Major Project, not for the squeemish
 

Well, first off I have to say I'm not a car person, yet. I've had too many things that were cheaper for me to fill my time until now so I have started a project that is probably to big for me, but I'm going to put my best effort into it.

I purchased an '86 RX7 for $250. Already your thinking what can be wrong with it.

A lot.

For starters it had no wheels and had been sitting on gravel out in a field for several years. The body looks good on the outside, hardly a dint or scratch in it. Unfortunately thats where the good news ends. The car was with another one and both were used as parts for another project by someone else. Don't know who, was done a long time ago, abandoned with the property. Anyway, its a big rebuild project and I simply don't know where to begin.

I have a lot of documents on how RX-7's should work, Gen 1/2/3's, ETC. I just don't know where to start the project. The car doesn't start or run, the break lines have corroded and it looks like someone took out a part of the car (probably a turbo) with hedge trimmers because I have thick cables hanging loose.

The main reason I purchased this car is I want to learn, and I believe in learning from the ground up, so, I'm thinking I should darn near disassemble the car, take off the panels, strip out the easy parts and get the engine out of the body to possibly just clean it, or potentially rebuild it.

Any advice on what to start with would be nice as this is the first car that I can actually work on and not care if its running at the end of the day or not. I have time, I have energy and a lot of patience. I'm going to need it all. I can furnish pictures of the vehicle, but they just show how bad a mess it really is. I'll probably be replacing a lot of parts and almost re-building the car from scratch, but its something I'd like to do and have a story to tell behind it. I'll probably take off the panels in the meantime as I have yet to see much rust on anything but the wheel rotors.

Thanks for the help, and yes, I should probably give up, but I really want to "make" my car and this is the best chance for me to learn about cars.

--GWDragon

I understand your enthusiasm, but I would not recommend doing what you described. You can learn a great deal about cars withoy re- building one - just try to maintain one and keep it roadworthy and on the road. iT IS NOT EASY KEEPING AN OLDER VEHICLE ON THE ROAD.

Get one that is closer to running, or running. Use the shell a as test of your skills then work on the one you can drive with less than two years work.

Thanks for the advice. They were really cheap and honestly was just expecting to get experience from disassembling everything I can on the car. The possible re-build of the engine and putting it back together wasn't really a goal but more a "wish". I've also changed my direction and just started removing things out of the engine compartment of the car, taking pictures every time I do something.

The other reason for even purchasing this car was it was cheap, I could probably part it out and make a profit, but I'm in this to get some learning.

I'm currently uploading the pictures I've taken so far to a website.
The place its going to be is http://home.flash.net/~midnight/rx7/

They are all time/date stamped and should be in order numerically. I'm still uploading a few in the list.

Thanks for the feedback and advice.

Well, After many many hic-ups, I'm getting close to pulling out the engine from the car. The question I have is should I leave the transmission on (which I hear you can do) or remove the transmission before I remove the engine. I'll be posting a few more pictures at the link above of where I am. Thankfully I'm getting plenty of knowledge that I was looking for and I hope to have an engine cleaned and disassembled by the end of the month, but who knows. I've even found an Engine rebuild video set that I hope helps. I can see a lot of people have looked at this, Maybe I'll make a web page to document my mis-adventures with my hopefully not dead RX7.

If you have absolutely no need to pull the tranny, I wouldn't. It's not much more work to pull both together, but still, it is easier to pull just the engine alone. Keep us update man. It's always good to hear someones bring an FC back on the road!

Edit: If you're gonna remove the tranny period, then I'd do it with it still connected to the motor. It's not difficult and should actually be easy since there is a ton of room once you get the fan shroud off. Just make sure you put blocks or something under the tranny to support it once you remove the tranny mounts. Then once you have the hoist hooked up to the engine and every things ready to go, just pull them both out!

No point in removing the trans first, you'll be working on your back ( unless you have a lift ) no matter what, but at least you won't have to worry about dropping the tranny to the ground without actually dropping it or getting the car high enough to pull it out.

Thanks for the info. I'm going to remove it with the engine then for the simple reason that I'm pretty sure its shot and has to be more than re-built, probably replaced. Its a manual and the stick moves WAY to much for there to be much in the transmission.

Also, if I'm lucky (and I hope I am), I might be putting an '88 RX7 back together as well. Its an auto but my goal was to put them back in running order. Thanks for all the info.

all i have to say is good luck. itll be a hell of a learning experience.