Turning my first love into a Street/Track car
 

Good afternoon everyone.

I'm starting to make a little progress and though hey why not start a build thready.

I've decided to take my '88 GTU to the next level. She used to be my DD while I was in college and unfortunately the Florida sun did some work to the paint.

The plan so far is to turn it into a street/track car.

Current Plans are as follow:

Drive Train:

Honestly I haven't decided what port to do 100% yet but probably a heavy street port.
RB Exhaust
Megasquirt EMS
Rebuild tranny and diff
Light Flywheel
Racing clutch


Chassis:

Energy suspension bushing master kit
Sway bars
Tower Bars
New bearings
SS Brake lines
upgraded rotors (slotted)
not sure about the calipers quite yet
rear roll cage

Suspension:

Coilovers (looking at Tein right now)


i'm sure there will be many more items but for now we'll leave it to the main ones.

Now for some pictures :)

Back in 2004 when I purchased the car!! Doing a little autoX action
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Taking the body panels off
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Taking the motor out!! I decided to pull most of what's in front of the motor before taking it out. BTW it's very annoying to take the motor and tranny out at the same time. I wouldn't suggest it.
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Motor finally out of the car.
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Next few items for me to tackle are cleaning and painting the entire car including the engine bay.

Right now i'm thinking black with S5 tail lights but i'm not sure i really want to paint the engine bay....feel free to give suggestions..i want to be able to see easily if I have any leaks or areas that need attention. I got my new air compressor yesterday! So as soon as she's prepped i'll start getting some paint going.


I'll keep you all updated on the progress!!!

fun project! unfortunately red is like the worst color to change into anything else, you have to remove like ALL the red, or live with chips showing up bright red... neither is very fun!

Fun car indeed! I always take the engine and transmission out at the same time, it needs a bit of wiggling, but it's far easier than removing the tranny from the engine while it's in the car. Nice that your going with a megasquirt, you'll love it!. About the paint, why don't just respray the outside in the same red colour and keep everything else the stock paint?

About the color, honestly I just thought I didnt care for the red anymore but your right i didn't think about chips showing bright red.

I thinking I worded it wrong in the original post too. I have to paint the engine bay, but if I do paint the car black I dont want the engine bay black. I started cleaning the engine bay today and half the paint was so loose I could just vacuum it up. The only problem I ever had with the car was leaking master cylinders and after enough time it took its toll unfortunately.

I'll post an add for dawn soap shortly. :)

A little update on the progress!!

So last weekend was the first time she saw the sun in about 2years. Got the whole car and half the engine bay cleaned up.

I couldn't believe how much time just scrubbing with a brush it would take to clean off all the years of grime...so i decided to share with you my dawn soap add :).

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Also this is the reason why I decided to strip and paint the entire engine bay. I've always had a bit of a brake fluid issue no matter how many times i replaced pieces.....

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Also i want to thank you guys for your comments, it gave me some extra variable to think about. A friend of mine has a portable grit blaster so in about 2 weeks i'm going to strip off all the paint and start from a clean slate. I was originally thinking a two tone, where the engine bay was a different color from the car but was convinced otherwise so through great turmoil (because i am terrible at deciding on colors, ask my wife!!:blush:) I've decided to go with a shade of blue that is similar to the Viper blue.

I say keep it the stock red color and paint the engine bay white maybe with some white wheels. If nothing else, use a lighter color for the exterior. It can get pretty hot waiting for your turn on the track/autox, especially if you end up striping the interior.

blue looks great on an FC. mine is a 1991, and i just had it repainted brave blue, and its nice! sometimes its purple, sometimes its blue, sometimes its black...

although basically any blue works

https://www.rx7club.com/2nd-generati.../#post10284539

So it's been far to long since i was able to get some work done on the car. But now that the weather is warming up I've finally made a little bit of progress!!!

Other than the sediment in the cooling channels it looks pretty clean for having 180k miles on it and being driven pretty hard.

Finally got the motor apart!! now i just need to clean everything!!!

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eeeesh that coolant port buildup. yuck

right!! that's the only thing i can see wrong with it so far.

Hopefully it'll all be cleaned by the end of the week.

Alright so I've finally gotten back at it a bit and have some news, some may consider it bad some may take more interest but after a lot of thought the power train will be taking a slight turn. :)

I've been contemplating the notion of installing a V8 into the car and recently I've made the decision to go that route.

Does anyone have any reviews on the Hinson conversion kit? I saw some troubling news about them in post about 5 years ago but their site is still up and active it looks like.


Anyway, Progress on the car is slow but starting to move a little quicker.

Almost ready to start sanding and painting the engine bay.

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Some new goodies that are ready for when the paint is completed :)

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Don't use Hinson, get the Ronin Speedworks mounting kit.
Much nicer construction and you get better clearance.

I used a hinson on an fd, construction was good, but didnt like all the hacking of the firewall that I had to do.

Thanks for the heads up!!! Ill have to rethink my plans a little bit.

Cant wait to get of this crazy work schedule so I can get some real progress made.