Looks good man! Keep it up! I'm also not looking forward to changing all my bushings either!

 

Thanks bud! Yeah it's a bit of work to do, but these mmr bushings are pretty stout so hopefully I won't have to do it again

Prince George eh? That's (kind of) my neck of the woods

-sean

 

so after work today i brought the rear control arms to my buddy at the machine shop and he pressed the bushings out with a 900 trazillion ton hydraulic press (actual spec). obviously it popped them out like butter, but while the front control arm ones came out clean, these ones tore and left a bunch of rubber still in the hole. we torched the remaining rubber off (stinky!) and found that these rear control arm bushings have 2 steel sleeves between the rubber bushing and the hole.. weird. the rubber is quite firmly attached to both of these sleeves, and each one has a lip around the outer circumference preventing it from being pushed through the hole. i really don't know how you could get these mounts out without a huge press and torch, or at least a whole mess of drilling and scraping etc.. not fun




popped those sleeve deals out with a punch and a hammer, and the new bushings went in no problem




^^ one of the sleeves that came out can be seen sitting on the vise, minding it's own business


seeing as all the bushings and mounts were now where they were supposed to be..
BAM!


BAM!


BAM!



i also mounted the ball joint tab on top of the front control arms instead of below it, in my crazy head this should help a little bit with the wonky roll center from having the car significantly lower than stock. am i making a foolish mistake? can anyone tell me if i'll die a flaming horrible death because of this? thanks



one more little baby step closer to taking it for a drive..

-sean

 

So i acquired a new family member..





1998 Kawasaki Ninja ZX-6R

This is going to be a fun summer.

-sean

 

Nice build dude the car looks awesome.

 

derp de derp.. no real work has been going into the 'ol mazda lately, i've been using the summer and fall to get as much motorcycle riding and subaru autocrossing in as i can. parts for the mazda keep magically showing up however, and i'm starting to run out of places to put them so i'd better begin putting them on the car. this winter will be a flurry of activity, i'm getting real excited for this beast.



please excuse the disaster zone of a shop, a cleaning day is much needed.


the daily mule has been getting some good use as well





turbo setup is coming up next, every time i get close to having a lump sum large enough to put an order in with elliot at turblown, i buy something. soon though, i promise.

-sean

 

looks like fun bud cool fc

 

hey thanks buddy, i was just checking out your sweet new red project you posted about.

-sean

 

hell ya keep it up !

 

Sounds like you will be having fun this winter! good luck! You are very lucky you have the space for that.

 

roll center, or anything else, is pivot point to pivot point, so anything you do to the arm in between doesn't matter

 

Good to know man, thanks for the heads up. I've been focusing on other things not related so much to suspension geometry so far. I've still got plenty of time before she's back on the road so I'll do some reading and figure out what I can do to make sure everything is set up properly

-sean

 

Ready when you are when you want to turn up the power!

 

all three of my favorite cars Subaru, skyline, and the lovely rx7

 

Turblown - oh man, I've been ready for a while but my bank account doesn't like to listen ha ha.. I was wanting to get everything at once (full tdx61r fc street kit with manifold/wastegates etc, adaptronic e440d, injectors) try and save on shipping, but I'm just retarded and every time I get close to saving the full amount I go and buy a motorcycle or something.. I think I'll just suck up the cost of paying shipping and brokerage twiceand order the turbo kit now and the rest later. That way I can start installing stuff, get a flange on the downpipe, tweak and fit my intercooler piping and yadda yadda. Then with the biggest purchase out of the way, coming up with a couple grand for ecu and injectors and accessories will be easier to do without getting distracted by something shiny.
I'll email you about it on monday


Ionix - and the sexy cars in the crew keep multiplying! There's now 3 Subaru's (the blue usdm rs gc8 with the cage in the pictures, a '95 sti 555 that's recently been acquired and my black '06 wrx), 3 rx7's (2 FC's and an FD), 2 s13 240sx's (one of which will be getting an s15 front end soon), and a mitsu evo 5 will be joining the party next month. Oh, and the skyline. We're creating a movement in my little northern hick town ha ha, its crazy

- sean

 

Time to heat this 2nd gen section up.... Sean's new turbo...

EFR 8374 .92 Internal Wastegate turbo!

Borg Warner EFR 8374 Turbocharger

 

Woop woop!!

Can't wait! Thanks Elliot

-sean

 

What's been going on bro I can only read through your thread so many times haha might be doing all my bushings in the near future looks like fun

 

hey buddy, nothing much has been going on lately with my 7, we're frozen solid up here and just trying to survive ha ha..

also me and my buddy are waiting on turblown to ship us a bunch of turbo stuff, holidays and some personal stuff for him have created some delays, but everything should be shipped out in the next couple weeks i hope. the bushings were honestly a big pain to do. the front lower control arm rear pivot bushings and rear lca sleeved bushings especially, make sure you have a BFH lol

as a general update:

my buddy has an FD that ate an engine and subsequently a turbo, so that is sitting lifeless in the main working area of our shop right now. a new REW was brought in from japan but he needs a turbo from elliot so we can put it all back together and get it out of the shop before i can really start anything on mine.

as soon as his FD is out of the shop, i want to degrease + scuff + spray bomb my engine bay black before putting the engine back in. once that's done there's a lot of stuff i can start buttoning back up to keep me busy until the NEXT car is done and out of the shop (bone stock auto s13 240sx, getting sr20/5-spd swap, s15 front end, paint). then i'm hoping at the start of spring i can get into the body work on my FC when all the mechanical stuff is pretty much done. that's going to be a bitch. i hate sanding.

my power steering was always super problematic before, and the current pump will be in the way of the new fmic piping, so i've been toying with the idea of getting my hands on an mr2 electric ps pump and using that. with an analog speedo cable, i'm not sure the power assist amount could be scaled for speed on these cars, but it's just an idea for now that i haven't really researched yet

more to come in a couple weeks hopefully

-sean

 

Sean your kit is on the stand upfront!

 

Big turbo, Would you like alittle rotor with your setup wow, impressive

 

Glad to see people finally using the new EFR turbos....that thing looks great!

 

Turblown: thanks for the picture Elliot, I can't wait til I get that monster in my grubby little paws! I was doing some thinking and my Walbro 255 might be a little lacking feeding those ID2000's I'm planning to run. Can you get your hands on anything beefier? (Aeromotive 340/ Deatschwerks 300/ Walbro 400). I'll need to get a fuel pressure regulator as well


Craze8: ha ha yeah, that sure is a beefy bastard. and if you do some reading on it, kind of nuts in other ways too. I'm super excited. I decided not to mess around this time


driftxsequence: yeah man, it took a while for most of the EFR's to get into the hands of the customers. a few setbacks in production, then a lot of filling pre-orders with race teams and shops and stuff. my buddy had one bought and paid for over a year and a half before his showed up. I was originally going to go with Turblown's TDX61R (which would have been awesome as well I think), but he offered me a great deal on the EFR and I couldn't say no.

 

Very cool. I remember seeing a clip of a 7670 in a FD spooling as low as 2000 RPM...looking forward to see what numbers you make

 

I wish I could say some numbers would be coming soon, but that's not likely. Even after I'm done the build and tune, estimates and HP calculator figures will be all I can provide until I can do a big road trip to get some dyno pulls. There's no dyno anywhere near me, and the ones within day trip distance are diesel truck shops so we'll have to see how it goes.

Ideally I would like to take the car to my guy Airboy in Calgary who did the dyno tuning on my Subaru. He's a real whiz with Subaru and Nissan tuning and has a nice 4 wheel dyno dynamics, but that is a big trip just for some baselines.

-sean