Hi, I'm Ian from Santa Clara, CA. I just got my first rotary, a red '93 FD Touring that I've spent 6 months looking for. It's got 55K miles and is completely stock at this point. The goal for this car is to keep it a relatively stock street car, as I have another project car for the track (a Miata).



thanks,
--Ian

 

Just thought I'd follow up with a couple more photos from the SLR instead of the phone:






--Ian

 

Welcome! Car looks good!

 

Looks mint. How much did you pay for it if you don't mind me asking. I bought mine stock too

 

Very nice! I'm out in Livermore and work in North San Jose.

 

Thanks guys! The paint looks good from a distance, up close it's got some defects/cheap repairs to it. Not going to do anything about that for right now, we'll see in the longer term.

HKSeNYC: High teens.

--Ian

 

Hey there, very nice! Definitely looks gorgeous from the angles but you're probably a little too harsh on it. You did what i wanted to do and got a car lift in your garage! We got to talk about who you went through to do that as i will be doing that in the near future. And beautiful miata and audi as well!

 

The lift is a Bend-Pak 4-post HD-9ST. I ordered it from Garage Equipment Supply, picked it up at the freight depot with my trailer, then put it up with a bunch of friends. IMHO pro installation is a must for a 2-post, but 4-posts are a lot simpler.

I've only got 9.5 feet between the slab and the trusses, so at 6' tall I can't quite walk under a car on the lift. A rolling chair works well, though, and it's great for storage. MUCH cheaper than a 3-car garage in the bay area! The measuring tape says the Audi would fit underneath with about 3/4" to spare, but I haven't tried it.

The FD spent some time on the lift this weekend, getting the rusty stock muffler off and a Racing Beat dual-tip going on instead.

--Ian

 

Nice FD. I have a 93 R1. I'm in milpitas

 

Thanks for the info, remind me to call you when i install my lift in the garage. How much clearance do you have from the floor to the ceiling? The plan is to have the rx7 on the lift, the rx8 below it. Both the rx7 and rx8 are lowered which will help with clearance issues hopefully but wont know until i move in and measure the clearance of the floor to the ceiling.

I may see if we can get a meet going this weekend, look out in the west section

 

I have around 114 inches between the slab and the ceiling.

The Bend-pak HD9-ST runways are 4.5 inches thick, and in order to be able to roll the roller jacks underneath it I need to have either the Miata or the FD up on a couple of 2x8s, so call it six inches for that. My Miata is about 45 inches high without the hardtop, and the FD is 48. That's 99 inches total, giving me 15 to play with.

The lift isn't supposed to sit on the hydraulics most of the time, when you're not actively running it up and down you want it to sit on the mechanical safety latches. These are spaced every 4 inches, and you need to run the lift up a couple inches to make enough clearance to release the latches in order to run it back down, so you need to leave space for that. This means that you need to be careful when running it up to the ceiling, because it's possible to go high enough that you can't get it down again without letting the air out of the tires or something.

So with the Miata as high as it will go, the FD fits underneath with about 6 inches to spare. The tape measure says there's enough room to have the Miata sitting one latch lower, but I'm a little nervous to actually try it.

A stock Rx-8 is about six inches taller than a stock Miata, so if you've got 10 feet then it should be no problem.

Here's a shot showing the clearances a bit better:



Will look for a thread on a meet.

--Ian

 

Join NCRG on facebook if you havent already. (Northern California Rotary Group)

 

Hi Ian. I've been scouting NorCal RX owners for a meet I'm organizing next month among all the Bay Area based rotary groups. I'll PM you with the exact details.