RX7 FC finding out what it wants to become

Oh I thought the vise grips were going to be like putting a playing card in the wheel of you bike and make cool sounds!

This is what im thinking about. I have tabs on a AC delete kit witch should look like this.

looks like a March pulley kit on a Cobra kit car mill.. $$$ but I bet nothing squeals!

http://www.jegs.com/i/March-Performance/655/30025-09/10002/-1 March Alternator pulley and adjuster

http://www.jegs.com/i/March-Performance/655/30035-09/10002/-1 Power steering bracket

not really as pricey as I thought!

Beagle im sorry I should have made my self clear. That is the belt rout I am going to try and recreate. Im not a fan at all of billet... It looks ok on a C10 or a 70's car but not a RX7. That also brakes the budget for just two mounts. I think I will be able to use that rout with the stock mustang parts im going to get used (may be next, I need to let my bank acc. settle for a bit.) That was just the best photo that shows where the PS pump is and there is no idler in that setup.

no worries - I was just playing "Name that vendor". I thought those pieces were higher than the are, but they are still too high for me. The billet can be fixed with plastidip. haha. My comment was mostly pointed to the excellent belt wrap on that setup and that it shouldn't slip.

x2 on the grey, black makes it hell to find leaks. You're making great progress man!

Thanks ya im looking into other colors. Por 15 colors and nothing really jumps out at me...

Spent the afternoon cleaning and prepping. First with the motor I got some naval jelly to clean off the rust. Dont know how well its working but I have a feeling it might take a few days and a lot of time to get it clean... Oh well it has to be done. I also cleaned up the bellhousing and trans up a bit more. Then moved to the steering rack and cross member. I think im going to drop the cross member but leave the lower arms on just so I can one clean and paint it, two im going put 1/2" spacers for more hood clearance down the road. So nothing worth taking photos of tonight.

Now to parts, I was working on a intake today. First trying to buy a offenhauser intake off ebay but couldn't reach a price with the seller. Then as luck would have it a guy from work said he has one for a good price! He is going to bring it by work tomorrow so I can see if it will sit low enough. The lower EFI intake sits 4.5" from the bottom to the top so that will give me an idea for the intake tomorrow. I don't think I can go much higher and still hope to get a air filter on it.

Pontiac metallic blue with black bolts, engine tin, and accessories. Beautiful and easy to spot leaks.

Well when I went to upload the new photos I found this one. The headers are BBK shorties., and they will work with both stock and P heads and fit well in the mazda.

So now for the new stuff. Got some navel jelly to get the rust off the block last night and gave it 2 or 3 good coats then got it off once the bottle told me to. This is what it looks like this afternoon.

It got rid of the rust and turned it into this white powder that is hard to get off... So looks like its going to be just as hard to get this off as the rust.

Today I got the parts to turn my T5 into a hydro clutch. I got a slave cylinder from a 91 toyota 4cyl. Why because it was cheaper than a miata slave and has the same bore, witch has the same as bore as the stock rx7 slave. Just hope it works in the end. only 1/2 way through now. I have to take the bell housing off to drill and tap some holes for the bracket (used my other bell housing for mock up). Then make a rod to go to the clutch fork. But its a easy mod that will be much easier and better than going with a cable.

I also am getting ready for some paint under the hood. I pulled the rack off and unbolted and dropped the cross member. 4 bolta was simple enough and it came down. Hit it with some degreaser then steel wool to ruff up the paint. It will go back to black tomorrow with some brush on rustolium. I am also going to do the whole engine compartment gray so its easy to clean and see spills. So Im going to clean up the frame rails and at least paint the bottoms of them with some brush on paint tomorrow.

As of now it looks like im am taking over my dads shop... Oh well im just glad he likes the project to!

And last but not least I got a intake! I got it for a good price and it was local. Not as low as I was hopping but the dual plane will be a good road/hooning intake and it looks good with no logo from some hotrod shop on the front. I don't want to open the hood and think hotrod I want to open the hood and think racecar!

loctite says use more naval jelly to remove hardened naval jelly... eeek. Good progress!

Eekk that sound like a marketing sceam "use more of our product to fix our product" oh well it will look good in the end just have to spend the time to get it there. I think im going to go with the silver block and black oil pan valve covers and acc brackets i think that will look good with the polished intake. It should look at home under the hood if the fire wall and inner finders are gray. Now how all that will look under the hood of a brown car... Yet to be seen.

Just so you know, all that rust on the drivers side framerail is from a leaky master cylinder. I would make sure your master cylinder and booster check out okay before the first drive.

That is pretty common on 2nd gen rx7s that have sat for a period of time.

Ya the brakes feel really good and iv checked the leval and it hasent fallen any during the time that iv had it. I dont know of anyways to check the booster without the car running. Im hopping that the PO just spilled a lot when he was doing the brake swap. New master is only $25 on rockauto but a new booster is $100?!? Ya I want to know for sure that mine is bad before i replace it. Also iv got to see what cam im going with down the road if the profile dosent give any vacume then ill have to swap to manuel wilwood master or somthing like that.

Well iv been working for the last few days but a lot of stuff that is no fun to talk about, cleaning, painting, grinding. So here is where it started Friday morning. I dropped the cross member for a few reasons. I wanted to get it painted and install 1/2" spacers to help fit the motor under the hood.

I have also been working on the motor. My oil pickup finally came in. I rented a puller and got the harmonic balincer off the crank followed by the timing chain cover. I am not going to change the timing chain right now. With only 45k on it it should be fine. It also gives me an excuse to do a cam swap further down the road.

Ya that's kinda nasty...

I also got more done with the slave cylinder. I put 2, 1/2" holes in the bell housing and tapped them for the bracket. The aluminum is not very thick but I really wanted to put threads in the bell housing so if I need to take the bracket off down the road I wont have to pull the trans to do so.

I also decided the 4 pot calipers were to nice to leave alone so good cleaning and some black paint got them looking good. But not good enough so I took my time with some sand paper and got the mazda back to the aluminum.

After painting the cross member and under the frame where the cross member mounts I got some 1/2" spacers and re-installed the cross member. I don't like having the spacers in there but I will need the room down the road.

I also got the welder to work for me and finished up the rust repair, not the best but it will work.

The block is taking FOREVER to get clean. I picked up some muratic acid and gave it a try on the other side. It seems to be working well but taking a long time. So I would guess another week before its ready for paint.

That's all the work iv got done so far, I did order a lot off goodies from rock auto so they will be coming over the next two weeks. Its nice to know that everything is as torn down as it is going to be. Its all putting it back together from here on out. So that should mean that I will be much cleaner since I will be installing new are old parts that I have cleaned.

I was also messing with the dash today and a key fell out of the dash... It was for the mazda I guess it was a hidden key that had turned into a lost key!

I feel like im doing an injustice by not updating in 4 days!!

Well not much has happened. Swaybar got repainted and some more cleaning of rust under the hood followed by painting the grey on with a brush in some of the places I will have a hard time with a spraying with a can.

Biggest news is the parts are starting to come it! All kinds of gaskets and seals and things to get the motor back together and make it not leak oil all over the place. There are a few things I am going to have to send back. The distributor and coil are for the EFI setup so they are no good to me :/ should have checked into that more before buying them. Also I got paint for the motor. I went with duplicolor even tho POR 15 was recommended. For the simple reason that everyone that has used the primer below the paint said it was amazing and the grey I picked up will look perfect and it was free.

In other news it looks like it may be a bit longer before I get the motor together... But don't worry its for a good reason! I found a guy that has a FC shell with lots of goodies! S/S brake lines, 5 lug with 4 pot calipers, solid diff mounts, t5 to rx7 drive shaft, and last but not least a LSD!!!!! He is going to sell me both front and rear sub frames and the wiper motor and 2 open diffs and one set of 1/2 shafts for the open diff. So ya looks like im spending more than I had planned on but all the parts are used and super cheap! So looks like I will have a drift machine on my hands when im done!

Thanks for keeping up with the build and the help! Probably wont have much more happening until after the weekend!

I would check to see if you have an LSD under the car now. Some of the sports had one. (your car is either a sport or a brake swapped base model).

The 1/2 shafts are the same between open and LSD diffs (assuming we are talking about NA diffs, teh turbo II diffs are different)

You already have the big brakes. They are stupid cheap to buy new calipers and rotors anyway, not really worth it to buy used.

Definetly pick up the SS brake lines and driveshaft!

Ya I plan on it, and i know that the brakes were upgraded by the PO from the parts car that he had, and he said the diff was open but I will check tonight. How does it work? On a open diff you spin one wheel and the other spins the opposite direction? Then a LSD both tires will spin the same way?

Ya the drive shaft will be a huge score as well as the brake lines. Im kinda bummed granny speed said it would be a week for the kit and its almost 2 weeks now. Iv heard some sketchy stuff about them taking forever so my fingers crossed that I wont be waiting months for the mounts. I did ask him a question about the motor mounts and a timeline for the kit to be shipped he responded about the motor mounts but nothing on the date to get the kit.

the easiest way to check for LSD on an RX7 is to see if teh drain plug has a little metal tag on it that says LSD fluid only or something liek that.

I have seen LSD's on RX7s that were a bit weak and would spin the wheels opposite directions but worked well on the track.

Hold the pinion flange still and spin one wheel. The other should spin the same direction (may hesitate for a second) if it is an LSD in good shape. (This applies to S4 LSD, the S5 is different and MAY not react the same way).

If the car was originally a 4 bolt car, it will NOT have an LSD unless somebody swapped one in.

I will check when I get back to the car. But it was a 4 lug car to my understanding and the PO swapped the 5 lug and all the other good parts from the parts car.

Also just thought about this how do yall thing I should vent the motor blow bye? just add a vent to one of the valve covers to a catch can? I don't think I will have a huge amount of blow bye but there is always some. Id rather not run a PVC valve I would much rather run to a catch can like this.

But the issue is that there is no vent on the valve cover... What can I do to get the gas out of the block?

For our racecar (SBC) we welded two pipe nipples to the valve covers (one on each side). Then we ran the hoses to a catchcan that had a small filter on top. Then, we ran a line from the bottom of the catchcan into the crankcase area (Explained below).

Where the mechnical fuel pump once was is open to the crankcase. We welded a pipe nipple to a fuel pump block off plate (drilled a hole in the plate) and ran a line from the catchcan (near the bottom) to that nipple on the fuel pump block off plate.

This worked awesome! Before we did that, we had all sorts of issues with oil and gases getting pushed out. Once we ran the hoses to EACH of the valvecovers and allowed it to return to the crankcase, all problems were sorted.

Ok that sounds like what im going to try and do, I was just hopping to not cut into my valve covers. I will also have to find some kind of aluminum nipple to weld on to them for the pipe. or I could use on of these.

I don't plan on running the oil back to the motor unless I have real issues with the catch can filling up.

We had massive issues with filling the catch can --- Under all day roadrace conditions.

Well I don't plan on racing this car maybe a track day and some auto Xing but mainly used to turn tires into smoke! But I will have to look into that as well. I don't have a good place to divert the oil back into the motor... I just wish I didn't have to cut into the valve covers. Does the intake not have a port that goes to the valley I feel like that would be a better place to run a line from.

Checked the diff tonight with the help of my dad, had to pull him away from his build (1977 ford capri SCCA improved touring rebuild restoration) and its a open diff as i thought the 1/2 shafts look a little to small as well. No big deal now that im on track to grab a LSD and the other parts. Hope to roll the car out of the shop tomorrow to do a tune up on my DD and maybe give the RX7 a wash and see if the paint is any good.

The new half shafts (if they are stock) will be exactly the same. (unless turbo)

Ya just did some looking around I thougHt the tII was the only rx7 that got the LSD but the GTU got it in 88. His car is a 88 GTU so more than likely its stock and has stock size 1/2 shafts witch are a bit weaker... Well he yas some spare 1/2 shafts for then I brake one so no big deal there. It also comes with 2 open diffs so i guess I will sell them and keep my stock unit as a spare.

The stub shafts in the diff will break before the half shafts. Keep spares if drifting!