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TL;DR - Idiot buys TII FC to drive as much as possible.
Sup rotary nerds,
Long time lurker, first time thread builder. After FINALLY getting the car I've been after for years, I figured it was a good time to start a thread to document my build progress.
I've wanted an FC for as long as I can remember. Back in high school when I was shopping around for my first "new to me car" (after driving my parents old '92 Suburban for a couple years) I had thought I would be able to get something worked out. A dealer close to us didn't have any FCs on the lot (duh), but they did have a Shinka RX8 that we had scheduled a ride and buy for. Unfortunately, due to poorly managed logistics the car got sold as we were on the way to the dealership, delaying my introduction to rotary life by about 10 years. Fast forwarding through the rest of high-school and college I continued my obsession with RX7s, and cars in general, all while discovering this amazingly terrible style of driving called drifting. If you hate drifting you'll definitely hate this thread since that's the main reason I ended up with the car that I did. Moving to Michigan after university to work in automotive I finally started dipping my toes into drifting myself, first with a NA8 Miata, followed by a Z33. The whole time I was building and driving both cars I kept an eye out for a FC that fit the bill for what I was after, but nothing seemed to come my way. Fast forward 5 years, when my wife and I relocated to Washington state after she graduated vet school, and the dream is finally realized.
Having built and driven two (albeit basic) drift cars I was looking to get into a chassis that was already at least partially modified for drifting. Between this, my budget, preferring a street-car vs a racecar (i.e. no cages, working interior), and wanting a car that had a reliable (lol) turbo powertrain I knew finding the exact car I wanted would be difficult. Enter, this freaking thing. Fresh off the truck. Straight from New Jersey to Washington. Note; oil spots already Sorry neighbors.
So much room for activities!
After a couple facebook and forum posts, a guy reached out to me from NJ. The car wasn't officially listed, but it fit exactly what I was after. After some chats back and forth over the next couple of weeks we both figured out we shared the same vision for the car, and it would be able to continue its progression as a drift based street car. Providing more documentation than I could have expected showing all of the work done over the last several years, the car seemed to fit the bill. The engine had been built and tuned by two very well known east coast rotary shops, making me comfortable with purchasing from across the country. With an amazing hand from @TonyStarkz, who helped vet the car in person and handle some document exchanges, the car was on its way West! Step 1 of project Financial Crisis complete.
First few weeks were about as normal as you'd expect. Did a full maintenance day on it, gave it a full nut and bolt check, and drove it as much as possible. The car came with most of the adjustable arms that I'd want right off the bat, so making sure everything was aligned and tightened down was pretty straight forward. One of the best things about on post access is the garage.
About a month into ownership I was confident enough that the car wouldn't blow up if I took it drifting, so I started prep for the first event. The only things I was really missing initially were spare wheels and tires. Scored a pretty sweet set of 18x9 +19 SSRs for spares for dirt cheap. Color matched the BNR33s already, and were period correct. I wasn't completely in love with the mismatched look of these two, but it would get the job done for now. Finally got the car lowered to an acceptable level, went and got it aligned, and we were off to the races.
$250 facebook marketplace score
Love a good tire shop that lets you check specs while they're aligning your car.
Still sitting a little tall, but better than its shipping height. Quickly got over this staggered look and started sourcing alternate spare wheels.
Really missing the later sunsets from the summer. Winter here is dragging on a bit right now.
Fast forward a month into September and we're finally getting ready to drift. Having started drifting in the Midwest, Pat's Acres was always somewhere that was on the bucket list. We had driven down for both Final Bout SSW and Summer Jam, so I was chomping at the bit to drive at PARC Fest. The track looked super fun and technical, and the scenery looked gorgeous. All of the above checked out. On the drive down the car started to heat up, creeping up to 195°F just from cruising on the highway, but other than that we reached Canby without issue.
His and hers black Mazdas Even though hers is probably faster than mine lol
We got registered, setup in the pits, and were ready to rip. After getting adjusted to the car a bit I tried to start hammering down on some laps, only to have the temps start skyrocketing. Pulled off, checked the water level, made sure the fans were working correctly, and just let the car sit to cool down. After that I maybe got 1-2 laps in, with some sitting in grid time in between, before I'd have to pull into the pits again and let the car cool. Ripping off the bumper and hood wasn't doing much to help out with temps, so we ended up just hanging out for the hotter parts of the afternoon.
PLEASE COOL DOWN
Once the sun started going down I ended up hopping back out for a few laps. Only to run into some power cut issues a lap or two later. I found a frayed wire on the TPS so I tried going down that rabbit hole only to find it working perfectly. Turns out the baffles in my gas tank were non-existent so the car was just fuel starving. Easy fix to just keep it gassed up, but still something I'm working on fixing with the car. After jumping out for a couple more laps the car started to overheat again, so I ended up just calling it a day. Definitely didn't need to pop my engine on day 1 of drifting it.
Man when the car kept cool it ripped. Thanks to Noel Scott for the pic.
I ended up not driving day two of the weekend just to deal with all of the same issues, so I just hung out around the pits with some buddies before driving back up to Washington. I'm really big into photography so a lot of this thread will probably have some of my own photos sprinkled through. All things considered, I'd call the event a success. Just identified a lot of points to address moving forward.
I'm 99% sure Felix Wankel would love seeing his engine power these loud and bright machines.
One note that I haven't mentioned yet, is that during this time I was (and still am) using the FC as my main means of transportation My wife had her CX-5 for any larger errands we needed to run, or camping trips with our dogs, but for all intents and purposes the FC was my main form of transportation. I could really only justify this decision because due to COVID and our relocation for my wife's job I was working from home. As much as I love driving the car, I couldn't afford the gas to commute to work every day of the week. The largest downside to this was that having that car down for more than a few days at a time for any larger projects was massively inconvenient at best. During those days, my trusty/crusty '84 Grand Wagoneer was a solid substitute to shuttle me around town, but needing a lot of work itself wasn't anywhere near as reliable as the RX7 (never thought you'd see that sentence huh?)
Totally practical daily driver! I started piecing together the Yakima parts for the roof rack before I had even purchased the car. The largest pain was the roof clips themselves, but thankfully eBay came through.
Brunch date in Seattle. Another pro of the Villans angle kit is that parallel parking is a breeze.
My main point being I really wasn't able to do a full dive into solving some of the thermal issues at that time. That being said tons of guesses were rolling around. Obviously, the massive front-mount intercooler was restricting tons of airflow to the radiator and oil cooler, but I had seen tons of other FCs running them without issue so I chalked that up to something else being incorrect. Converting back to an OEM top mount intercooler would obviously be a step in the wrong direction, plus I'd have to get rid of the TBO hood vents and swap back to a TII scoop. No fun in that Switching to a water-meth injection kit would absolutely cool engine temps down, but I also didn't want to dive into setting the Haltech up for that just yet since it was functioning well enough to enjoy, just not beat on. Finally, the lack of a radiator shroud and ducting was allowing too much air to pass around and not through the radiator when the fan was on. This being the quickest fix I could attempt for minimal resources, I ordered a Summit universal fan shroud, and with an afternoon of work I was able to get that fabbed up relatively easily.
Bare radiator that came with the car, no shroud. Note this isn't a dual pass... something that got swapped out later.
Basic summit shroud wasn't perfect but fit the critical dimensions.
Trimmed up and mounted with the e-fan.
I figured even if this wasn't an end all solution (it definitely wasn't) it would at least be an incremental step in the right direction.
Next up was another new to me track in the PNW, though this one being much closer to home, Spirit Peaks Raceway. Basically a massive skidpad with a fun course laid out and a concrete wall to initiate on. Definitely one of the lower risk courses I've driven, which always makes it that much more fun to push your driving. The day started out pretty early convoying with some buddies to the track. One of my favorite things about moving to the PNW vs the midwest, is that no matter where you're driving the views are gorgeous. I could have driven from my house to the track, and straight back again and enjoyed the day. Fortunately we were able to get some drifting done in between.
3 cars driven to the track. 3 cars drifted. 3 cars driven home. Always a great time when nothing goes wrong. Feat. Mitch and Geoff, piloting their machines powered by God's motor, the VQ35.
After a couple of laps in I was starting to see the same temperature issues, but seemingly not as drastic. One convenient thing about having a standalone is being able to set thresholds to record signals without having your laptop plugged in. At the time I didn't have the appropriate hardware to set warning signals, but correlating the stock gauges to what my ECU was seeing I could ballpark a safe operating range well enough. Or so I had thought. After a session of 3-4 hot laps (one thing I love about SPR is the ability to keep lapping if grid isn't backed up and there's not a ton of traffic), I saw my temp gauge rising to about 1/3, so I pulled off to grab my laptop and check the temps. Holy shitballs batman, I was getting greedy.
SPICY SPICY SPICY. NOTE; I do see the 233°F temp "max" on the chart above, but that seems to come from an intermittent signal drop out on the ECU. At that exact same moment all of the other signals I was recording spiked to a max value as well.
My water temps had gotten up to almost 220°F, and I was really worried I had just blown my coolant seals. This being my first rotary and being as committed to keeping it as reliable as possible I really would have hated letting something so stupid ruin the car for me. I let the car cool down and sit for about 45 minutes before attempting to start it again. Fortunately, it fired right up and had no indication of any damage or trouble. Took it out for a quick highway rip to make sure we were good to go, and all systems checked out. Drove far more conservatively the rest of the day. Maybe 1-2 laps before pulling off and cooling all the way down before jumping out again. But aside from a panic moment from temperatures all was well.
Tire smoke or oil smoke from the exhaust? Always my favorite rotary question.
Once again pulled the front bumper to see if allowing some more air in would help. I promised myself this was the last event I'd drive without a bumper unless it was ripped off from driving.
Trash driver, excellent car.
A couple quick clips from the day. Geoff being the great homie he is let me take the G35 out for a taxi lap with the whole crew onboard. I still love how simple and easy the Z33/G35 is to drive. Definitely my #1 recommendation for people who want to get into drifting. Stupid drift tax on them considered. No way could I ever get into one again for how cheap I picked up my first.
Watching these videos again I really need to clean up my hand work. Used to be way smoother, clearly out of practice there...
Once again, all things considered the day was a win. It was time to apply some serious effort to resolving these cooling issues though... diving into that in the next post.
Nice car, man! Where in WA are you located? There's quite a few of us FC/FD owners around Portland, OR/ Vancouver, WA.
As for temps, definitely make sure you keep an eye on that. 220F is way up there and the coolant seals typically don't survive that unless they've been replaced with aftermarket viton seals.
Hey @djSL ,
I live in Tacoma. I've met a couple local rotary guys, mostly through random car groups or drifting. I'm down in the Portland area for visiting family or drifting in Canby.
Thanks for the input on the coolant temps. Fortunately the whole engine was rebuilt before I bought it, but I definitely didn't make a habit of letting it get this hot. Ended up being a one time excursion before I reworked the whole cooling system. Follow up posts incoming, I've been super busy with life stuff so I haven't gotten the thread up to date yet. Can confirm the car is still ripping though
So after SPR it was decision making time. Options were:
Revert almost to full OEM spec, with a front mount. This would involve sourcing an OEM style fan shroud (deceptively annoying and expensive), seeing how to mate that with an e-fan (P.O. had already pulled the clutch style out), and still having the FMIC blocking airflow.
Look at installing a water-met kit. Definitely a solid solution, but adds complexity to the system, so I opted to save this for later if I start chasing more power.
V-mount
Spoiler alert, this is the way.
Since my fabrication skills are lacking at best, and the tools on hand were limited to an angle grinder and drill press I definitely should have opted to take this to a shop and have them perform the work. Probably would have cost more, but the turnaround would have been much quicker. Unfortunately I love learning those lessons much too late and would rather gain a lot of knowledge by going through the process myself and have some more to show for it at the end of the day. Since this was going to be a larger undertaking I wanted to figure out as much of the layout as I could before jumping in, buying parts, and ripping the engine bay apart. Two largest components to worry about here are obviously the radiator and intercooler. Noticing the Koyorad that came with the car was a still a single pass, not a dual, that was an easy improvement right out of the gate. The aluminum single flow is still an improvement over stock, but since this was a full commit solution I opted for the upgrade. For context here's a quick graphic from Koyorad for their N-flo radiators.
Dual pass keeps the fluid in the radiator longer, resulting in additional heat extraction.
Radiator out of the way, time to move onto the fan and controls. I try and beat the hell out of the search function on forums because let's face it, none of us are having 'new' problems at this point, and I'd wager that most people on here are smarter than I am
Bigger intercooler -> cooler intake charge -> better? Yes? Not always. The core that came with my car, albeit cool looking, was definitely oversized for the current levels the car was at. I'd need to dig back through my notes and the math that was done to verify (and then quickly brain dumped) the size core I'd need based on the turbo I have on the car. Easily ended up with a CXRacing unit. Definitely not the nicest unit on the market, but for an initial design I was okay not dropping $500 for a core. I mainly went with this because it met the cooling needs for the engine currently, but it also fit within the front radiator rails.
Let's get started.
Previous fan/shroud setup.
Cores all gone.
Out with the old. The one car garage has been a huge exercise in space utilization for me.
Last edited by iTreyler; 03-13-22 at 07:33 PM.
Reason: Formatting
Started with working on some mounts for the intercooler since the charge pipe routing would be the most difficult. Ended up just throwing a metal plate behind the hood latch to mount the intercooler to up front, and tied in some aluminum angle stock to the OEM radiator mounts. Threw a metal bracket between that, the intercooler, and the radiator and we were in business. This will definitely get reworked in the future by someone much more capable than I am, but at this point I was just trying to get the car back on the road as quickly as possible.
Vertical adjustment clamps. aka zip ties and metal scrap.
Crude but effective. Eventually this will all be replaced with a welded bracket to make install and removal much easier.
Both in. The radiator needed some tabs ground off to clear the pulleys, and the neck cut and rewelded, but looked like we wouldn't have any clearance issues.
Managed to cut and reposition the existing charge pipes to make them work. Not the prettiest, but saved some cost from getting new piping welded.
Air now travels from the turbo to the intake, cool.
Ended up not being able to clear the pulley with the Quest fan, so threw the original e-fan back on for the time being. SEE: shitimoto AN line that I'll go into some more bitching about later.
Last up was the oil cooler. I cut out the stock mounts to let the radiator clear the lower chassis bar since that looked too structural to cut out without replacing it with something else. I've seen tons of data from SCCA or time attack builds still utilizing the stock cooler, so it would be plenty for now. Tucked the oil cooler up towards the top of the bumper and added some -10 AN lines. Spoiler alert, don't buy Mishimoto ****
First start up after swapping everything around. No leaks and only issue was the smoke from some residual oil burning off.
That v-mount looks great! I'm doing something similar in the nearish future (hopefully). Don't let me spoil upcoming posts, but are you running without a hood vent? And how are IATs?
Feel free to not tell me until you're ready to post it.
That v-mount looks great! I'm doing something similar in the nearish future (hopefully). Don't let me spoil upcoming posts, but are you running without a hood vent? And how are IATs?
Feel free to not tell me until you're ready to post it.
Good work
Thank you! No worries about any spoilers, I'm not that regimented about it. I actually have a TBO vent in the OEM TII location instead of the stock scoop. The previous owner added that in and cut some more of the hood up underneath that adds some venting. Latest data shows IATs peaking around 130°F when it was about 60°F ambient, so it's doing some venting but definitely could be doing more. I'm actively trying to source an R-magic vented hood, but it's damn near impossible state-side right now, and ordering one from Japan is really cost prohibitive currently.
Thank you! No worries about any spoilers, I'm not that regimented about it. I actually have a TBO vent in the OEM TII location instead of the stock scoop. The previous owner added that in and cut some more of the hood up underneath that adds some venting. Latest data shows IATs peaking around 130°F when it was about 60°F ambient, so it's doing some venting but definitely could be doing more.
That's promising for me, I actually want to try and keep my uncut NA hood if possible. Obviously the vent is more efficient but I like the straight hood myself. Trying to have short piping, straight hood, no cutting of the body, and cool IATs. I know I'm going to need to compromise one of them but I'm not sure which yet
02-02-22, 12:51 PM
Sorry neighbors.
Even though hers is probably faster than mine lol
My wife had her CX-5 for any larger errands we needed to run, or camping trips with our dogs, but for all intents and purposes the FC was my main form of transportation. I could really only justify this decision because due to COVID and our relocation for my wife's job I was working from home. As much as I love driving the car, I couldn't afford the gas to commute to work every day of the week. The largest downside to this was that having that car down for more than a few days at a time for any larger projects was massively inconvenient at best. During those days, my trusty/crusty '84 Grand Wagoneer was a solid substitute to shuttle me around town, but needing a lot of work itself wasn't anywhere near as reliable as the RX7 (never thought you'd see that sentence huh?)
Switching to a water-meth injection kit would absolutely cool engine temps down, but I also didn't want to dive into setting the Haltech up for that just yet since it was functioning well enough to enjoy, just not beat on. Finally, the lack of a radiator shroud and ducting was allowing too much air to pass around and not through the radiator when the fan was on. This being the quickest fix I could attempt for minimal resources, I ordered a Summit universal fan shroud, and with an afternoon of work I was able to get that fabbed up relatively easily.
