1983 RX7 on $100 a week

By the way Evan, my stock power level triangle of doom is reliable as a stone compared to your pressurized explosion waiting to happen.

Yea, maybe if my car was still making less than 100hp I wouldn't have all those mechanical failures...

I want pics with the new wheels.

I keep walking into the garage and staring at them. Now I know why people pay real dollars for them. I should have the tires mounted soon and the event on the 24th is at a venue where I can run them. I'm stoked. Pictures soon.

What wheels are they and what happened to the super secret tires you were importing?

OK, the wheels came from another board member (who may identify himself as being awesome if he chooses) and are 14 inch 4x110 1983 RX7 limited edition wheels. These are not easy to find, and I'm damn lucky I get to use them. It turns out that what I paid for them shipped is exactly equal to what I sold the old Mazda2 wheels for, so I'll call that a wash. I mounted up the still super secret tires today. $45. Tread is slightly more aggressive than the all seasons that I have been running. They're a bit taller than the tires I had been running but it will almost certainly be fine.
I also solved my short ramp issue. In order to get a good angle on the short ramps I needed to drive the rear wheels of the truck onto blocks to tilt the trailer. Now the trailer was at an angle and when things were slippery and muddy it was dangerous getting the car on. At the last event a ramp shifted and we damn near dropped the car. Not cool. I hunted around and ended up getting a set of 130 inch two piece ramps from Race Ramp. Overkill? For the rally car, yes, but now I have something that will allow me to load the 911 if it ever comes to that. I'm including them in my race budget just because. $641 shipped.
Last money was $892.
New money through the end of the week is $400.
Spent $696.
New money $596.

They aren't super secret when there is a picture :)

Did you get the grass version or reinforced?

mazdeuce wrote:

Nice Mazda motorcycle! You seem to have just the one ramp and be aiming right at the corner of the house / Grosh there.

cghstang wrote: They aren't super secret when there is a picture :) Did you get the grass version or reinforced?

Dammit!
Grass version. The car is light enough that I think it will benefit from reduced weight more than stiffer sidewall. In theory I'll still get another set of proper gravel tires for harder surfaces/higher side loads. My bathroom scale says they weight just a tick over 30 lbs per corner mounted which is pretty damn good.

In reply to Adrian_Thompson:

I like you guys enough to take a picture while messing about with the ramps, but not so much that I'm willing to hook up the trailer and move it to get a better picture.

Evel Kneivel stunt cycle ramps...

Nice tires!! They look out of place on an RX-7, but maybe that's just me. Those rims still look the same in the TX air. I thought they may look cooler or bigger or somethng as everything is bigger in TX, but I guess I was wrong.

They'll look better sideways in mud, I promise. I told you I'd take them on great adventures, and I will. They already got to go to the sketchy tire shop where the dude first tried to tell me that it was useless to bother balancing them if I was going to drive them in the mud and then 10 minutes later marked one with a R telling me to run it in the back because it required a berkeley ton of weight (his words) and it would probably vibrate in the front.

Where'd you get the rally tires?

Probably here:

http://www.demon-tweeks.co.uk/motorsport/competition-tyres/maxsport-rb1-grass-tyre

Evan is like the Sherlock Holmes of rally tires.

Well I did guess right before you posted the picture.

In reply to mazdeuce:

I don't bother balancing gravel/mud/snow tires for the rallycross car, doesn't get up to speed enough to matter and costs more.

fidelity101 wrote: In reply to mazdeuce: I don't bother balancing gravel/mud/snow tires for the rallycross car, doesn't get up to speed enough to matter and costs more.

Quoted for truth. Never bothered with balancing a rallycross or an autocross only tire.

But...but I drive really fast!
You're probably right. These are the first tires I've ever had that aren't going to see road use at least some of the time. Old habits and all that.

Since rallycross is Saturday I thought I'd get a jump on things and put the tires on. They're slightly taller and narrower than what I've been running.
A combination of narrower and offset differences between the wheels also means that the car is much narrower. Maybe that will keep me from hitting cones with the rear tire? Maybe?
They do look super duper bad ass. Now I just need to bolt the seat back in. I was going to move it forward but my co-driver is going to Mexico for the weekend so that project is put on hold. I did flip all the switches and it fired right up and after a few minutes settled into a nice smooth idle. I've done absolutely nothing to the car since the last event. I think it loves me.

There is a chance that you guys were right about the balancing thing. Perhaps.

In reply to mazdeuce:

Cue the My Cousin Vinny reference...

Rallycross. It was a bit soft. The tires were AWESOME but might have contributed heavily to site degradation. I'm pretty sure nobody wants me to run them again at this site. I had two co-drivers for the day and we had a very good time. Driver #1 is a good FWD driver who runs with the Colorado boys usually. His car is up there while he was in Houston. He's fast. We were very close in times until he got stuck on one run. He had a good day though and thinks he might sort of understand the appeal to this RWD thing. In this picture he appears to have struck a land mine.

Driver #2 autcrosses a BRZ quite competently and I've been trying to find a weekend to get him on the dirt with us. He had a TON of fun. He started slow (like I asked) and quickly worked his way up to fast. On the parts of the course that held together he showed that he had the best car control of the three of us. Unfortunately, he's still learning how to drive on the soft stuff and stay out of ruts when needed.

I had a good day. Finished second out of the five of us in MR. I finally had enough traction that I felt like I could have used more power. I struggled a bit finding the fast line in the gooey stuff and lost chunks of time wallowing. The car did throw HUGE rooster tails when it hooked up which made for a really nice hero shot by one of the photographers. It was a good day.

I spent three hours pulling 100lbs of mud off the car on Sunday and drove it into the garage. I started pulling the carb apart. At least one clogged jet and the bowls have a heavy load of sediment. Time to pull it apart, adjust the floats, and see if I can make things run a bit better.

What type of carbs are you running?