SAEJP

Hi, my name is JP, from Southern California. San Diego specifically. Just picked up a 1980 RX7 SA. Second owner, old woman had had it sitting for 20 years after she had the engine rebuilt! Work at a shop down here called SAE Motorsport and we are planning on using the car as a platform for CHUMP car and other racing series.

Washed the car, changed the fluids, did some re-wiring to fix where some kind of large rodent had eaten through the ignition coil grounds. We picked the car up for a great price, lots of us were skeptical that the engine would still be good. Hand cranked it and everything felt smooth with a little ATF as lubricant.

After putting in a new battery we eventually got the car running after about 30min of playing with it.

Anyways cars exterior is pretty rough, only paint wise though, body is in wonderful condition. However the interior was amazing, put a smile on my face when we connected the battery and the old radio and speakers, and other electronics came to life after two decades of retirement.

The next step was prepping it for racing, we've gutted most of the inside of the car, prepping it for a full cage, but was careful with all the interior pieces because I'd like to post them for sale just in case anybody with an FB/SA is looking to do a nice original restoration. The hatch, side windows, and one of the rear corner glass is all out of the car, no scratches or cracks. door panels, headliner, and carpet are all intact with minimal flaws. PM me if there's any specific pieces your interested in!

Next we moved onto the engine bay, AC has been deleted, vacuum solenoids all removed and ports caped off. We've ran a PCV and breather filter from the oil filler tube, copying a thread I found from another member on this forum. Radiator and gas tank were both removed for restoration since the water was pretty nasty and the fuel was just kerosene. We plan on V-mounting the radiator and creating shrouds directly to the radiator and factory oil cooler beneath it. We will replace the factory cooling fan with an electronically controlled fan to take some drag off the engine.

On our list of to-do: FD ignition coil, carb rebuild (ours doesn't seem to be leaking though). We will probably end up getting some headers, carb, and building an exhaust for it. Bushings all of course need to be replaced. We are hoping to find a GSL-SE so we can take the disk brakes, lsd, brake master, 13b, and probably everything but the chassis for spare parts.

Will create a build thread for this as well as a parts thread. Thanks for reading, good to meet you all, feel free to PM me with any advice or questions. I'd love to hear from people who have worked specifically with these cars. Can hopefully get some photos up soon and document step by step from here on out of the car.