, pulled the front bumper off (which was a real PITA) and the flasher CPU. Not sure if I need to replace the CPU or not yet.

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Continued with body working the sunroof panel. Picked up some supplies to prep for paint. All of the exhaust parts and paint I ordered should be in by the weekend: 2 Vibrant TPV mufflers, stainless 2.5" piping, stainless v-bands as well as the red paint that got mishandled by the post office. I'll have to stop at my local welding supplier and pick up a different shielding gas and a stainless mig wire spool. Although, I am getting my wisdom teeth removed this weekend so I won't be doing any work I think. Hopefully I can get everything prepped and painted and welded up before the first autocross April 26th.

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It's not as thick as it looks. 1/16th tops in the deepest spot where the new metal was welded in.

Mufflers and red paint came in last night . Spent some more time working the sunroof and finally got some primer on it. Checked the red color against the car and it matches almost perfectly (in poor light at least).

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Paint color matches really well. I received double what I ordered in the exhaust tube, which is totally okay! Need to throw some clear coat down after a quick wet sand and then pick up some welding gas and a spool of stainless wire.

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Had an extremely productive weekend since my wife was out of town. Exhaust all finished and the hood and headlight covers prepped and primed. It doesn't sound like a lot, but it was very timely to get it all cut, tacked and then fully weld it. If it turns out to be too loud I'll get a resonator or a silencer to tame it down.

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Great job on the exhaust, looks very nice.... So how freaking loud is it?

Looks like nice fab work! Keep it up :-)

Nice, nice, very nice indeed.

How are you liking those v-bands?

So, it's pretty stinking loud hahaha. Has a really nice low throaty grumble at idle. Some of that loudness though is because of a leak somewhere on the manifold or the down pipe/transition pipe. I think it's one of the stock gaskets somewhere.

Thanks for the compliments.

The v-bands make everything better :) Two bolt flanges get annoying when the studs or bolts are too long. I just use cheap ebay v-bands. Think they were 20ish bucks for one kit which includes two flanges and one clamp. They work just as well as any and are cheap.

Picture from this morning :D
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I ran in STR yesterday with 4 honda S2000s and got... Beat. It was roughly 4 sec from the fastest to me. Considering how heavily modified those cars were and how worn out and slow the rx7 is, I don't feel all that bad. Driver mod is king!

Couple pictures. I forgot to charge my gopro the night before so :(

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Not bad at all! Those S2000s are spanking fast from the factory anyways.

Do those ebay v-bands not leak? If not, that's actually fairly surprising

They do not leak, but I'll let you in on my little secret. I smear high temp ultra rtv on each connection, let it cure, then I clamp it together and it doesn't leak after that. I used the v-bands that don't come with an o-ring.

That's interesting. You let it cure before joining them together? How big of a bead/thick of a film do you put on?

Really it's not a thick coat at all just enough to form a gasket. If you let it cure before you put the connections together they will com apart easy vs if you smash them together then let it cure it'd be a pita. It's a trick my boss told me about. He uses it on his diesel race trucks so it must work. He even does that on intake piping but uses "the right stuff" on v-bands. It holds over 90 psi that way. We all know how much of a pita the v-band o-rings can be.

I'm still hunting my blinker issue. I can actually hear the clicker with the left AND right blinker but no lights other than the rear left. Hopefully I'll get some time this weekend to find a gremlin.

Here's an okay video of the exhaust (still has a leak at the manifold though :uhh: )

Sounds good!

Body work is one thing I dont feel comfortable doing for some reason...Is it difficult?

Thanks!

It is if you don't know what you're doing. I don't so it is, but I'm willing to spend the time to learn on my own and with the help of the all knowing interwebz. I still don't feel comfortable enough to do actual work on the body itself yet. I have a spot under the wing that I need to fix, but I am leaning towards having a shop do that part even though it's only about a half dollar size or less.

Picked up a pace header over the weekend. Need to blast the paint off and put some ceramic or high temp paint on it so it'll go ahead and not rust. I have to shorten my Y pipe as the header is longer than I was expecting, but no biggie. Other than that I was going to fix a squeak from the rear crash bar brackets. It turned into tapping and painting brackets to fix it properly after most of the bolts broke off.

SO, I found a LSD assembly on fleabay for a good price. I'm just skeptical of whether or not it's actually a LSD unit. Says it's out of a 91 NA. Thinking about nabbing it up and cleaning it for a quick swap.

Could ask them to pop it open since there was no concrete evidence if the 91s came with LSD. They dropped the GTU/GXL models and just called them package A B C.