Santa Cruz is Convertible Country
 

Hello rotary nuts,

After 12 long years of not having a car I am pleased to finally have gotten my 88 RX-7 convertible. She is a hottie that is in need of some TLC, but deservingly getting it.

I picked her up on St. Patty's day of 2010 had 126k on her, and I have joyously placed another 18k on her already. What else are you to do with a convertible in CA, esp a rotary rocket, but drive her everywhere with the top down or the center bar out.

A little bit about myself:

I grew up on the Mazda rotaries (literally). When I was 4 in '74 (ok showing age) my dad was reading Popular Mechanics and just started raving about the engines. Next thing I knew my parents were driving off of the lot with a brand new rx-4 wagon, and a rotary truck. My mom went through a couple of rx-4's but my dad hung to his truck for an incredibly long time.

My brother's first car was a '73 RX-3 wagon, an old dual distributor with headers. This car eventually became mine. I really miss that one. I so loved giving that car a tune up. I can still nail down setting the points by eye on dual distributors.

For several years I was a mechanic at a local Mazda dealership, I saw all the rotaries that came in, and I had my own repair shop specializing on the rotaries, while taking in the occasional other Mazda, or Ford built on Mazda chassis for my really good customers.

While at my shop I had done a couple of rotary conversions, mostly into miatas. Sponsored a couple of racers on the autocross circuit, even raced my 1st gen RX-7 in CSP, became an expert engine rebuilder, and could seriously tweak the stock carbs to get some serious performance, and even better mileage.

Currently my plan with my convertible is to build a turbo engine before this one dies, and do the full turbo conversion with it, making it fully CA smog legal in the process. yes, with the harness and cpu etc...Of course this being with an 89-91 engine. Then get then softtop reworked. As I tell my girlfriend, "we will then have the ultimate touring machine."