pzr2

iTrader: (4)

Hi,

I'm back. Wow, has it been forever. Quick primer - all previously stated plans are on fire or have long passed into smoke and ash. The most I've done to the black T2 in recent years is take more parts out of it, and the tornado silver heap is still rotting into the dirt. Electrical connector jazz and the website are... uh... in progress. (no)

I won't lie, I've been especially low on focus and motivation, so I'm here looking for internet bullying to get my *** in gear for the off chance I still have the slightest possibility of making Sevenstock this year under triangle power. The plan here is to catch up on a build thread on the car with daily bites, so I can motivate myself to hustle and finish more work between now and getting caught up, so I don't embarrass myself with how little I've gotten done. And then from there, you guys can call me an idiot for messing something up in real time instead of having to hear that after I come back posting about how the car got home on a flatbed again.

With this arbitrary deadline, it's now officially a "time-crunch" so Good Enough TM can now be the primary build ethos rather than the usual pedantry and project creep that usually kills my projects. First order of business: work scope. Get the T2 or the grot tornado silver car working? Ready your best noises of exasperation - it's going to be a different car that's way worse off than either of them.

Back in the summer of 2017, I bought a pair of FCs and dragged them out of some guy's backyard, where they had been returning to the earth for about 5 years. I mentioned them in passing in the tornado silver's "build thread" (lol) and never elaborated much, but it was bad. Parked with open windows and missing hoods in the dusty backyard of what retrospection tells me was a hoarder's house (yes, that's an airplane with no wings next to them). Both were disasters as a result of animals living in them, haboobs, monsoons, and the southwest sun murdering anything plastic. Even the glass filled nylon parts like the air box were disintegrating and leaving fiberglass strands everywhere. One of my first posts on this forum was about how I was stupid enough to buy the tornado silver car in the state that it was in, for which I got gently lambasted, so I wasn't quite ready to divulge the fact that I never learned. But, it was a hell of a deal even for the time. 2 mostly complete but ugly, non-running project cars for the price of 1 rolling shell these days. I pulled the trigger against my better judgment.



The backstory apparently was that the previous owner got both of them from auction and planned to smash them together into a single working car, so I was going to step in and finish that work (if you can even consider the "project" as ever being started before being given up). The red car was a 1987 SE that I can only assume was Little Timmy's first bondo project. It was bashed up, the *** end was crooked, the rear quarters had bondo thicker than a paving slab, and yes, the rear Mazda emblem was stuck where it was because of how much bondo was in the original spot. But, it purportedly had a working engine and plenty of other functional bits, i.e. 5 lug hubs, LSD, 4 piston brakes, the complete sport aero package, a 5 speed, etc., so it was going to be the engine donor for the other car. The silver car is a 1987 GXL that died of an engine fire. Passenger side, so I'm guessing a faulty FPD was to blame. Besides the extensive surface rust all over the engine bay, transmission tunnel, and shock towers from the fire stripping the paint, the peeling clear coat, and the bent front bumper from the firefighters prying open the hood, this car was in way better exterior shape than the red one. I know, still laughably terrible, but it's all relative here. It likewise had a bunch of nice goodies, including center speaker doors, the same go-fast-bits as the red car, and a surprisingly non-cracked dashboard. My rationale was that even if getting the car put together was totally impossible, I had enough valuable parts on my hands to recoup my costs.



I hauled them to a borderline abandoned property my parents owned but couldn't be bothered to fix up, and attempted to mash them together there. Being the least of their priorities, the property didn't have water or electricity or a sealed roof or a lock on the gate or a usable driveway. It was also a 3 hour round trip away from home, so every trip was a commitment that involved lots of gas station food (I miss my college stomach being able to tolerate that and all the alcohol). I was also still in college at the time, so progress was miserable, slow, and intermittent. While the cars were stuck there, I really only managed to rip the dead engine out of the silver car, toss all the unsalvageable parts, get the engine in the red car to turn over and splutter a bit with some starting fluid, scream like a little girl at the sight of what looked like a brown recluse, spend 20 minutes chasing it around with a can of carb cleaner, and take stock of the absurd challenge I gave myself.




Obligatory GoPro handy for idiots like me with the memory of a goldfish.




Engine was very boned from the fire.




But apparently not boned enough for me to have very bad no good stupid thoughts anyways.

pzr2

iTrader: (4)

Genuinely, one of the dumbest things I've ever attempted. It also does not help when you start tearing apart your main modes of transport in the middle of this chaos.






(Just ignore the child's bike with the 2 stroke motor attached to it, we don't talk about it anymore)

Eventually, I got punted out of the family home to go live near campus. My parents said it was for me to get experience living on my own, but in the back of my head, I had the sensation that they were tired of my **** given I now had a grand total of 4 RX7s and no job. Ironically, this was a huge boon to the progress of the project. The place I bunked up at had a 2 car garage I could shove the cars into and, uh, electricity. That's really nice.





Seeing the garage in this state is really alien.

The newest top priority was stripping everything of value off the red car and sending it off to return to the metal cycle of life. The pictures really did not show just how bad it was. One of the bondo chunks I pulled off it was big enough to be a doorstop, and the rust and holes beneath it were horrifying to look at. Ended up best to euthanize the poor thing. May its soul brap on as an airplane toilet or something. Perhaps it knew what was coming, because it promptly did the classic FC thing of having the outer door handle break, and then on top of that, the latch mechanism turned out to be frozen shut (probably related). It would have been great to have gotten rid of the red car to use the space in the garage for work, but the real reason was my parents wanted at least 1 of the RX7s off their lot, so I hauled the tornado silver car and brought it to the garage.

(Just imagine an image of the bare shell on the floor of the garage, I was stripping it of things right up till the tow truck driver arrived and never took a picture of it)

As for the tornado silver car, I don't exactly have a good image of when I first moved it in. It's hard to get the motivation to document a car that you think of as a shelf more than anything.



I now had a decent place to work, a car to fiddle with, and a pile of parts to put into it. This was many months after picking the cars up, but this really felt like the proper start line.



Heavy lifting starts tomorrow

GtiKyle

iTrader: (5)

Really good story so far. Love the details, and your honesty about where things are at. It's tough to stare reality in the face sometimes. I've got a long (5 year plus) project that I'm coming to realize i will never finish, and it's time to let it go. I poured so much money and time into it, but I'm just done. I'd rather focus on the FD project instead. Best of luck to yah.

ruddyrid

iTrader: (8)

Man oh man. Welp, I'm not much of a bully, but I'll do my part to try and hold you accountable! Subbed, and ready with popcorn.

need-a-t2

iTrader: (9)

Welcome to the motivation party. Honestly, making a public statment of your intentions is the best way to start and creates accountability. I'd suggest telling your close friends and family as well, so they can also shame you into actually doing something and not just watching youtube vidoes of other people doing the things you should be out doing yourself. Not that I'm speaking from experience or anything....I also find it useful that I make myself do at least 1 thing on my project a day. Doesn't matter how large or small a task, do 1 thing that progresses your project every day. Last night I soldered about 5 wires together and that was it, but it's done and today I can move onto the next task. You'll be surprised how much you get done in a week.

pzr2

iTrader: (4)

Thanks for the kind words. Knowing when to call it and adjust my expectations has been one of the hardest lessons I've learned over the years. I'm not sure if it was the repeated humbling from the disproportionate time I've owned 7s compared to driving them, or if I've finally achieved some semblance of emotional maturity. I logged in and was surprised by the Senior title. I guess I just am getting old in spirit (and spine). I had a look through your build thread and am wishing the best for you and your FD!

Please do! I'll let you know when I'm doing something questionable without a fire extinguisher again so you can get the 2 for 1 on entertainment and free heat for the kernels.

I'm already having to slap myself for thinking "well, I have about a week's worth of updates, so maybe I can rewatch Project Binky for the 4th time for 5 days and then magically get a month's worth of work done in 2 days..." But hey, progress made today, so it's already working evidently. I'll be doing my best to keep up daily accountability posts from here on out.

Before I resume, a quick detour: apparently I do have an image of the shelf when I first parked it inside



So, I am now living on my own. Kind of. My mother set me up with a roommate. Forget your first assumptions - it was a middle aged Russian woman she met at a taichi lesson. Life was really weird. But anyways, while I have my bills covered, I am also operating on a shoestring budget from whatever is leftover from doing deliveries. You bet this car is being crapped together with a rattle can and every shadetree mechanic tip I can extract from Roadkill.

But first, Sevenstock, the whole motivation for documenting this mess. It's fall of 2017, and with 3 very not working RX7s, my options for making the big 50 anniversary boiled down to the trusty ole steed.



(This was not a good idea, but what part of this thread made you think I was going to start making responsible decisions)



You might be able to make out the parking section of shame for everyone that arrived dorito-less like me.










It was really nice being able to commingle with everyone. Especially this lad. I don't remember your name, but it was nice that you didn't laugh at me for showing up on a Honda.

pzr2

iTrader: (4)

Soon, hopefully.

With renewed vigor from being amongst fellow rotorheads and aspirational machinery, I promptly did nothing with the car for another month. Something inconvenient related to finals or whatever.

I'm not really sure how to tackle this bit of the build because everything was a total blur of cleaning and bodging things together. Most of my pictures from this period are very evidently reminders or notes for something to panic about.

WHAT IS THIS BOLT



WHERE'S THE BATTERY TIE DOWN



WHAT IS THAT



WHY



AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA



The most appropriate point to start is likely the engine bay because that's how things really snowballed. The rust bothered me, so I stripped everything back in hopes of bending the sheetmetal back into shape and repainting the bay. As always, way too much work, way too much mess, but seeing the improvement put bad thoughts of "but what if everything looked this nice" and then it was all downhill from there.



Got rid of the firefighter's beak modification





Good, now, leave it there - stop, don't - no, you're going to regret this -



Haha oh god no

Kellis

iTrader: (4)

I am loving the stream of consciousness here.

Yeah you'll regret that until its done (5 years? 10? Needs more motivation) but it sure will look purty after

WondrousBread

I'm enjoying reading this, you definitely have a lot of work ahead of you there. One thing I've realized is to just not let it sit. Drive it (even if it drives like crap), work on it, vacuum the carpet, whatever tiny thing you can do.

Not only does this get it done faster than you think (like need-a-t2 says), but if you don't make some progress or eke some tiny enjoyment from the car, you start resenting the project. And that's never good.

Eager to see more updates.

pzr2

iTrader: (4)

Gonna have to apologize in advance, I have done nothing on this front to remedy its shaggy appearance lol

Yes, absolutely. I have 2 schedules I'm working off of, the intelligently laid out, efficient, stick up the *** manufacturing engineer list, and the list of things that appease my inner child. I'm doing my best to jump between them whenever I need to.

Anyways, after many sweaty, dusty, miserable days of realizing I don't know the slightest thing about body work, I gave up halfway and started focusing on things of actual consequence.

Evicting the biohazards was a massive priority, so that was next.





Mostly de-poo'd. Probably still a minor health hazard despite my best efforts (and vinyl spray hiding the worst of it)

By now, I had gotten tired of my hilariously precarious arrangement for moving the car about while I undercoated the car: stacks of cinder blocks and a really unhappy pair of dollys. I really have no idea how I didn't get maimed by my own negligence. It was way overdue getting it back on its own wheels.






New pads, rotors, rebuilt calipers, polyurethane bushings, lowering springs, and pretty much anything I felt too ugly was cleaned or painted. Suspiciously by the book. Not cheaping out here is probably why I'm not dead, but my budget really hurt from here on out.

Fuel tank came out for cleaning. I bought a gallon of muriatic acid before thinking better of it and using good old fashion rocks, water, and a violent shake. Acid is still hanging out in my garage for my nonexistent pool.

Also, there is apparently an image somewhere my friend took where I fell asleep under the car immediately after installing the rear suspension assembly. It was a very long day.




Back when I was stripping the red car, I cut straight through the wiring harness in my haste to remove the engine. The passenger door was stuck and I wasn't able to get to the ECU plugs until the last few hours before the car went to the scrapyard, so out came the snippers. One of those unfortunate circumstances where you know why you did it, but are nonetheless annoyed by having to deal with the consequences. Rather than just use a cancerous wart of 40 bright red splices, I added a set of GT150 connectors at the shock tower.

This is more or less ground zero of the connector freakout I had. If you had any doubts on where my obsession with finding the electrical connectors for FCs came from, this car and its abysmal wiring harness are the source of my spiraling insanity. I don't have many pictures of just how terrible the connectors on this harness were, but most were a stiff breeze from checking out and letting the terminals short against each other. Spent quite a bit of time robbing connectors from other wiring harnesses or splicing on generics to make it passable.





Et voila, magic pixies appeased, at the low, low cost of 1/10th of my soul.

need-a-t2

iTrader: (9)

If you haven't already seen it, you may want to take a look at this thread for lots of connector info.


and with the value of FCs going up, 1/10 of your soul could still be worth quite a bit of cash when it's all done

pzr2

iTrader: (4)

Yes, I've talked to JerryLH3 a few times about electrical connectors, in particular that accursed S5 MAF connector, and his work on S5s is outstanding. I didn't realize my ramblings were the inspiration for his work though! If you want to see said ramblings, they're in this thread.

My focus is mostly on S4s so there are a handful of differences. One of many projects vying for attention is that website I was supposed to make to catalog the connector data I've amassed, but uh, "in progress".

Now for the elephant in the room - the engine.

Extreme naivety stopped me from actually cracking this engine open like any sane rotary owner would and just rebuilding it. The inconvenient truth was that I simply didn't have the money to do it properly, so I cleaned up the outside and pretended like the engine was going to be fine, despite already knowing an apex seal was stuck in each rotor from poking into the exhaust port.



I don't really have much to say about this. Don't do drugs



Factory fresh (by British Leyland standards anyhow)



Before I move past this, I need to vent, because this image makes my wrists hurt. I'm sure most of us Americans here are using some sort of SAE fractional hose in lieu of the proper metric sizes, and for the most part, that's fine. Despite most of the fractional sizes being slightly smaller, you're dealing with rubber vacuum and fuel hose that has a bit of give. Around the time that I was shopping for hoses, the news was full of discussions about whether the government was going to go through with mandating an increased ethanol content in gasoline to E15, so I opted to give that fuel hose with the ethanol resistant plastic liner a try. Holy ****, you really feel the difference of 0.1mm in diameter when the liner wants to give you 0. I shot myself in the other foot by replacing all the vacuum hoses with braided hose meant for washer jets I believe. Just as stubborn. Pure wrist pain for a week and no shortage of masturbation jokes (not helped by the amount of vaseline I used)

Anyhow, about now is when I went on vacation for a bit with family. That's when I got fidgety and started writing out total nonsense in that other "build thread" I was never going to get around to. I don't exactly have many images from that vacation that aren't too personal, so here's a Twingo



When I got back, it was time to finally make this car look like a car again.





Alright, home stretch, right?



Just about buttoned up by now, needs fluids...




AaaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Patience, patience, calm, zen, empty, empty

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAA

(After a lot of shouting into my cereal, I resolved this by cutting a longer length of hose and covering the break in the hardline with the extra length. Rubber undercoat has still not been touched up)

need-a-t2

iTrader: (9)

you guys are saints for going thru and finding all those connectors. As an extremely lazy person, I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

You're making extremely good progress on this build. Keep that momentum!

j9fd3s

iTrader: (3)

lmao, mine is exactly like this too, i feel bad because i never check anything off the to do list....

pzr2

iTrader: (4)

Last night was a late night and I never got around to the daily update, but we'll pretend like it was a deliberate cliffhanger for added dramatic flair.

Stay tuned for that website! Should be out by 2058.

My child appeasement list has been whittled down to a handful of stragglers dependent on finishing the important work, so I've been finally forced to be productive, lol

--------------

It's every programmer's favorite day - debug.

Y brappn't

Spark was good/painful, compression was laughable with the stuck seals, but I was bandaid-ing with bottomless cocktails of MMO and ATF, I couldn't think of any obvious air obstructions, and I knew the fuel pump was definitely working from the feed line fiasco fumigating me out of the garage for a day.


Amazing, car hasn't run yet and it already needed deflooding

Eventually, I found that, despite already managing to flood, it wanted fuel still, as it only ran with starting fluid. Pressure was evidently in the lines with the stiffness of the feed hose. I knew the injectors could open and close from the carb cleaner cleaning I did to them, it was just a matter of figuring out why it didn't want to trigger the injectors.


Food
Research what I needed to do to remove the intake manifolds again
Sinking dread related to having to remove those stubborn vacuum hosess
Shower to procrastinate
Epiphany

I'm pretty sure I had a similar problem with the T2, but it turned out to be the MAF again. It was shutting off the fuel pump. This time I assumed it was because I left the intake hose off to spray starting fluid down the throttle body. I hooked the air intake hose back up and

It still didn't run

The flapper door was just barely jammed shut. Took the filter out, poked the door with my finger, and




Honestly, I'm amazed this heap ever ran at all (and that I didn't take this as a reason to buy a fire extinguisher by now)



The rest of the month was a blur of fiddling. I bled the coolant, messed with idle, changed the oil, got yelled at by the Prius driver down the street for the smoke this thing was still dumping out, steam cleaned the engine to unstick the seals, adjusted TPS, got all the exterior lighting functional, etc. I made a post about power steering bogging the engine around this time and left this photo:



See the problem?



Brain not work too good

AZ has 3 day no-questions-asked temp plates for $1 that you can use to transport cars for repairs, emissions, and registration. In typical fashion, things started going to **** when I got one printed and stuck to the back of the car. I forget what other things I had to fix, but I do remember having to reapply for those temp plates because the air pump pulley bolts fell out.




That all being said, it did manage to get to the emissions inspection center and pass, which I am still amazed about. Mostly because when I fixed the air pump pulley matter, I completely forgot to hook the air pump back up and it still managed to pass. ADEQ must have a wide berth of lenience for rotaries or something.

With all required paperwork in order, I managed to get the car registered and out on the road properly. In my excessive enthusiasm, I started daily-ing this car which was quite a lot of unnecessary added stress. It ran 99% without issue, with that last 1% being the parts where it would sometimes die on its own and not start again without sufficient aimless fiddling about the engine bay with the hood up. This usually happened in really inconvenient spots, like the left lane of a highway or the middle of an intersection. I poked at it a lot, but couldn't really chase down what the problem was. It ran consistently enough that I could join my friends at the local mountain roads, so it never stopped me from just continuing to drive the car.



Accurate to my frame of mind at the moment. Abandoned purely because **** ASU I'm not giving them any more money



I was not kidding when I said I'm terrible at body work



Insert joke about wife and side piece meeting



Still to this day, I haven't been able to figure out this issue. I tried both a set of Eibach lowering springs, then a set of Tanabe GF210s on Tokico Blues, both of which dumped the front to the point of constant rubbing while leaving the back riding sky high. More on this in future




Beep beep the comedic relief is coming through

Brrraaap

Man I would’ve gone insane, in about the same shape but it’s all from one car, it’s ALL apart and I told myself I was waiting on parts and now I just don’t have motivation

pzr2

iTrader: (4)

I generally pride myself on having more mechanical sympathy than my peers, but clearly I didn't given I was booting this poor thing up mountain roads while it was sublimating its internals like this



For an added twist of the knife, I just managed to figure out how to sort of fix the atrocious panel gap at the front



Right before the engine finally stopped tolerating my BS



While going uphill, the engine started getting a bit hot. It should have been red flags enough that the coolant gauge ever moved, but I thought it was "manageable" and backed off so I could drive it home. Nope. It got hot again, and this time, started losing power before completely quitting in the middle of the road. The engine would turn over, but not start. I had to come back with a truck, a tow rope, and a friend. We dragged it to a section of road that was downhill for a while before disconnecting the tow rope and letting the 7 roll down the road on its own. After you clear the main downhill bit, you're essentially off the mountain, but there are a lot of rolling hills and flat sections before you're actually out of the park, so my 2 functioning braincells crossed wires and thought trying to give it the push start to end all push starts at 40MPH wasn't a cataclysmically stupid idea. It did come back to life, but sounded like it was running on 1 rotor. It died again soon after, but we were out of the park and had space to maneuver it onto a trailer.



For many, many months, I really didn't want to touch the car. It had blown a couple months before I graduated and right after I got an actual part-time job related to my degree, so it wasn't a priority. I was also sort of in a motoring low point, between the blown up RX7, crashing my motorcycle, and letting this accursed heap of **** start to ruin my life, but I'm not really going to get into that (too much).



Rather than go in and figure out why it was dead, I bought some Shine Auto panels for it and did my best to ignore it. Mostly because my job was burning me out and the Civic was increasingly flushing my savings and sanity down the toilet. Speaking of, my toilet also broke. I'm never replacing a toilet in my life again if I can help it.





The one time I did try to make some progress on the RX7, I decided I wanted to rip out the blue carpet because it was still admittedly disgusting despite my best efforts. I got as far as attempting the seats before I got to a frozen bolt. It ripped the weld nut right out of the sheetmetal.



Back to the backburner with you

I know this post has been excessively whinge-y, but I don't have a particularly good excuse for not having done much to the FC since 2019. At least, not until COVID hit. Then I was just swamped with work.

pzr2

iTrader: (4)

Fast forward to late 2020, I had made a habit of collecting really garbage condition engines under the delusion that I'd finally find something low effort enough to smash back into the car and get going again, but I wound up with lemon after lemon.



Out of a junkyard car, had blown coolant seals from collapsed seal groove walls.



Jank, worn, grooved up irons, weird modifications done to it including water pump ears ground off the irons.





"Rebuilt". Catastrophically chewed up, missing front stat gear because eccentric shaft seized on the rotor bearing (or causality could have gone the other way. I don't know whether to believe incompetence destroyed the motor or it was wrecked and someone tried to piece together garbage to sell as a "rebuilt" engine). Spare jack had to come out of the Camry just to disassemble this mess. Also came with a pile of destroyed housings, so I probably should have seen the writing on the walls. (A side track, the guy who sold me this collection of scraps recently texted me asking if he could forward my number to a friend that had questions about rotaries. Wasn't in the mood to respond)




Out of a junkyard auto transmission car that was bent up from a hit. Closest core to not being utter crap, but still a bit worn out with the beginnings of chrome flaking on the rotor housings. At this point, I just needed a set of irons in OK condition (especially the middle one) and these were the closest I got to acceptable.

A tally for those keeping count:

• 2 x S4 T2 engines, one from the black T2, one from the junkyard car
• 5 x S4 NA engines: one from the red SE, the junkyard auto car, 2 off craigslist, the torched engine originally in the GXL (although this one went straight into the bin)
• 1 x S6 engine from an auto car
• Assorted loose irons from whatever was packaged with craigslist engines and also from buying them separately when I still had plans to build the REW, plus housings from a car a friend abandoned fixing up

All terrible!

I figured it was about time I see if the engine already in my car was rebuildable rather than keep farting around with all these blown mystery engines.

pzr2

iTrader: (4)

Autopsy on the engine was pretty brutal. The thrust bearing plate was nuked, thrust bearings annihilated, and the front main bearing was mostly in the oil pan. Both rotor bearings were also spun and destroyed, and the front rotor tips appear to have contacted the side housings. Side housings and eccentric shaft were garbage. Pretty much the entire core was toast.






So uh. Definitely not usable.

I only have theories on what caused all this. I never overrev'd the engine purely because I'm not a very brave driver, so that's out. More likely what happened is that the engine got hot, the oil cooked, and the front main bearing spun. That would have starved the thrust bearings of oil and given the rotors enough play to contact the side housings. I won't rule out the thrust bearings could have also been my own fault as I resealed the front cover when it was on the stand, but I'd be amazed if it ever ran with misaligned thrust bearings given the garbage compression and then kept going for several thousand miles. That being said, I'd appreciate feedback and suggestions if anybody has more plausible explanations for all the carnage.

Going off my presumptions about the root cause, my planned corrective action is to install better gauges (oil temp, oil pressure, and coolant temp), install an aluminum radiator, big stonking electric fan, double up on oil coolers, swap for a turbo oil pump, shim the pressure regulator, and get rid of the T2 hood which was probably messing with airflow out of the radiator.

JerryLH3

iTrader: (11)

Your thread was a great leaping off point and helped point me in the right direction of where to find many of the connectors used in an S5 emissions harness. I never did find out if that Toyota connector was the same as the S5 AFM, the Toyota dealership never called me back and I never tried to order from an online dealer. I also never found the knock connector, but nearly coming up with the whole thing was an accomplishment in itself. I keep going down the rabbit hole and have found a few more connectors. I'm currently making a mini harness to plug in between the cruise control computer and front harness to make it easier to diagnose my current cruise control issue.

Excited to see the progress! That engine is quite junk.

pzr2

iTrader: (4)

Whoops, missed your comment. Yeah, it's been pretty discouraging having all the parts scattered everywhere and an overwhelming amount of problems to resolve, but something I've found works for me is making sure I've got things to do that maintain or reignite interest in the project. Yesterday's daily quota was spent vectoring a dumb little sticker I'm having a friend diecut for me so I can put it on my car when it's working, and today's update is pretty much the embodiment of trying to kickstart that excitement again.

Haha, junk is the biggest understatement of this year so far

Missing only 2 connectors out of that harness is a huge accomplishment nonetheless. It's amazing how many different connector standards Mazda used... I think j9fd3s made a comment about how ridiculous it was that Mazda somehow had the money to do seemingly frivolous things like this and designing NA vs JDM coat hooks or whatever it was. Best of luck with the cruise control endeavors! If you're ever stuck, feel free to PM me and I'll see if I've ever run into it. Honestly I need the distraction. I found out this week that I hadn't been paying attention to the account funds for the service hosting my server and my website got wiped. I wasn't storing the connector data on there, but dusting PuTTY off to reconfigure everything was not done willingly. Getting back to where I was originally is my goal for the remainder of this week

To recap, all engine options are pretty boned and that's the only real issue stopping me from advancing on this project. So, with that in mind, it's time to -



-do everything other than work on the engine.

For motivation, I've mostly been messing with appearance related parts to try and get myself excited about getting the car out on the road again. I'm going to apologize in advance for what happens next. I'm still a 12 year old at heart and entertained by silly wings and other childish additions.

The underpinnings of exterior modifications always start with... the underpinnings. Wide fenders demand wider track, and while I could have and should have gotten different wheels, I figured it wouldn't hurt to roll with spacers and dial in the fitment before committing to new wheel specs. Finding hubcentric spacers for the FC's oddball centerbore of 59.5mm was proving a bit difficult, so I went with made-to-order spacers from Motorsport Tech. No complaints for them, parts arrived within stated lead time. Front are 12mm, rears are 30mm, so the front ended up being a standard spacer while the rears were studded. That presented a slight issue with the stock studs being just barely too short up front, so I had the front hubs apart to repack the bearings and press in extended studs.



Quick metrics for those who care, the Shine parts are +30mm all around, give or take a few depending on how competent you are at fiberglass and hanging them right. Wheels are 17x8 +28, tires 225/45R17, and as mentioned, the spacers are 12mm/30mm front/rear. This will probably get tweaked in future, mostly because I'm not 100% on the fitment. Part of that was because I was slightly off on my measuring, part of it is that rear girth makes my nuts tingle and I want wheels that will tolerate 305s

And uh, yeah, I guess we have to talk about those, huh. Yes, I bought the meme rods.



When you need height adjustability, it's hard to argue with a set of coilovers that are cheaper than 2 stock replacement struts. The embarrassing height difference between front and rear with both lowering spring setups I tried made me lose interest in trying yet another set of lowering springs. All I wanted something with a collar I could fiddle up and down, anything else was bonus. From my experience with having helped install eBay special coilovers on other people's cars (friends from college were absolutely shameless and so apparently am I), they're perfectly functional for a couple years before Chinese QC catches up to them. That seems fine for me since I'm already planning on cutting off the entire front of the car eventually and completely redo-ing the suspension.

The tl;dr is the front subframe on this car doesn't fit any other cars and other subframes don't fit this car - the studs are slightly too inbound. My inference is the engine fire very slightly warped/shrunk the frame so that the car still drives straight, but now I have to have the thought of the frame warp in the back of my head. So, if I ever get around to committing this car to track duty, I'll slice off the front and tube it while installing a cage. That will also open the door to silly aero, suspension, and engine mounting ideas. But, for now, going to have to say no to Mr. Project Creep and set that thought aside. I don't see the frame snapping in the Cane's drive-thru any time soon.

Step 2 is to fit the wheels and see how it sits, but I was getting tired of tripping over the hurricane of bonked 13B housings lying around everywhere, so I detoured to tidy them. It went about as well as you can imagine.



Back to not touching engine stuff.

To get rid of the T2 hood, I ended up robbing the steel NA hood off the tornado silver car. Functional, good, but disappointing to look over the hood without that scoop...

Then I found this hilariously awful sort-of-not-really DMAX copy vent for $80 from Amazon.



Not exactly the zenith of quality when only some of the vent slots were cut out and the ones that were actually done were cut crooked. Using rivnuts and security torx bolts to hold the vent down looks comparatively overkill with the jank slots but hopefully I can clean them up. I was absolutely baffled by the ETA on shipping being a month until I got tracking that said it was inbound from Russia. All in all, I can't exactly recommend buying it, even if that were still possible with current events. But if for some god forsaken reason you find yourself compelled to do something similar, do note that the FC's hood is surprisingly curved and the vent needs a lot of persuasion to sit right.



The vent holes will eventually be fixed so I can pretend this was a functional addition. In the meanwhile, the silly factor is back so it at least accomplished that.

pzr2

iTrader: (4)

Now, before I introduce the next bad decision, I have to get something off my chest. Something that lives rent-free in my head is the moment I met a marketing rep from HKS and saw the rollercoaster of excitement to disappointment when I told him I had an RX-7 but then had to clarify it was an FC. I think (or at least hope) the ensuing rice is not an overreaction to that.



For the longest time, I had wanted to retool and make this car into something resembling a Super GT race car. I'm aware the timelines completely don't fit - more appropriate would be JSS, and even when the FD debuted, Super GT was still called the JGTC. Pedantry aside, the wild aero packages that came from early 2000s Super GT GT500 cars is still my definition of hotness, so that's the goal here.

1st hurdle for this endeavor started with the wing. Something that really bothered me about off-the-shelf wings was that none of them match the wing stand spacing you'd need to emulate most touring cars. They're usually way too far apart - stand spacing is usually no more than a foot and a half apart on the real deal, but aftermarket wings like the RE Amemiya unit have the stands to the absolute edges of the rear hatch. Maybe the priorities are different, i.e. supporting the aerofoil vs building it heavier and more robust to keep the surfaces clean towards the outside of the wing. I'm not really sure, but it was complicated my plans.

I could always default to a chassis mount, but I really don't like the look of them on FCs. Most wings from real touring cars have them sprout from a trunk, or whatever is the closest approximation to that for fastbacks. Since the FC doesn't exactly have the topside real estate for that without making a comically large rear spoiler as a ledge to park the wing on, I aimed to mount the wing through the gap between the license plate and a set of convertible tail lights. That locked me into a stand spacing of roughly 20-22" wide, which left remaining options to look at something made-to-order or something a chassis wing manufacturer had lying around since they would likely have a stand spacing in that range. With a real APR being way out of budget, that left one option.

Battle Aero was surprisingly accommodating with my request for a one-off. It's a Force 2 deck, spanning 66" and having a 22" stand spacing as requested. I didn't do much measuring before crapping together a mockup and yeah, it shows:



That is incredibly awful to look at, but that's the nature of prototyping. It made it painfully obvious the wing needed to come down, the stands needed trimming, and the endplates straight up needed the fugly beat out of them.



2 iterations later, and the wing was looking better, but not perfect.




While I was scrubbing the license plate, I figured you all could share in my pain by looking at the registration sticker being out of date by over 2 years and left it in.

I got my hands on a set of S5 convertible tail lights to finish up the look:



I think the position is pretty much perfect, since it meets criteria of dominating your rearview mirror for maximum giggle factor in traffic, but I'm going to need to tweak the stand shape and endplates before I'm happy with the look. It's still too... hotboi? I'm not sure how to describe it other than it looks like they'd look at home on a car with anime ***** and broken heart stickers plastered all over the rear window. I still need to remake the stands out of aluminum and make a reinforcing structure for the stands to screw into. Who knew the sheetmetal for the license plate wasn't meant for 300 lbs of weight

The only thing left to see how everything would come together was getting the front bumper on. I've probably had these body panels for over a year, but I only got around to drilling (some of) the holes for them recently. The half bumper is meant for an S5, so to make it fit my S4, the bottom half of the original bumper below the molding is mostly gone now.




Just uh... ignore the taped on mirror. I'm working on that.

To quote a friend, it's very "touge" in appearance, which I guess is fine for now. I'll have to probably stick more angry aero bits to the rest of the car to balance out how much presence the wing has, or skip straight to the rabbit hole of one-off fiberglass work to commit to the Super GT look.

The rears are the main reason I'm still unhappy with the wheel fitment on the car. The angle on that last shot really shows that it isn't fully there. It probably just needs a few more millimeters to be fixed, but I'll leave that as a problem to be resolved in the future.

Dak

Cool story. I'll definitely keep checking in to see where this goes. As for the wing as much fun as people make of big wings sometimes I kinda like it. Sometimes after playing Gran Turismo I'm tempted to put one of these big wings on my car someday. I think with the aero I eventually want it would work. Think time attack inspired.

pzr2

iTrader: (4)

Well, so much for daily updates. The side project I planned on discussing has completely derailed, jack-knifed, and caused a ton of financial damage that will take a hot minute to fix. Rather than wait until I untangle that situation, I'll just post about today's junkyard diggings to confirm that this project still isn't dead, even if Sevenstock is starting to look increasingly impossible.



Part 0: Honda Garbage

Everything on the right is for my Civic. tl;dr it's a heap of **** that keeps breaking and we won't go into that

Part 1: Brake Master Cylinder Rabbit Hole

So like a few others in this forum, I tripped and fell down the rabbit hole that is finding a suitable master cylinder upgrade for the car. At first, I went with the Subaru option, the 99 Legacy Outback unit with the 1-1/16" bore because bigger is clearly always better. Once I had it in the car, I realized just how much I did not like the angled master cylinder and went looking elsewhere. I kept the booster since it was a much larger, more powerful double diaphragm unit though. And also because it's already bolted to the firewall and I've bent up a new hardline for the vacuum supply.

As it turns out, fixing the angled brake fluid reservoir was going to be the biggest nightmare of the whole operation. Pair that with the fact that I did not like the ports facing the driver's side due to the lack of space plumbing up lines there, and I could not find anything that met all my criteria. They were:

• 1" or thereabouts bore
• 2 or 3 ports facing either up or towards the passenger side for easier plumbing of the lines and no U-turns
• M10x1.0 inverted flare ports
• Had to fit the RX7/Subaru brake booster
• Brake fluid reservoir meant for a straight and level brake master cylinder, and ideally isn't ***-ugly
• No extraneous protuberances like a nipple to feed the clutch master cylinder
• From a car that isn't well known for being a total pile of junk, and common enough on roads or in junkyards
• Can get new replacement master cylinders
• Ideally can still source replacements for the reservoirs separately

This spiraling mess really showed me just how weird it is to have a firewall that's completely perpendicular to the ground. Everything from RX8s to Volvos have moved towards angled firewalls, likely for space efficiency.

I wound up with about 6 different brake master cylinders sitting in my garage from Hondas, Mitsubishis, Subarus, etc. Eventually I turned to old faithful, 90s Toyota. I saw a 1999 Lexus RX300 in the yard. Remote reservoir, 1" bore, inverted flare ports, 2 ports facing up and towards the passenger side, looked like it would fit the RX7 booster, and looked like I could find a reservoir for it. And it did, a reservoir from a 1999 Toyota Camry slipped right on. Not as aesthetically pleasing as the FC's simplistic rectangle of a reservoir, but after all the garbage I've seen with wild protuberances to clear windshields that extend a foot forward of the firewall, this is good enough.




And yes, it did bolt up to the RX7 booster. Not without a fight though. I need to investigate what sort of pushrod length is necessary to make it all work.



Also, it being a 90's Toyota, the connector is likely still easy to source. This one I recognize. I think it's a Yazaki from the SWP line or whatever it's called



Now, there is a bit of a problem that's left to address. This particular master cylinder I grabbed uses M12x1.0 ports:



While in the junkyard, I hastily looked up the specs on RockAuto for this master cylinder and saw a listing that said M10, so I just grabbed it. Had I taken a moment to investigate, or at least think longer on the fact that the flare nuts took a 12mm wrench instead of a 10, I would have noticed. It seems like there does exist an M10 version of this master cylinder though. The divergence appears to be between cars with traction control and those without:




Even if the non-traction control unit does turn out to be identical in every way other than the M10 ports, I'm not sure I'll be 100% happy with this arrangement, but it'll be good enough for now. It seems like you can buy new Camry fluid reservoirs, which is a nice bonus. Maybe I'll run into something better in the future.

So expect a continuation on this.
.
Part 2: Oil Cooling

When I wasn't in the rabbit hole of the master cylinder debacle, I was willingly throwing myself down the other rabbit hole of aerodynamics. Being a rotary owner, heat exchanger packaging and optimization became one of the more relevant aspects I dug into. I realized my original plan of doubling up on FC oil coolers was probably not going to work as well as I'd like, and for a hell of a lot more weight and even more expensive oil changes from the added capacity. The problem lies in the stack up of heat exchangers in the stock configuration, where the heat from the oil cooler can impact radiator cooling, and in a roundabout way, impact the oil temperatures as a result. Ideally, you move the oil cooling to separate air streams, which is how Mazda did things with the FD and RX8. After seeing someone fit an RX8 oil cooler in an FC in place of the brake ducts, realizing I could get a pair of them for less than $40, and remembering the side vents on the Shine Auto half bumper I have is way bigger than stock, I decided that was the route I was going with. Lucky for me, there was an RX8 with a dual oil cooler setup sitting at the yard:



The only issue now is the plumbing. I planned on and purchased supplies for the old dual FC cooler idea, which involved rigidly mounting the coolers together and attaching them to the same rubber dampers, allowing me to put hard lines from the coolers to the Y fittings before transitioning to the flexible hoses. I'm going to have to rethink this part now that the coolers are in different postal codes, and hopefully find a solution that isn't too expensive.

pzr2

iTrader: (4)

Part 3: Electrohydraulic Power Steering:

Another forum favorite, the Volvo electric power steering pump. I don't think I've seen anyone list out what exact car you're supposed to find these in, so I just went digging through every Volvo's engine bay I ran across. Eventually I struck upon a 2006 V50, which has a remote reservoir arrangement as opposed to the fill cap directly on the main body. Bit of a shock to find Ford branding on this thing, if being a Mazda owner wasn't enough. I do have to say though, I think we got off easy. Ford engineering mashed with the European fascination for Torx bolts is a match made in hell. I don't think I'm going to own a Volvo, ever.



As I was taking off the lines to pull the pump off the car, I spotted this freaky looking fitting and realized I had no idea what I was looking at, so I figured I should take the hose end home. In passing, I read these were supposed to take an M14 inverted flare fitting or something like that, so the o-ring was a huge red flag. If any of you guys recognize it, please let me know, otherwise I'll see if a hydraulic hose shop near me would be willing to re-crimp this fitting onto a new hose.



And because going on wild goose chases for connectors is apparently my thing, I now have something new to make my brain hurt over. I don't recognize any of this at all since I usually make a point to stay away from Ford components.



Part 4: The S5 MAF Connector

Speaking of connectors, I finally went and nicked one from an LS400. As it turns out, Series I is the only version you can find these connectors on. Series II LS400s switched to Yazaki 090II connectors. They have a boot on them, which means they'll probably be in decent shape if you pull one from a junkyard. And that yellow TPA was a surprise.



Obligatory test fit on an S5 MAF:



And then to confirm my hunches: a Yazaki arrow marking. Yazaki makes this stupid connector and I can't find it on their catalogs or records. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA



I will attempt to have news of progress by the end of this week, but don't be surprised if the next update is in December