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Hello all, I don't exactly have the most pristine example of an FB, but I love it nevertheless. Here is my a 85 GSL-SE (Roxanne) with a S4 engine.
Disregard my friend he wanted to be funny on a drive and take a model shot posing on my car
This car (as you can see) has been beat for most of its 180k mile journey through life. I bought it about 4k miles ago with cracked coolant seal grooves on all 3 irons (of course I didn't know this at the time of purchase) and with very ugly fender flares and 17x10 wheels and tires that rubbed the rear fenders at the slightest turn (right now the car is sitting on some 15in wheels I bought from a junkyard for $250 bucks with a set of some brand new Yokohama summer tires). I bought it in June 2023 and it is my first rotary car. I spent about 4 months working in a friend's garage rebuilding the engine (I street ported the primary ports as well) and cleaning up some very sketchy handy work. I prime example of the previous owner's care and affection was the completely loose bolts for all 4 links for the rear axle (impressive I know).
After getting the car running in a somewhat stock form, I decided that the 12 mpg it was getting was not sufficient and I bought a Microsquirt standalone ECU and took on the month long project. This being my first large scale wiring job and first ECU install (being only 20 years old) I was a tad nervous, but I took my time and I only messed up the wiring for the fuel pump. Everything else has been fine so far except for having to switch out a bad BAC valve (which I think I cooked ). After doing the swap and some base-level tuning, the car achieved 20 mpg on the same trip it used to get 12 mpg on! The car also runs much smoother under low load. The butt dyno doesn't show any huge increase in top end power, but that's most likely because of the stock cast exhaust manifold (I'm hoping). Soon I will be dropping it off at an exhaust shop to get the header modified (GSL-SE header from RB has a 2in outlet whereas the FC header has a 2.5in outlet, so I got a GSL-SE header (FC header hangs a bit lower in the FB chassis) and a FC pre-silencer (2.5in vs the 2in GSL-SE one), and I have to get the GSL-SE header modified) and the rest of the exhaust cut to mount to the end of the pre-silencer.
This car is my "daily" and of course it won't pass smog in CA or anything, but I'm in the Air Force and simply stationed here. I got the car registered in Florida (my home state) and viola problem solved... kinda. Right now my mission is to make the car a better daily and fix it up cosmetically. The car has been a California car its whole life and it has no structural rust. All it has is some surface rust from the peeling paint from the previous crappy paint job. I want to patch the holes in the fenders and just make it one color. I would like to get new front fenders, but they may be out of the budget for now. Anyways, sorry for going on for so long, but I have been scrolling through this forum for months now gathering information from all you knowledgeable folks and I figured I might as well join the club.
Welcome to the forum!! The car appears to have good bones and if you're planning on restoring it, thr car would restore very nicely! What color was the car originally?
04-10-24, 09:15 AM
Everything else has been fine so far except for having to switch out a bad BAC valve (which I think I cooked 
). After doing the swap and some base-level tuning, the car achieved 20 mpg on the same trip it used to get 12 mpg on! The car also runs much smoother under low load. The butt dyno doesn't show any huge increase in top end power, but that's most likely because of the stock cast exhaust manifold (I'm hoping). Soon I will be dropping it off at an exhaust shop to get the header modified (GSL-SE header from RB has a 2in outlet whereas the FC header has a 2.5in outlet, so I got a GSL-SE header (FC header hangs a bit lower in the FB chassis) and a FC pre-silencer (2.5in vs the 2in GSL-SE one), and I have to get the GSL-SE header modified) and the rest of the exhaust cut to mount to the end of the pre-silencer.
