Car ended up sitting for 6 years, got just kinda rough, went for another refresh, tried some different stuff, some good some questionable, none permanent, always a work in progress but at least it's back on the road and being driven again. This is not comprehensive, just an overview of some of what it's been through in the past 4 years, will try to update as further issues are resolved and modifications made.

Here is how I found it




Started right up on the old fuel in the tank and give her a rinse and enjoyed as is for a bit after cleaning.

 

Wheels look really good on it. Interested to see and hear more about it.

 

Thank you, I do like the wheels, my first set of wheels I ever bought, old SportMax 962s.

Pulled the interior to dry her out and do some cleaning, minimal surface rust removal and coating. The old Rtek7 2.1 survived luckily, good old factory ECU is tough and I was eventually about to figure out how to tune it with my Android phone now which is cool, will show that later. I currently have a brand new charcoal grey interior carpet to install just too lazy, want to finish other stuff before that but I have the full interior in a box inside the house.

 

Went ahead and addressed the only real rot on the car, the stupid factory floor rails were abused by previous owners and did not hold up well over the years. Replaced with heavy duty boxed chassis bracing I welded up. Much better now, car is much more solid and it fixed my bent drivers floor, straightened everything up, added benefit of added ability, the new rails fit inside my jack stands perfectly. Ive seen more involved methods, not claiming my work is superior but its good for me and this seemed to address this problem for me in a straight forward way. The new rails were welded to the front frame rails and welded at the rear and then bolted along the lengths. Coated the underside while we were doing this.

 

At the same time went ahead and pulled the motor and trans for a engine bay refresh and stuffs. Stripped and blasted the bay, first tried painting the whole bay with POR 15, got terrible results and have since stopped using it on cars period, had to strip and blast again and refinished with Summit Chassis Shield the second time with great results. I'm not a big fan of painting, too many steps and expenses to do a perfect job, its something I do when I have to but its functional rather than show quality, my hat is off to real body and paint guys who know how to do proper jobs. Overall better than the 20 year old Duplicolor rattle can graphite grey that I sprayed on way to far away and got powdery finish, but the old rattle can stuff did hold up despite my lack of skill at the time. Just a lot of time since the motor was out last, was happy to get this part done.

 

Motor is still very low miles Mazda reman keg so just got rid of the hideous Hemi Orange engine paint, decided to go for a bare metal type look, used a product called Shark Hyde metal protectant for the cleaned housings and plates and stuff. Went with a new ACT clutch and resurfaced the stock flywheel. My trans really needs a rebuild but its working for now, not sure whether to try to have it rebuilt of do a conversion to another RWD gearbox like the Nissan CD009 or whatever its called, maybe T5 who knows, would be happy if I could get a perfectly good stock TII trans, this is my second one and it might actually be worse than my original, ugg, I hate sloppy shifters.

 

I built a sandblasting thingy according to what I thought would work, only thing that could be better is slightly better visibility if there was a light inside the cabinet and my view port pieces tend to get blurry after a lot of use, had to switch them out after this project but for the cost of what a used cabinet costs this worked wonders. I still wore a respirator when using but the dust was managed really well and I was able to reclaim the media, much more important for the glass bead than the sand. I've since moved away from using sand and use coal slag media for stripping.



Here are some parts that have just been sand blasted


Here are the parts after being blasted with microscopic glass beads, nice satin finish




A little bronze brazing from the factory on the oil filler, so pretty I couldn't wait to clear coat it with Shark Hyde

 

Dropped the motor and trans back in with some new gaskets and hoses etc, redid the fuel system including the rail fittings, FPD elimination, Aeromotive FPR, went with 850cc and 1100cc IIRC injectors. Bolted on the old parts that were now shiny. Redid the FD UIM and VMIC I had years ago but with better radiator now, the intercooler piping has been slightly reworked since these photos to allow the strut brace to fit, stuff is constantly being refined so these are only snapshots in time as the process unfolded. So many cool old parts here like the first part I bought for my T2, the old school Blitz SS BOV I got from a guy on here from Hawaii 20 years ago, the FD UIM adapter from Greece that I thought was made wrong but I was an idiot and was trying to install it upside down, poor seller was so patient while I got my head straight, Greddy FD TB elbow from another user, my same old BNR Stage 1 turbo from that silver FC from Jersey, just a mix of old stash and new energy.















Put the Knight Sports hood back on to go with the VMIC, now we are getting closer to the vision.

 

Hooked up a Bluetooth to serial converter for the Rtek7 ECU for my android phone for logging and tuning, voltage monitor usb charger for temporary power supply, need to get my WBO2 and EBC mounted better too. Summit cheapy recliners replaced the old seats which were actually from my first '88 GXL, found two pics of that car for throwback sake!

 

Once it was running and driving again I decided to do something temporary for aesthetics, the Eastwood Rat Rod Satin Black had held up for 10 years in the sun but I wanted something different and missed the old red. PlastiDip with some pearls added, came out kinda shitty honestly especially the roof and hood, way too hot in the shop when I painted it and thats my fault, oh well, dont really care looks good enough for now but whats killing me is that I need to redo the black accents for the S4 effect, the taillights and the hatch surround, belt trim, mirrors, sunroof, main hood vent all need get coated black ASAP.



Filled the old antenna hole and fixed some minor dents and stuff as best as possible

 

Redid the exhaust, cut out the WBO2 bung from my old CorkSport downpipe, that bung was the first weldment I ever made like 25 years ago almost! Rewelded it onto the new DP I welded up, **** aluminized pipe, I really hate using this stuff for exhausts but Im using up what I had left in my garage and hopefully moving into stainless tig for next full systems I build. I went full 3" downpipe, well I cut the old turbo flange off the corksport downpipe and then went 2.5" to 3.0" expansion, 3" Y Pipe and 3" duals to retarded shorty dirtrack mufflers, lol, way way too loud, kinda awesome but way too loud for sanity and practical purposes. First I added a 3" resonator midstream but that didn't mke much difference. I just recently switched back to the previous mufflers I had which ended up sounding good with the larger pipe now. Its pretty deep and loud under load but its pretty normal at idle and low revs unlike the previous iteration which was ear damaging for certain.













Had to put the regular muffler back on, sounded like an aneurysm lol




Again, I really hate the look of the red taillight surrounds, like a bloody 10AE or something, need to do my trims and accents black ASAP.

 

Some pics as she sits now, stills needs a ton of work and will never be done, I know its not as nice as a lot of the RX7s on here, you guys have done well to keep these cars looking great over the years. I still need to do some details like new windshield trim, black accents, need to install my brand new charcoal grey interior carpet I have sitting in a box too. I do plan to eventually repaint it red again, probably the original red color or maybe guards red or similar but that's just not in the cards any time soon. Thats pretty much it for now I guess, hope somebody enjoys reading this, was neat to put it all together, haven't posted on here since 2014 so nice to pop in and say hello.

 

Great progress, I think you did a really good job.

Can you go into more detail using an Android device for monitoring on the Rtek? I just picked up a Palm device to get into mine for the first time (haven't tried it yet), and am curious what I might be missing out on with the adapter route.

 

nice work. nice car. i love the progress.

i particularly like what you did with the frame rails. i admire your skills.

what kind of mufflers do you have?

 

Nice Job bringing it back to life. I remember you from the olden times on here - nice to see another NJ person still at it

 

Wow, what an undertaking. Great work so far. That interior at the beginning looked terrifying!

 

Thanks very much.
Basically the Palm Pilot sucks for tuning, you can't view the full tables and it's just awful overall. There's a way to port the RTek7 Pocket logger palm app to Android and run it on a palm os emulator and then you can use your phone to run the software to log and view the tune and make changes much easier. I'll grab some screenshots, I actually need to set it back up on this phone. You need to connect to the serial port and I used a BT to serial adapter as pictured. Works great for what it is, the RTek7 is kinda like a stop gap measure, way better than stock or a flash tube but not as great as a standalone ems like Haltech etc..

Thank you, I've gotten much better since I welded those rails, I've since gotten D1.1 certified for SMAW and gotten pretty darn ok at GTAW and GMAW working as a fabricator and going to welding a school, it was always a hobby but taking it to new levels. Nice to be able to do better quality repairs and Ive gotten better tools like big ole 240V welders and plasma cutters. I'm still a complete hack and noob compared to experienced fabricators and old time welders but I'm getting better than when I started more than 20 years ago on this car!

Those are old school eBay turbo mufflers, I actually searched the other day and couldn't find any like them, I like how they have a rolled tip so don't look super cheap. I'll get some sound clips soon.

Hey thanks buddy, nice to be remembered! I've learned Soo much from this forum, really helped me get into cars and doing everything single thing myself.

Much appreciated, yes indeed, my heart sank, I may have shed a tear. Life is like that I suppose. These were the last pics I posted on here back in 2014 right before the car sat for 6 years. When I saw how it had deteriorated I was really disheartened but I turned it into determination, I'll build this car as many times as I need or want to.

 

I agree with what the others say, the car looks amazing. Especially considering the way it started out.

I also like the frame rails, but you might consider welding them in. I had the same crumpled (though not rusty) frame rails as many FCs do, and I ended up banging them straight and then installing the V8 Roadsters Miata frame rail reinforcements. They're a reinforcement sleeve pretty similar to your design, except that the steel isn't as thick as yours is. They also bolt in, which is nice because that makes them replaceable.

However, I don't know if I'd be comfortable running a bolt-in design only without a welded rail underneath.

 

Thanks, the rails are welded in at the front and rear, I didn't weld the whole lengths as it seemed unnecessary. I can go back and add stitch welds before I put the carpet in.