Area-77 Drift FC RX7 2011 FullRace Chassis Build
 

With the 2010 FormulaDrift season coming to an end in a few weeks, and having a solid spot at the last stop for FD - The FormulaDrift Pro-Am Nationals on October 7th, 8th, and 9th. It's about time we start gearing up for next year whether it be going to the big leagues and throwing down with the best, or traveling across the US with the XDC/D1GP circuit. We need to take our years worth of data, and our knowledge of prior FC RX7 Rotary builds, and make one new car to compete with anything and everything all in-house at AREA-77 RotorWorks.

The EXACT build details will be under wraps for now, however it'll be worth the wait.

Car Specs:

'87 Mazda RX7 TurboII
(replica buckey car. build date is only a few weeks later than my OEM build date. same options minus, the chrome wheels upgrade. Vin# is almost exact.)

what i plan to contribute:

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BN-sports Type2 Aero. (if our original idea fails by the time the season opener kicks off.)

Dmax Carbon Fiber hood.

ShineAutoProject WideFenders & hatch wing.

Lexan hatch

JTP's hotline Spindle upgrade + S5 onepiece LCA's

tons of labor, stitch welding everything. full chassis paint, colors TBA, with good reason! ;p

hopefully some experience with fab work (welding/bash bar front/tube'd rear end, maybe cage if i get enough experience by then and the some decent metal working tools)

simplified chassis with only the essentials. simplified chassis harness, standalone, tons of power/angle.

The projected completion date is around 2/1/11, to allow for ample setup time, and tuning//working out the bugs. this is going to be the car to test alignment settings, power, and traction.


Spent a few hours stripping the majority if it down. still need to remove the harness, tranny, driveshaft. i doubt we're going to get crazy and do a rotisserie however, i may try to get nuts and fab one up and test out the welds by putting it on it. depends on time.

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^ drilling spot welds where the bumper support was removed. practicing for the rear speaker covers. nowhere near done, so dont think so. lol

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This chassis had some fun in the drifting community before, and i hope to keep it going.

Tomorrow is the mental day, stripping wires, and de-tarring. i plan on not cutting corners with this one considering i have a few builds under my belt, and this is the first "full race build" im getting a chance to help out with to gain more knowledge.
I hope to have this car as professional appearing as best i can.

It will be updated frequently like my Personal FC build thread.


TAGS:
Buckey, vegas, drift, FD, pro, am, area-77.net, vegasrotary, euroasianmotorworks.

Chill day #2.
put in a few hours. didnt really have anything else to do.

i stripped the harness from the rear hatch area, and most of the lines/cables.
tomorrow's goal is to pull the rest of the chassis harness (front portion) and strip the tar out.
then get nuts with the fluxcore and do some welding.

since the interior isnt usually photographed in detail, i opted to do this first to figure out the characteristics of the welder/metal. i want the engine bay to be the strong point as always.

made a harborfreight run for some flapdiscs, and a spool of wire. gloves, and a spot weld drill bit, which sucked... lol i had better luck with using 1 big drill bit and drilling the spots welds with it..
i finished removing the messed up bumper support, and smoothed it up.
Pics of the madness
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after having shit luck with the spot weld drill bit upfront, i decided to test it out on some random brackets that needed to bone out. before i moved to the speaker covers.
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noticed how crammed looking the hatch is with the speaker covers on as opposed to being removed. now the strut towers can be tied together when we throw some tubes in it. not to mention the 3lbs of dead weight just chillennn.
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now heres one removed.
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and both out...
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my test dummies for the seam welding to setup the welder.
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not the prettiest welds, but thats nothing a flap disc cant fix if i want to redo.
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tomorrow is going to be some more practice, maybe bust out the gas, and try to read a book on it to get a better idea.. all in all, its a race car. if people are looking at stitch welds then the car isnt getting driven hard enough. plus its nice to not pay someone to do shit and potentially mess it up.

looks like you hit the ground running.

sometimes i wish i didnt have full time work and school. i have no time to work on my own stuff.

wanna trade spots? lol i hate being un-employed. vegas is sucking right now for jobs. thats one reason why i'm really trying to get better with the welding/get into fab work so if i get good enough i cant start taking side jobs.

nah. im happy working. its just hard to walk past my fc with the engine on a stand collecting dust. ive become accustomed to staring at my shoes as i go inside.

but sucks vegas sucks. go be a pitboss or something. im sure in recessions the first and last places to recover are the attraction cities like vegas so im glad that i live in a somewhat stable community, even if you get to work on your car and dont have to battle snow 6 months a year.

You can make time.... Maybe.

Mine sat many a weekend with me just staring at it because i had zero money.

Buckey, why s5 lca's vs s4?

because they're one piece balljoints, the S4 has that shitty bolt on extended balljoint that bends every time you barely touch something..

we have a RHD spare rack for the boss man's RHD GT-R FC that has the S5 LCA's and it looks like a better setup.
the only thing i dont like about them, is if for some reason the balljoint fails, then you're done where as the S4 you can just bolt another one up if it screws up.

this car is going to be the test car to test out all kinds of stupid setups to see whats best. the car is perfectly straight unlike mine (the diff is sitting 3"to the left of OEM...)
we want to play around with different steering racks from other cars, take factory FC racks apart to see if they can be made to give more angle without doing spindles...etc etc

Sounds cool.

That'll do pig.


Had no idea those things bend that easy.

word buckey glad to see your back in the game atleast!

subbing, this should be an interesting build !

the car was previously mine, and before that, was here in town about 2 years ago, so if you were looking for TII's back then, this possible could be it lol

yea, probably is lol

Reallly liking this build

looking good man

Definately a great start to a build...looking forward to watching the fab as it progresses...

so lack of updates due to reasons need not be mentioned.
if the shop so decides to update the build of this chassis then it will be a good build, although i dont know the plans thusfar.

however, we parted ways for 2011, and i will not be working on this car.

on a positive note i picked up a cherry FC shell locally and will be making the build shortly with fresh parts, and a baller cage. so hopefully this build and mine will be beneficial to some.