rx7inLt

I don't know how much you will lower your car but if you are going for the same height as the black one you will probably get around 3* of camber in the rear, something nice with the HSD DT's is that they have rubber inulated rear top mounts so they should be a bit more comfortable than the pillowball topmount that most coilovers have.

meerkat8701

thanks for the tips blame! somewhere along the line whilst reading up on all this yesterday, someone in some post wrote that you actually get POSITIVE camber when you lower the car. i thought this was wierd considering my last car was a pretty damn low bmw e36 (i managed to knock a hole in the gearbox the size of a golfball at some point so it was at least that low) i was aware of the natural camber you get with the beemer but i wasnt sure if it applied to all cars. should have checked that out but considering i was 12 hours into a 16 hr shift at the time i was a bit fuzzy in the head
ill definately be checking out that build thread to see if i can glean any info. it would be easier to put together and install the seperate ones for sure..

tomat your picture of carl gustav gets me every time. pure comedy hehe
i was definately thinking of going at least that low with mine. it means that ill have to be a bit careful with my route planning but they havent gone completely crazy with the speedhumps here in stockholm like they have in london. having a lowered car there is just a no no.
robban tried to convince me to buy some super duper racing coilovers and it took a good half hour to get him to understand that im broke.
the DT's definately look like they'll do the job so ill be getting them next week!

after visiting robban and helping him bleed the brakes on his new nissan leaf, i dropped joel home and managed to get a good four hours in. by the time i left everything was in some stage of being painted..



its just as well because the charm of this particular job had definately worn off. itll be nice to do something else while i finish off the painting next time im there.. ill be waiting until it gets a bit warmer then ill be powerwashing the wheel wells and painting them up too.

meerkat8701

i have been a silly (and lazy) boy. i have made three mistakes.

1. when cleaning the brake calipers with my wire wheel, i did not notice that i had unwittingly worn away the rubber seals around the pistons.

2. i didnt paint the calipers in high temp paint.

3.i didnt just do them properly in the first place.

so i have to redo them. properly this time. im really hoping that i can get a hold of a renovation kit here without having to import them. i wonder if there are any (more common) cars from mazda that had the same brakes so that i could use the renovation kit from them or am i just going to have to go take one up the bum from mazda?

blame

Ha ha good job, champ!

The Mazda part number for the rebuild kit is FB05-49-240 and it will do two 4-pot calipers (FC or FD). I don't believe it works for any other car unfortunately.

I was looking these rebuild kits up about a month ago and most online places in north america were charging around $30 USD. I don't know how much shipping and import fees would be for you on something relatively small and cheap like that

-sean

meerkat8701

yeah man my laziness cost me some unnessecary work right there. serves me right! the fact that the fd one is the same gives me hope that i will find it here. the fd is not exactly as forgotten as the fc seems to be here. if i get my seven sorted by summer ill be definately reminding people that its still a car worth remembering! at least among the jdm enthusiasts here

ill check mekonomen first tomorrow and if all else fails ill have to go to mazda and let them ransack my wallet. just to give you an idea of how import is here ill give you an example. when i ordered my last package from racing beat, the goods plus postage ran me about 3100kr, then when it got here i had to pay 900kr on top of it in duties. its approx 30%. racing beat did send the stuff quite quickly though ill give em that.
hopefully the only thing ill have to import from outside the country will be the s5 tails... hopefully..

clokker

iTrader: (2)

If it makes you feel any better, I've never used special high temp or epoxy paint on my calipers and they've held up for years.
I don't believe street cars heat calipers up much.

meerkat8701

actually it does clokker because when i got to the garage today they had come up quite nicely! it almost felt like a shame to buff em up and spray them again. i went to the auto parts store today (mekonomen) and they had both the front and rear rebuild kits for the calipers. all for a tidy sum of 500kr (77.66 usd)
i dont even want to know what i would have had to pay at mazda. i try to make a habit avoid authorised dealers of any company (for import cars which is all of them except for volvo and saab) like the plague.

i only had about 3 hours at the garage before i had to scurry off to work so i cleaned up a bit, then drained the oil and coolant from the engine and before i left had managed to remove all the bits that would hinder me from lifting the motor to change the engine mounts.



whilst doing this i noticed two things.
1. how dirty i have managed to make the engine bay again.
2. why i couldnt find my 12mm ratchet spanner anywhere

its definately moments like this that are quite rewarding though.. thinking back to last year (or the year before?) when i decided to first pull the engine and just looking at the great big mass of wires, hoses and components and not having a clue where to start. i was genuinely crapping myself then. now it all seems to have fallen into place. i have my little routine so that i remember what i have removed and i have stopped being so damn impatient, instead having more realistic goals for my alotted time at the garage. the whole process feels so much calmer and fluid, which actually makes it fun! a proffessional mechanic i am not, but it nice to feel like im progressing at least in my knowledge of my own car..
im going to be mostly working the shorter 6 hr shifts at work next week so i hope to really be able to get some time in before next weekend when i should be getting my coilovers.

placd1

iTrader: (3)

I admire the way you just soldier on in this build thread. Snow, flu, back pain, hangovers, nothing keeps you away from your little frozen piece of paradise aka your garage

meerkat8701

thanks placd1! its kind of a passive-agressive motivation i have found through the dissapointment at the beginnings of the last four summers when realising that i would be driving my nissan micra for the entirety of it and this build thread. i was very unsure whether i should start one because from the ones i had seen then, it seemed like everyone was a civil engineer/rocket scientist and there was no way that anyone would be interested in me fixing up my little n/a on the other side of the pond. turns out i was wrong. if i said i didnt feel like giving up at certain stages i would be a liar but the encouragement and help i have received here on this forum have been a instrumental to keeping me going. you guys have had my back and i appreciate it alot!

clokker

iTrader: (2)

Ah, a teachable moment.

You were overwhelmed and nervous because viewed as a whole, the engine bay IS frighteningly complex and mysterious.
Over the course of the project though, you've had to break it down to subsystems and deal with them separately and you now know that all that intricacy is just a bunch of small systems overlaid and intertwined and it's not so incomprehensible as you thought.

In this same way, the engine bay serves as an analog example of the wiring harness.
Look at the complete schematic for the car and the electrical looks completely chaotic and unknowable. Ignore the whole and concentrate on individual circuits and suddenly you'll feel as you do now about the bay, yup, lots going on but it's actually lots of pretty simple **** that looks complex only due to size and number.

Extrapolated even further, your aha! moment can (and should) be applied to any project. Start breaking a job down into individual steps and you'll see that most of them are things you're already comfortable doing, it's only a few things (as opposed to everything) that you have to learn or figure out.
Much less daunting when viewed that way.

Regardless of how this particular car turns out, coming to this realization has already made the project a success.
You'll never look at a car the same way again.

meerkat8701

very true clokker! im just taking it a step at a time at the mo and trying not to do everything at once. i still have a hell of alot to learn and i dont know if this project will ever be fully "complete" but it definately feels like im seeing light at the end of the tunnel. looks like ill be forced to delve into the electrics when it gets warmer, i just cant shake this feeling that getting the engine to run right/work out whatever the hell i have missed is going to be a project all on its own.

speaking of projects, i have often looked around for aero parts that would suit my car but havent found any that i liked. the only thing i have even remotely considered is some type of "rocket bunny style" wing like the one for the nissan s13 (200sx). i happened to see it on instagram the other day and thought it was proper nice!

fd9b02cf-f335-4271-86ea-1a30e8e32981.png?t=1392355399

wondering whether i should buy a replica or make my own from fibre glass that matches the rx7 form a bit better .i have no idea what i may be getting myself into but it could be something for later in the warmer months/next winter. i actually have spent the most of this night shift reading about making fibre glass panels/parts and it looks like it would be something fun to try. might take a few attempts but it would solve my little pickiness issue

clokker

iTrader: (2)

That wing looks like it evolved from the Z-car wings, didn't like them and don't like it on the FC either.

They look more like air brakes than aero aides to me.

meerkat8701

heres a pic of it on an actual rx7..



found it on another thread here that had rapidly descended into an argument over drifting. jeez..

meerkat8701

like this?



not my taste either but i reckon it could work on the fc. just think of it as a little bit of an exaggerated duckbill =P

clokker

iTrader: (2)

K, lemme try that.




Nope, still don't like.

In fact, even after moving heaven and earth to get a duckbill for my car, I think both the Z and FC look better with no spoiler at all.

But you be you, girl.

blame

^ agreed. wingless fc's look awesome.

-sean

meerkat8701

im still not sure what ill do tbh, the duckbill is very nice as it is and it sometimes feel like i want to change things just for the sake of changing them. the rocket bunny wing is though, unlike alot of cosmetic mods done to fc,s, quite unique. i dont know whether its because its ugly or not

i picked up my brake rebuild kits on the way to the garage but when i got there and opened them i saw this...



i asked specifically for kits for the front and rear brakes. i dont get it. it cost 450kr (cheaper than i originally thought but still you can see that one boot is way too big and the other one that seems to be the same size as the boot for the front brake caliper only has ONE boot! considering i have 8 pistons to repair, this would cost me a rediculous amount of money to repair them all. somethings definately wrong. ill have to back and find out what kind of catastrophic communication breakdown has occured to cause this.

seeing that i wasnt going to be getting anything done with the brakes today, i turned my attention to where i left off yesterday. i removed the transmission mounts and cleaned up the bracket and started painting it. all of the nuts broke off of the little sheild on it so i sawed them off, popped out the leftover bits of bolt with a punch and will be replacing them with new ones. im assuming that the reason that its there is so that the same thing doesnt happen to the nuts on the bushing so i thanked it for a job well done. (i think)
whilst spraying up the bracket, i changed out the engine mounts. through this i realised why it such an absolute bastard to get the engine into place last time. its alot easier if you leave them a bit loose when installing it. a lesson learned. i wasnt finished spraying the bracket so i took some cleaning agent i had left over from the job i did in jönköping last autumn cleaning all those filthy cnc machines and started cleaning up the engine bay with it. fantastic stuff. spray, leave it for a couple minutes and wipe off crap with a damp cloth. worked a charm! i got halfway through before i had to go home. ( i should technically be asleep now).

its a bit hard to see the difference with this blurry pic but it made a big difference. i had cleaned the left side and trust me the right side is muckier than it looks. ill look forward to sorting it out so that it can all get dirty again



ill be working all day tomorrow and theres a possibillity that may be forced to work 24 hours if nobody turns up for the night shift. if things keep up like this ill at least be able to strike being broke off of my complaints list..

blame

engine bay looks good buddy! maybe bring a front and a rear caliper in with you when you talk to them about the rebuild kits so that they know what you need. the kit they gave you might be for a base model 4-bolt fc, which i believe had a single bigger piston in the front caliper. that might be what that one big boot is for.

last summer i was in pretty much the same boat as you with work, so much overtime that i got almost nothing done on my fc. it has paid for a hell of a lot of parts though!

a 24 hour shift will be super rough no matter what you do though, best of luck man

-sean

meerkat8701

thanks man i dont know how long the bay will stay that way but doing it a couple of times a year will make it an easier job to do. im an hour into the shift and it already feels horrible. i shall be using the tried and tested englishman's method of lots and lots of cups of tea.
ill have to get down there on monday and try to find out what happened. i thoguht that picture would suffice but its a good idea to take the calipers with me so that i can check them directly in the store.

it seems strange that i only got a kit for one side anyway. it all seems a bit expensive but i only have myself to blame for getting all cavalier with the wire wheel.

clokker

iTrader: (2)

They gave you a kit for the stock, single piston front calipers, not the 4-pots you actually have.

meerkat8701

thanks clokker! i should have checked when i was in the store really.

i am so captain hindsight..

clokker

iTrader: (2)

While you await the right kit, go ahead and paint the calipers.
You've already freed the pistons, right?

meerkat8701

busted. i am actually a little unsure of how to get them out. it would be really nice with some sort of writeup with pictures on how to do it because i found nothing in either the fsm or the book. there is a writeup "with pictures" on here but there werent any pictures. i think i read something about using compressed air or is there a simpler way?

clokker

iTrader: (2)

Well, the simplest way is to do it before you remove the calipers...use the hydraulics to force the pistons out.
You are, sadly, beyond that point, so compressed air will have to do.

The trick to this will be moving all the pistons without popping any single one completely free.

It appears that you've sandblasted the calipers, so before doing anything make sure they're clean of media/grit. Once clean, pry out the dust seals, they've done their bit and new ones are part of the kit.

It's easiest to just bolt the caliper back onto the knuckle w/rotor but I guess that's not an option for you now, so you'll just have to fix the caliper in a vise or some other method to stabilize it. Use a chunk of suitably thick wood in the caliper, thick enough so the pistons can extend but not pop completely out.
Apply air to the port that the hose feeds to...just a short burst.
You should see some-hopefully all, but probably not- of the pistons move out.

If they all moved- excellent.
If not, you must restrain all the pistons that did move (wood blocks, c clamps, whatever you can arrange), leaving only the stuck piston free to move. Apply more air till it frees the stuck one (but don't let it pop all the way out).
Once they all start moving, use thinner wood and more air to allow the pistons to equally extend till one finally pops all the way out.
The others should be extended far enough to just weasel out by hand or (carefully) pry out using screwdrivers in the dust seal groove.

It's pretty obvious once you start doing it and doesn't take a ton of time.
Just remember, the further extended you can get all the pistons before one pops and you lose pressure, the better off you are.

meerkat8701

thanks clokker! you sir, are a gentleman and a scholar.

interesting that you mentioned sandblasting. the results you saw were from some serious over-zealousness with a drill and assorted wire wheels. hence the worn off parts of the dust seals. i actually had to google it to find what sandblasting is and what manner of sorcery it is. im definately going to be doing it on my steel wheels when theyre done anyway. thanks for the writeup ill be having a crack at it tomorrow if i get the chance to get over to the garage. all hopes of m getting out of this 24 hr shift are fully gone so i geuss ill have to do it when i wake up. considering my girlfriend is six months pregnant, it is an absolute frickin miracle that she hasnt lost it with me yet for being at the garage all the time. fingers crossed that it holds