Hello! I just picked up an '88 SE. Virtually no rust (only some on the window seals on the doors), clean title, southern car it's whole life. It's a roller, but with 98 percent of an engine (the rest of the parts are in my shed) that I'm already attempting to get rebuilt. I love it already. Such a sick car! I am in high school, so I am gonna be trying to get it on the road asap to enjoy. This will be my build thread for all of the modifications I do to it. If you have any maintenance/mod suggestions, hit me up! The car currently has no battery, so I have raised the pop ups and sunroof (more about that) manually.

 

Here is the sunroof. The original lubricant is completely dry, so I put some new lubricant on. I opened maybe 4 or so times (manually, with an allen key) and on the last time I heard clicking as it tried to transition to closed from tilt. I slid it back, and tried again, but the clicking worsened. Another thing is that when opening it before the clicking started, it jolted a bit coming up from the socket because I had forgot to push it up a little to help it out. Does anyone know what the issue is/how to fix it? I don't know when it will rain, and unfortunately the car cover I have is too small so I have no way to cover it up in the mean time.



right side hinge



current lowest position it will go



left side hinge




plug for the mechanism



current lowest position it will go

 

Nice job on the acquisition, it looks like a really solid starting point. Thanks for sharing a ton of photos too.

It's likely that something stripped. I know this thread doesn't address the same problem you're having, but it's a very detailed write up and with pictures about how the sunroof operates:
https://www.rx7club.com/2nd-generati...te-up-1145356/

 

I'm OPs Dad. I just wanted to say THANK YOU. This is very helpful info. My son got the sunroof back down, fortunately. We still don't know what the root cause is, but we're going to dive into it.

 

Congratulations on finding a great 88 SE and welcome to the forum!! I think you found a great car to restore and its overall condition is more than worth of the restoration! I will definitely be looking forward to seeing more pictures of the car as you progress through getting it back on the road!

 

Thank you! Yes, I agree. We got a clean car. I'm looking forward to making progress on it and sharing about it here. We love the input and help from the RX7 community. We couldn't do it without you all!

 

You're very welcome! The RX-7 community here is a strong community and is a very supportive community as well. There are a lot of great people here that are more than willing to lend advice, parts, and even a hand if they're close by.

 

I gotta say, I was hesitant getting into rotary engines because there are no shops around here (Nashville, TN) with a mechanic who can work on them, but the info and support from the rotary community is incredible. I'm so glad we jumped in!

 

I'm cheering for you guys, keep us posted on the progress.

 

Well, bad news. Interesting and somewhat fun though. Me and my dad spent a number of hours moving the keg to our shed, putting it onto an engine stand, and taking it apart. We took apart the rear rotor housing, and found something pretty wild. Unfortunately, the rotor and housing are definitely done. The port is very messed up too. Maybe if we port it enough we could fix it? Ok, on a more interesting note, the rotor detonated, but more accurately it split an atom. It looks like someone used it as target practice. I see people talking about a little dent in their rotor, but I can see through the solid wall on this rotor. It's completely blown through. It has a large chunk of it missing too. What I think happened is the guy who had my car previously pushed it too much, too often (obviously). He then took it to a mechanic once it needed a rebuild, but a mechanic who didn't know anything about rotaries. Unfortunately the mechanic scammed the previous owner, who was about to be deployed. The mechanic said he would fix it while he was deployed, but that never happened. We had to stop tonight (it is 3 59 am as I am writing this) because whoever removed the engine didn't loosen the front bolt before they took the flywheel off. When we get up tomorrow, we'll go to ACE to get a strap wrench, hopefully that will loosen the front bolt. Our original plan was to hope and pray that the rotors/irons/housings were spectacular (ironic) and go to the traveling rotary rebuilding event in a few weeks and learn how to rebuild it, with an Atkins Rotary rebuild kit. I honestly think the front rotor will be cooked too, and in that case, and maybe still if it is good, I wonder if it is more reasonable to buy an engine straight from Banzai Racing or someplace similar. Does anyone have any tips? How to save money, what to buy/not buy, where to get/not to get parts, etc. We are on a fairly low budget, enough to get reliable parts but not to make a crazy engine. We literally got a 25 dollar home depot pole, a 70 dollar fb marketplace engine stand, 60 dollar used 13b engine mount bracket on ebay, and ratchet strapped the engine to the pole and did something between a deadlift and a shimmy up to our hill to the shed, then lifted it up to mount it to the engine mount. Basically, we want the money we spend to be on a better, more reliable part, and we maybe don't mind putting in a lot of work to get it to work. (lmao hopefully we will be the first people to ever pull off a budget build on an rx-7). Also, how dcrazy/rare is the damage on the rotor? Is it common?



bad scraping on the housing


It's hard to see, but there is a 3mm thick bead of metal that has gotten scraped by the rotor and a deep gouge on the left. I'll get a better photo tomorrow.


bad port


bad scraping


more bad scraping


see through rotor view 1


see through rotor view 2. notice the big chunk missing out of the corner, and the bullet hole sized hole.


crater like holes


our rig to carry the keg


getting the keg out of the trunk

 

That's a bummer about the engine. It looks like there's probably not much in salvageable parts there. Finish tearing it down and carefully inspect the front housing, and the e-shaft, you might get lucky.

 

We ended up getting an s5 engine (1991), and we rebuilt one engine with Matthew Orth with the Rotary Engine Workshop. He's a super awesome guy, if you need to learn how to rebuild a rotary then definitely go to him. The only part we used from the original engine was the front iron. as the s5 engine's front iron had had a critical failure. The front rotor/housing/iron were all ok. All of the rest of the parts of the rebuilt engine are s5 parts. We turned the eccentric shaft and it sounds 100 percent. We ended up going with a big streetport, and we ported the housing too in hoped of getting the most brap. We painted the engine too, I will add some red accent.


[img alt="mid rebuild
"]https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.rx7club.com-vbulletin/1500x2000/rebuilding_5472d74387c54d90e51c506596a6de0fe579012 a.jpg[/img]
[img alt="assembling
"]https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.rx7club.com-vbulletin/2000x1504/rear_rotor_rebuilt_3d61e55357c0f2316cadf434332ab96 f557fc51c.jpg[/img]
[img alt="how it sits currently
"]https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.rx7club.com-vbulletin/1500x2000/jacked_up_036951de2301b07e0d0f45aa52fcaa677397723e .jpg[/img]
I am on fall break currently, and I am going to work on getting the transmission out and seeing what condition that is in. I'm very excited to get this thing running.

 

Awesome progress, any updates?