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Hello boys and girls, I've been lurking for years, I've tried to start build threads but either fail at documenting, or I fail at updating my thread. This is going to be sort of a blog-type build thread. I have wanted to do this for a number of years and I'm incredibly happy to be pushing on with my goals.
Several years ago, I bought an 808 from another member here locally. The front inner frame and fender were wrinkled from a previous accident where they weren't completely pulled out, it was missing nearly all the interior (rotten from bad weather and no windows) and all the side glass. It wasn't too rusty, I robbed a lot of little pieces from it while I got my old 74 RX-2 sedan on the road though. Overall, it was a pretty decent project; but admittedly it was more work than I was comfortable with. I knew I was capable of doing the work, but since I had never had anyone to teach me about cars nor went to school to learn, had limited access to tools, and my work space was on the side of the street... I knew it would take a long time and a ton of money before I could even think about it being on the road, never mind the fact it had no title. I spent about 3 years gathering parts for it, determined to make head way 'some-day.'
My eventual goal was always to put a rotary in the 808, and take it out drifting. I also wanted the car to be able to be driven to and from the track as I have 2 about 30 minutes away from me. I also wanted to be able to drive up to my families cabin up on the Pend o Reille River.
One day I was talking with a local guy while purchasing a repu from him and he told me he knew of an rx3 racecar for sale in town. I kept prodding for awhile and he agreed to take me over to the guys house. I saw the car, went home and listed my 808 and some other parts I had been stashing over the years and came up with the money within about a week. I went and made an offer, and I drove the car onto the trailer, titled and all.
For now, here are the pics of the car when I got it. I have been hoarding parts and getting connections for years, this has allowed me to do things on a budget that would cost most people a LOT more than I have spent.
This car formerly belonged to yet another local member, PartlyMazda; years ago. Upon searching rx7 club and determining he was the owner on paper, I spoke with him on the phone and to sum up what he told me; he bought the car from Seattle in the late 80s or early 90s. Hauled it back with his REPU. He said he thinks it was an SCCA racer over on the west side of the state but he never got any paperwork regarding it. Him and a few other guys threw a 4 port together out of good used parts and auto-crossed it for a while until he sold it to the gentleman I bought it from about 15 years ago.
This car has been hacked up, lathered in bondo, and hacked up some more. Even if I were to get a full interior, it would not be a viable restoration project. The tail light panel is hacked up, factory rear qtr is all hacked up, the whole trans tunnel was hacked up, firewall included. This is really the only rx3 I wouldn't feel bad about beating on, which is why I think it's the perfect car for me to build into a drift car... More later...
So, as soon as I had the car and title in hand, I went and got the it put in my name, registered, and insured. I needed headlights, and found out you can not mix headlight fixtures between styles of nose cones. I had a rusty red wagon with a nice 12a big bumper front. It didn't take very long for me to decide it needed to go on my coupe. I considered selling the 10a front, but for one it's hacked up, and two I thought it would be nice to swap it out for the more expensive 12a front any time I hit the track.
The tail lights were... Interesting, so for now I wired up some side markers in the gap next to the brake lights to be flashers/running lights. This worked rather well, I've never been pulled over for it. Knock on wood...
The car was sold with a bolt in cage, and no seats. I snagged the ragged weather beaten seats and seat belts from my rusty wagon, wired up license plate light, running lights, and head lights. A few short trips around town had me extremely faithful in the edlebrock powered 4 port. I swapped my rikens on, and my girlfriend and I took it about 2 hours up north, nearly all the way to the Canadian border. My only complaints; the cage doesn't allow me to sit back LOL, and the factory brakes seemed more like suggestive stopping devices that actual brakes. I encountered a deer, began braking VERY early, and still nearly had a heart attack. Luckily the deer didn't stick in my way for long haha. The wagon seats we used had very little foam left inside, but were surprisingly comfortable.
We averaged 15mpg@70 with an rx3 4 speed and edlebrock 650 😎 The steering box is incredibly tight, the car handled impressively well on windy mountain roads for what I was expecting. The 4 speed was quite crunchy in 2nd and 3rd and it smelled like gear oil extremely bad when downshifting at high rpm. Beyond that, we put about 300 miles on it the first weekend I really drove it. The car ran awesome the entire time, not a single issue at all, nor did I find anything on the highways that I couldn't pass 😎
Shortly after my camping trip I decided the trans had to go. Having previously modified an FC trans to fit my rx2 sedan, blowing the trans up, and keeping all the bits that could be swapped into another box; I was in business. A trans from an s5 vert that floated around locally (passed thru my hands twice, gave it away, then bought it from someone else lol) made its way into the coupe. I didn't notice much increase in mpg, mostly because I have no speedometer and no way to track... But this trans shifts like butter and doesn't smell like nasty gear oil when you down shift.
There was a car show and 2 day Matsuri drift event going on so a good buddy of mine and I took our yellow beauties out with matching rikens and "Horwood Mazda" license plate surrounds. We were assigned parking across for the supposed local Mazda group, none of which paid any attention to our cars. In fact, hardly anyone knew what we even had. The SA is a September 78 car, fresh spark yellow paint and new carpet inside. I believe he has a wooden Nardi wheel, and a period correct alpine tape deck inside. It is a very nice car.
I added a picture of my red wagon, this car is hanging out for parts right now. I drove 1000 miles one way after purchasing it site unseen. It is by far the ugliest rustiest car I've ever seen in my life. The guy who sold it to me lied to my face when I told him I could see rust in the pictures and asked how it looked underneath. But my lust for a wagon got the best of me...
The RX-4 wagon belongs to my buddy with the SA. I road tripped a couple hours away to pick it up with him the same day I sold my 808. We had to drive half way across the state for the rx4, so we just met the guy who was buying the 808 a couple minutes away from the RX-4 to kill 2 birds...
I had planned to drift the coupe a few weeks after this, was fully prepared to do so.... Until the day before the event when I looked on Craigslist and found the silver rx3 wagon. I rushed to buy it, 1 owner car with very little rust or damage. My buddy with the SA went on a 12 hour road trip on a moment's notice to get this wagon with me. This thing needs very little to be a cherry... This will set me back on being able to drift for a while, but it was a great buy...
We took the car camping again. I found an old atv trail to get a little sideways on. Still not a single issue. I got sick of the tail lights I had, the guy who showed me the coupe gave me a set of 808 tails that made the car look a LOT better. I also traded a set of ugly rims for some wrx seats I fit in the car. much more comfortable now.
Great story man!! congrats on both cars!! If you need any parts for it hit me up or check out my for sale thread in old school. Those 808 tails look better than what you had but you really need some correct rx3 tails... I do have a couple extra sets if interested... good luck man
This brings us to early July. Of course, we had a rx7 meet local to me on 7/7. I sold my nice GSL-SE so I brought out my rx3. You'll notice I got rid of the ugly rear flares and fit a set of black plastic ones I got locally for $10. I also cut down a foam FB wing that had been improperly shipped causing the foam to warp. I feel these small touches give this ugly turd a bit more character. If you're interested in seeing pictures of other local Mazda's you can go to this album. https://www.flickr.com/photos/kayweb/sets/72157695639000852
There was a 90% restored 9/78 SA, 2 SEs, a shinka owned by spokanerxdude, and a te72 13b drift car. Our buddy Keegan came out and took some great pictures.
shortly after this. I had it with the front brakes, track day was approaching; and I had no faith in the stock rx3 brakes. A clapped out SE supplied me with its front suspension and brakes and I was in business. I had to test out my new fuel pump as the stock one the PO used would run out of volume at WOT in 3rd.
A 3rd gear brake stand had me confident the car would run great on the track, and boy did it create a cloud!!!! 😎😛😍
I got out to the track pretty late, only had one set of tires to burn, and the edlebrock REALLY didn't like being thrown sideways. I made 2 passes where I linked the whole figure 8, but after that I kept having fuel slosh issues. After this event the car has been sitting while it is being improved upon. We're nearly up to date now, let's just say for now... I made up my mind to never run a carb on the track again after this event. I know I am a good driver, the chassis isn't the most ideal handling drift car, but the carb was holding me back, by a lot....
Update: oh man, it's been over a year. A lot has happened and changed. I decided to go EFI and swapped in a GSL-SE 13b and sold the running 13b to a friend which I now seriously regret lol. I wasn't employed at the time and was hard up for cash. I got the SE injection running but something wasn't quite right and I couldn't get it to idle or rev past 3k. I also had a good friend of mine and my grandfather pass away 2 days apart and I ended up taking a hiatus from working on cars for quite some time. Over the winter I only had one engine and needed my RX-3 wagon to have an engine for inspection, so I put the 13b from the racecar in it just so it would pass inspection and I could begin the 3 year Washington State titling process. In January I registered the wagon and began the 3 year wait.
I needed another engine for the wagon so the 13b could return back to the racecar for drifting in 2019. We had a big drift event at SCR I seriously wanted to drive at. A friend of mine found a 12a that seemed to have good compression at pull n save and broke the hood latch and stuffed it up under the dash to give me an extra day or 2 to get out there and pull it. For those who live where its dry all year, February broke record snowfall in Spokane on at least 6 different days, and for the entire month as well. I think we got like 16" in one day... anyways; I braved the single digit weather and chipped away (very very slowly and COLD) until the engine was ready to pull. I dragged my girlfriend out to Pull and Save and she helped me wheel the engine hoist to the very back row of the junk yard. I think I spent about an hour digging out the 12"+ of ice/snow mix so I could get the hoist over the engine. We were still struggling to move it just the two of us, and a 60 something year old dude from like 4 rows over dropped what he was doing, came over and helped us yard the engine out. Then wheeling it across the entire yard of 12"+ of packed ice/snow in a wheel barrow felt impossible.
I got the 12a home and with several feet of snow on the ground I decided to get the 12a running on a dolly/cart in my garage since pull n save does allow returns on engines... to no surprise it fired up and idled on the very first try. I pulled the 13b back out of the coupe and put the 12a in the wagon where it sat for several months after my girlfriend had a family emergency and we decided to buy a '76 Toyota Chinook to keep us entertained through hard times. I never ended up making it to the drift event in May, and the guy who ran SCR effectively killed drifting for the rest of the 2019 season due to his own personal reasons; so my attention turned towards the 60k mile 1 owner wagon sitting with a running 12a that just needed some love to be back on the road...
I busted *** to get my wagon going (the rx3 wagon is my rotary dream car, I love camping and road tripping so it was perfect for me)
I think I finally got to drive it sometime in late July, and early August it was solid enough for me to daily drive. I drove it to work and for every errand that my girlfriend and I needed to do all month in August and September; opting to take the wagon over her 2013 Mazda6 even on 90* days when her car had A/C (how did I get so lucky with this girl??)
Which brings us back to this week.... having put about 600 miles on the car around town and several trips to hunt huckleberries up at Mt. Spokane I felt very confident in the little wagon. I planned for a trip to Olympia in the wagon to hangout with a good friend of mine who also owns an rx3 as well as an 808 wagon. I was supposed to hang out for several days and purchase a hood up in Bellingham as the one on the wagon is rusted from being stored with a battery inside. My buddy decided to meet me somewhere in his 808 wagon (his rx3 wagon has a blown 12a atm) and we decided it would be cool to meet up on Mt. Rainier and take some cool pictures of our wagons there... Well I made it about 20 miles shy of our meet up spot, Longmire Historical Inn.
I'm not sure yet what exactly caused it, but I heard some knocking a few times and backed off right away. This happened around Vantage which was only about 660'. I didn't know it was coming from the engine but I knew it was a bad sound and took it a bit easier on the freeway to be cautious. By the time I climbed to around 4000' I had completely forgotten about the knocking noise from earlier, which had now become a very very nasty breakup around the same RPM. At this point I had no cell phone service and was unsure of how far I was from my destination. I drove about 10 miles babying it and pulled over to investigate, hoping to have an ignition or carb issue... after shutting it down I noticed the rear housing was wet and oily, I pressure cleaned the engine very well so I knew this was fresh. I pulled the air filter off and noticed fuel pooled under the rear venturi on the Weber. I pulled the front plug to check for compression, great. I pulled the rear plug... and promptly left my car in the middle of the national forest over night with no other option....
Luckily my buddy owed me for some parts and ended up giving me and my car a haul back to Spokane and we called it even. Tomorrow the 12a comes out and for now; the racecars 13b that never made it back in will propel the wagon down the road again. The old owner of SCR either quit, or resigned, or something... rumor has it that drifting will be allowed at SCR again in 2020, so I will have to build an engine for the drift car over the winter... until then, I'll have to update on the wagon for now...
08-12-18, 07:54 PM
