When you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network.
Hello Everyone! I recently had the amazing opportunity to rescue this poor car back in April this year. The back story on the car is it has been sitting and up until a couple weeks after I had bought it had not run since 2003. I tried to put fresh gas and new spark plugs in the car and I had no luck whatsoever. After a short diagnostic session I determined that the fuel pump was not running. I ended up pulling the fuel pump assembly out of the car and it was a horrendous site to say the least. This poor car must have sat the majority of its life with the same gas in the tank for decades. I then pulled and cleaned the fuel rails, replaced fuel injectors with stock size RC 550 injectors, installed a beautiful mint condition fuel tank, and hanger with brand new oem pump assembly, then installed a new Napa Gold OEM style inline fuel filter. In the mean time of all of that I ordered a new starter brush rebuild kit and refreshed the starter as it had started to crank very slowly even with a brand new battery. After the mad rush to try and see if this car would run after replacing all of this stuff it was finally a success! I fired right up and ran beautiful....I didnt want to run it too much on the oil that was in it but i moved it back and forth in the driveway and quickly realized that it was going to need serious brake attention. It acts like a caliper is hanging up and on top of that has no pedal at all, however the parking brake works very well. I have since just ordered a front caliper seal kit to rebuild the front calipers, and waiting for the kit to show up as of right now. I will post up pictures of the car from the time that i got it until now. The poor thing looks really rough, but it is actually very solid and deserves to be brought back to life. I also have a short little video I made of the car as an experiment and a learning project for video editing. I will post pics and the link to the video. Feel free to follow along on here, and YouTube @ Powershift Automotive channel as I try and get this thing brought back to life!
The night that I bought the car, at the place I bought it from. Looking at it under some light for the first time Backed in the driveway at home The amassed leaves and filth under the hood Fairly decent interior First pic next day in the morning before leaving for work Pretty much as it sits now. I really want to get the car to drive and stop correctly and then focus on getting the body cleaned up and repainted as soon as possible.
The first horrendous site that greeted me as I opened the tank. The awful disaster inside of this poor tank. What the inside of a tank should look like, the tank that I put in the car The new to me unit that came with the tank, I did also replace this filter The treat that I was greeted to when opening the air box.
I saw your post on this car on Facebook and I was thrilled to see it then and am even more so now!! Thank you for saving this car!! It deserves a good life and it sounds like you are on the right path to an amazing restoration! The fuel tank in the 10AE that I bought last year and am restoring also looked like that. I boiled it out myself as the tank was in nice shape. That's all that was holding it up from running after I did the tune up and injector service. Will look forward to seeing more progress! I'll shoot you some details on my next RX-7 meet next month! We aren't too far away!
Thank you very much for the reply! Yes I would love to come to an RX7 meet, it has been 12 years since I have gone to one! Literally the only RX7 meet I ever went to was the one on. 7-7-07 at the RX7 store! It’s really been that long ago 🤣 and you say you aren’t too far where are you located? Also I’m pretty excited that my caliper rebuild kit showed up today at my work, so I’ll have to run and grab them and post up pics. I did actually move the car from one side of my house around to the other earlier today and I’m super motivated. It runs so well it begs to be driven lol. I really want to make it a driver and maybe enjoy it the rest of the summer and then really focus on cleaning it up fully over winter.
Oh nice! Possibly but around Vermillion area! I’m not super familiar, but I know a little bit around the area. I was born in Norwalk. I’m also familiar with the Wakeman area. I am into DSM’s as well so I’m familiar with Buschur Racing in Wakeman. Sounds good I’ll be looking forward to the invite! I probably won’t have mine ready then, but I’ll keep trying to push towards it!
I'm very familiar with the Norwalk and Wakeman area. Vermilion where I live is only 12 minutes from Wakeman. Even if your 7 isn't done in time that's ok. Any car is welcome. The meet is about the people getting together more so than just the cars. We have all sorts of cars show up so there no worries if the TII isn't finished. But crossing my fingers that it is!
All calipers and front rotors pulled off Everything torn apart, I decided to pull the front hubs and all to inspect, clean/replace, and repack the bearings since it was this far apart and the passenger front bearing was a little “grumbly” sounding How the rotors looked before sand blasting and turning on the brake lathe The finished product. I do believe that I will put a coat of paint on the hats of the rotors to prevent rusting up again.
Yes sir, still waiting on the last outer bearing to show up. Currently have both inners and one outer. I ordered a rear caliper rebuild kit from Atkins so I should see it the beginning of the week sometime. Planning to get the front calipers rebuilt and on the car tonight. My next biggest challenge is going to be dropping the sunroof assembly out and seeing if it is fixable, if not I’ll have to get a working one. Baby steps but it’s progress nonetheless LOL
Turning the rear rotors.
This isn’t much of an update, however I did finish getting the front calipers rebuilt and I did reassemble the rear calipers although I will have to pull them back off because they still need rebuilt. The car stops 10 times better than it did before, still not perfect....it does still need the new brake pads and the rear calipers rebuilt correctly. I had to pull the car off of the lift to work on other major customer cars for the time being, so this is how she sits at the moment. Next update will hopefully include me figuring out the sunroof, and swapping out the dash.
I
I lied, next update is just after I gave this thing a major scrub down. I know the paint is horrendous, however I mainly did it as a good thorough once over on the entire body of the car to try and memorize and spots that need more attention. I have discovered in another thread where I talk about the vin number in this car that this car has not only been an Ohio car it’s entire life, it was sold new and has been local to me within 30 miles its entire life! This thing is extremely clean for being an Ohio car it’s entire life. It does have three spots of rust that need attention. To me it is minor work as I have done rust repair and bodywork on a variety of vehicles from Miata’s to Full size pickups. This has three very minor spots in my opinion. From worst in my opinion to least of the three spots I would say are as follows. 1) there is a small spot on the passenger side where the rocker has a captured thread for the fender to bolt. This spot has a small rust hole I managed to open up to a size smaller than a nickel. Nothing a small patch with a new captured nut on it shouldn’t be able to fix. 2) there is a small spot on the inside of the rear of the drivers side rear wheel well where the inner and outer wheel tubs come together that has a small hole that I opened up to not quite the size of a dime. Again nothing that a small patch won’t be able to handle. Last but not least 3) there is a small spot of bubbling on the passenger rear wheel opening towards the rear of the car. The bubbled area is probably the size of a quarter. Nothing very major in my opinion and I could probably have all three spots adressed, fixed, and prepped for paint within a few hours once I start doing bodywork.
Last edited by black_turbo_FC; Aug 10, 2019 at 08:42 AM.
This is what I would consider the worst spot. To the right you can see the bottom of the fender is pretty rusty as well, but I don’t consider that major in the fact that it can simply be replaced with a new fender. Here is the inside of the rear driver wheel well. This spot is smaller then I thought probably take a spot sand blaster to this and clean it very well, and see how big it gets and make a tiny patch or maybe even to fill it with weld. Here is a closer picture of the same spot. The bubbles on the passenger rear quarter. The bottom of the passenger fender, however I don’t see this as major, the fender can easily be replaced. I think the fenders would still be in good condition had they not had the add on Mazda mud flap things. This is the driver side fender, again it had the Mazda mud flaps that I think had they not been on the car probably would have spared the fenders.
I grabbed some pictures quick of the spots that need attention.
Last edited by black_turbo_FC; Aug 10, 2019 at 09:14 AM.
Talk about reviving an old thread! Here we are two months away from 5 years ago on my last post to this thread. This is very much a tale of ups and downs, stalled plans, and just life happening in every way other than you had planned. From selling this car to a friend, to getting the car back within that time frame, starting a shop to leaving that shop and starting new ventures, it has sadly hampered the progression on this car. It still sits in almost the same condition as before, however it does run (for the most part.) I have slowly acquired a handful of things for getting the paint job and body looking as it should. In the words of Godsmack “My pain is caused by my pleasure” I reference this as a man who simply cannot be satisfied ever with only taking on one project at a time and therefore spread my financial, physical, and mental self very thin lol. I have a ton of projects that I love dearly and dread simultaneously, but it’s one of those things of being a car guy right? So enough with the rambling, the car is alive and well, just not super pretty yet and nowhere near being to a point that I am satisfied with. I have learned through talking with a handful of people this car is definitely an early build date TII and therefore I have run across something that I am hoping to maybe find an answer to here. This car has had a cracked windshield ever since I bought it and I managed to find an OEM windshield at a fairly local yard. I didn’t notice the issue until I got the newly acquired windshield next to the car. The “Factory” windshield has a gold “brow” across the top of the windshield where the new windshield has a very blue brow across the top. Which also kinda sucks because I definitely like the gold brow a lot more lol. However every marking on the glass is identical between the two, both have the antenna, literally the only difference is that color. So I had a question as to if the gold brow would actually be the true factory glass to this car, or maybe somewhere along the lines the windshield got broke and then replaced with one from possibly a 10AE. This isn’t a huge issue, just a simple curiosity as if anyone may know the differences. I am getting everything ready for the body and paint and lining up to pull the glass before paint and curious as to the difference. Just finishing a couple other projects first before I have another car unnecessarily torn apart. Thank you in advance, and hopefully I get to post updates on this car now more than once every 5 years, but like I said before life always seems to make the plans for me not the other way around lol, so here’s to that lol
