My vmax rx7 build
Discussion
RobCrezz said:
You got 330bhp with induction kit, ECU and exhaust?
It had a boost gauge as well and possibly running a higher boost (plus a cat bypass pipe). The RR was done on a mobile unit at a car show, so may have been optimistic, but it certainly felt like it had 330BHP, had also just been rebuilt including replacement of all pipes etc so was running as well as it ever could, Id say probably a realistic 315BHP, but Ill stick to what the RR said for pub bragging 
Will be following this build closely, would love another RX but the running costs broke me, Ill never forget a service at a place called rotechnics (I think), bill came to over £570 and it didnt seem to cover much!! A definite enthusiasts only car.
Good luck with it, try get some sound bites up when the engine is running at its best, must sound like a beast.
well tonight i have been busy on my ebay elbow.
firstly i cut the smaller diameter off, i could have done it after the lip and it would have been simpler but hindsight is a wonderful thing!
after cutting the end off i used a dremel to enlarge it back out to the correct size, not sure neat but not to bad, stops the restriction in my pipe work by making it 70mm internal diameter instead of 60mm
i then used my grinding bits to take out all the bumps, casting marks and general crappyness, it still looks rough in the pictures but feels silky smooth.
this took me 2hrs to do in total and its not a fun job sitting in the kitchen working on it, got pins and needles in my hand now!
firstly i cut the smaller diameter off, i could have done it after the lip and it would have been simpler but hindsight is a wonderful thing!
after cutting the end off i used a dremel to enlarge it back out to the correct size, not sure neat but not to bad, stops the restriction in my pipe work by making it 70mm internal diameter instead of 60mm
i then used my grinding bits to take out all the bumps, casting marks and general crappyness, it still looks rough in the pictures but feels silky smooth.
this took me 2hrs to do in total and its not a fun job sitting in the kitchen working on it, got pins and needles in my hand now!
got myself a decat pipe for my birthday this year, even with the big turbo ill be running a 3inch exhaust on the road as due to running low boost there wont be massive back pressure issues and it keeps the noise down to semi-sensible levels........to say its loud compared to when it had a CAT on it is a bit of an understatement!!
When i started it up i crapped my pants, thought the decat had fell off, my neighbours werent to impressed!
Though its much better from 7-8krpm now as the ports where being heavily restricted by the CAT.
Big difference in weight
new gaskets and bolts which is nice
checked flanges and they are both true and flat
had to jack the decat up so i could get the lower brace back on, but all bolted up!!
video of starting it up
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oiKRYFv2I8
sounds like a cross between a v8 and a boat lol
When i started it up i crapped my pants, thought the decat had fell off, my neighbours werent to impressed!
Though its much better from 7-8krpm now as the ports where being heavily restricted by the CAT.
Big difference in weight
new gaskets and bolts which is nice
checked flanges and they are both true and flat
had to jack the decat up so i could get the lower brace back on, but all bolted up!!
video of starting it up
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oiKRYFv2I8
sounds like a cross between a v8 and a boat lol
sounds like a canal boat.hey guys, not much of an update but id mention a couple of things anyway.
since im gonna need all the help with my brakes to stop from such a speed i stripped down both calipers and rebuilt them, was a bit of a nightmare
was dirt in the fluid that messed up 3 of the pistons.
Eventually got the piston out to find it had some scoring and a burr on it:
With similar scoring inside the caliper piston recess:
Was caused by pieces of grit in the system! This is despite there being dust seals and the main piston seal appearing to be in perfect condition!! Luckily the damage was not deep and came out very easily.
Rebuilt it with new pads and bled the brakes. This was the state of the fluid:
A bit skanky to say the least!
You can see its been a while since the pads have been changed!
the next update is that because of something happened today(which i will come onto later in the post) i decided to not go with my idea of having the intercooler in the engine bay.
I have decided to put it in the bumper area, now because of the large size of the cooler and the way the stock bumper wraps around the chassis area so tightly it meant that the bumper wouldnt have the physical density to contain the full cooler.
So i went on the hunt for another bumper, since it seems someone local has been using my front bumper to bounce there car off a few times a replacement was needed anyway.
Found this going cheap recently so picked it up including the lights that go in it.
Its a copy of a japanese bumper from FEED
As you can see it has much larger opening for air intakes, this will help to get more air travelling to the intercooler over a stock bumper aswell.
Also my new manifold arrived today, got it for a bargain price of £40 but bare in mind it needs ALOT of work, ill get a friend to go over the welds again to make sure it doesnt crack, also gonna borrow warrens dremel to sort out all the overlaps on the insides, remember it looks bad now but for the money you cant expect much better lol
Once all the insides are cleaned up and its strengthened with a few well placed braces ill cut off the wastegate flange and weld on a 60mm v-band flange for my wastegate
Suppose the final update was that today i got invited to santapod with redline magazine, was alot of fun and interesting to see how the car did in its very basic setup(not much up on stock)
Arrive at pod at 10am, remove all the crap ive brought from home(food etc)
Have a wander around to see whats there and sign loads of paperwork to say im happy to die lol
Put the fuel back into my map to take it off economy mode, gotta love PIM voltage settings.
DRAG RACING
Leave it on stock boost for the moment, as im still on the basemap, thinking ill up the boost later on in the day when i get my 60fts perfect.
Since i didnt have a air compressor with me i just evened the tyre pressures out on the back to 20psi(since they are just old eagle f1s)and set the teins to soft.
So this is it, little bit nervous as not really sure what to expect and never launched a rwd car at pod before.
Drive around to the start line avoiding the water trap, move into position, rev up to about 5500rpm and go.
Pull of the line not to bad, once it hits 7krpm in 1st i get massive axle chatter and it shakes me stupid, change to second and pull to 7.5k, change to third, pull to about 7k and into fourth.........suddenly ive got no power, do the usual look in the mirror for white smoke(habit from owning a r5 turbo) look at the boost and ive got 0.01bar of pressure!!
Cross the line basically rolling
Feeling a bit disheartened thinking ok this sometimes happens to me but ill try again and hopefully the solenoids will be kind to me.
Pop into the timing booth to see what my 60ft was so i can see how much i need to improve(basically expecting a 14sec quarter and a 2.5 60ft)
Get given my slip to find ive done a 12.8059@107.3mph pulling a 2.1667 which i thought was pretty decent since i had no power for some of the run.
Thinking if the boost holds together for the run im hoping for a 12.5 at 110mph+
Launch on the next run and get a 2.1445 60ft so a little better but since im still getting axle chatter i know my launches need more work.
Soon as i go into third gear again no boost, try in fourth and same again, nothing, cruise over the line at 17.0822@57mph lol
Shame really as i didnt even get to try a 1bar of boost my first run only peaked at 0.69bar
SPRINTING
Feeling a bit miffed about not being able to see what potential my car has i decided to pop up to the handling circuit.
Here is a rough picture from what i remember, there might be a better pic when its in the magazine, you launch at the startline on the right and the timing stops when you come to a standstill at the end.
The picture doesnt really show how extreme the salom at the end was, much more tighter and the cones were closer together
Pull up the start, asking the guy where do you go, advises me to drive around it slowly to find where im going then come back around and go for it.
Before i had a go i asked what sort of time to be aiming for, few guys say people are averaging around 33seconds, anything less than that and your fast.
So first go and ive now discovered ive got no boost....at all, since ive now only got about 150bhp i just keep my foot in as long as possible.
dont get out of the second gear the whole way around and use my handbrake to slow the car down as the big corner tightens up, then basically understeer my way around the rest of the course(foot welded to the floor as havent got the power to get back up to speed again)
Nail the brakes very hard at the end to help pull some time back.
Guy gives me a time of 32.5secs
Feeling pretty happy with it as i basically messed up the entire lap and didnt really know where im going.
Ask what the fastest time of the day was and its fensport corolla running 600bhp on semi slicks with a time of 28.4seconds.
i then started to put some more runs in and clean my lap up
2nd run 31.7secs
3rd run 30.0 secs
4th run 29.7 secs
5th run 29.6 secs
6th run 29.1 secs
which im not 100% sure where that will leave me in the end but i was in 3rd position when i left them to it at 330pm
Not bad for a car with no power, rubbish tyres(still 20psi in the back) and havent touched the suspension.
Found compared to other people i wasnt braking at all in the corners when they were, im guessing this was pulling my time back over the big power evos/scoobs etc
So overall a few positives to take away from it and alot of negatives.
POSITIVES
running 12s at pod in a stock twins rx7 is so easy its unreal, 10psi on a basemap with no boost in 4th, old eagle f1s, i easily broke into the 12s so that should be a good thing to everyone out there who fancies a go.
Also shows my car has decent potential when running correctly and on decent tyres
Also i didnt break anything, was little worried about the diff as i have no brace and that i might blow the engine but all was good!
NEGATIVES
to be honest its kind of my fault, i really shouldnt have asked to go with the car not being in great condition, really showed up when i needed it the most.
Im sure with boost, set of 888 tyres and decently set up suspension i would have won the sprint competition so need to address these issues
got some pics off my mates phone, god the quality is poo!!
few from sprinting
since im gonna need all the help with my brakes to stop from such a speed i stripped down both calipers and rebuilt them, was a bit of a nightmare
was dirt in the fluid that messed up 3 of the pistons.
Eventually got the piston out to find it had some scoring and a burr on it:
With similar scoring inside the caliper piston recess:
Was caused by pieces of grit in the system! This is despite there being dust seals and the main piston seal appearing to be in perfect condition!! Luckily the damage was not deep and came out very easily.
Rebuilt it with new pads and bled the brakes. This was the state of the fluid:
A bit skanky to say the least!
You can see its been a while since the pads have been changed!
the next update is that because of something happened today(which i will come onto later in the post) i decided to not go with my idea of having the intercooler in the engine bay.
I have decided to put it in the bumper area, now because of the large size of the cooler and the way the stock bumper wraps around the chassis area so tightly it meant that the bumper wouldnt have the physical density to contain the full cooler.
So i went on the hunt for another bumper, since it seems someone local has been using my front bumper to bounce there car off a few times a replacement was needed anyway.
Found this going cheap recently so picked it up including the lights that go in it.
Its a copy of a japanese bumper from FEED
As you can see it has much larger opening for air intakes, this will help to get more air travelling to the intercooler over a stock bumper aswell.
Also my new manifold arrived today, got it for a bargain price of £40 but bare in mind it needs ALOT of work, ill get a friend to go over the welds again to make sure it doesnt crack, also gonna borrow warrens dremel to sort out all the overlaps on the insides, remember it looks bad now but for the money you cant expect much better lol
Once all the insides are cleaned up and its strengthened with a few well placed braces ill cut off the wastegate flange and weld on a 60mm v-band flange for my wastegate
Suppose the final update was that today i got invited to santapod with redline magazine, was alot of fun and interesting to see how the car did in its very basic setup(not much up on stock)
Arrive at pod at 10am, remove all the crap ive brought from home(food etc)
Have a wander around to see whats there and sign loads of paperwork to say im happy to die lol
Put the fuel back into my map to take it off economy mode, gotta love PIM voltage settings.
DRAG RACING
Leave it on stock boost for the moment, as im still on the basemap, thinking ill up the boost later on in the day when i get my 60fts perfect.
Since i didnt have a air compressor with me i just evened the tyre pressures out on the back to 20psi(since they are just old eagle f1s)and set the teins to soft.
So this is it, little bit nervous as not really sure what to expect and never launched a rwd car at pod before.
Drive around to the start line avoiding the water trap, move into position, rev up to about 5500rpm and go.
Pull of the line not to bad, once it hits 7krpm in 1st i get massive axle chatter and it shakes me stupid, change to second and pull to 7.5k, change to third, pull to about 7k and into fourth.........suddenly ive got no power, do the usual look in the mirror for white smoke(habit from owning a r5 turbo) look at the boost and ive got 0.01bar of pressure!!
Cross the line basically rolling
Feeling a bit disheartened thinking ok this sometimes happens to me but ill try again and hopefully the solenoids will be kind to me.
Pop into the timing booth to see what my 60ft was so i can see how much i need to improve(basically expecting a 14sec quarter and a 2.5 60ft)
Get given my slip to find ive done a 12.8059@107.3mph pulling a 2.1667 which i thought was pretty decent since i had no power for some of the run.
Thinking if the boost holds together for the run im hoping for a 12.5 at 110mph+
Launch on the next run and get a 2.1445 60ft so a little better but since im still getting axle chatter i know my launches need more work.
Soon as i go into third gear again no boost, try in fourth and same again, nothing, cruise over the line at 17.0822@57mph lol
Shame really as i didnt even get to try a 1bar of boost my first run only peaked at 0.69bar
SPRINTING
Feeling a bit miffed about not being able to see what potential my car has i decided to pop up to the handling circuit.
Here is a rough picture from what i remember, there might be a better pic when its in the magazine, you launch at the startline on the right and the timing stops when you come to a standstill at the end.
The picture doesnt really show how extreme the salom at the end was, much more tighter and the cones were closer together
Pull up the start, asking the guy where do you go, advises me to drive around it slowly to find where im going then come back around and go for it.
Before i had a go i asked what sort of time to be aiming for, few guys say people are averaging around 33seconds, anything less than that and your fast.
So first go and ive now discovered ive got no boost....at all, since ive now only got about 150bhp i just keep my foot in as long as possible.
dont get out of the second gear the whole way around and use my handbrake to slow the car down as the big corner tightens up, then basically understeer my way around the rest of the course(foot welded to the floor as havent got the power to get back up to speed again)
Nail the brakes very hard at the end to help pull some time back.
Guy gives me a time of 32.5secs
Feeling pretty happy with it as i basically messed up the entire lap and didnt really know where im going.
Ask what the fastest time of the day was and its fensport corolla running 600bhp on semi slicks with a time of 28.4seconds.
i then started to put some more runs in and clean my lap up
2nd run 31.7secs
3rd run 30.0 secs
4th run 29.7 secs
5th run 29.6 secs
6th run 29.1 secs
which im not 100% sure where that will leave me in the end but i was in 3rd position when i left them to it at 330pm
Not bad for a car with no power, rubbish tyres(still 20psi in the back) and havent touched the suspension.
Found compared to other people i wasnt braking at all in the corners when they were, im guessing this was pulling my time back over the big power evos/scoobs etc
So overall a few positives to take away from it and alot of negatives.
POSITIVES
running 12s at pod in a stock twins rx7 is so easy its unreal, 10psi on a basemap with no boost in 4th, old eagle f1s, i easily broke into the 12s so that should be a good thing to everyone out there who fancies a go.
Also shows my car has decent potential when running correctly and on decent tyres
Also i didnt break anything, was little worried about the diff as i have no brace and that i might blow the engine but all was good!
NEGATIVES
to be honest its kind of my fault, i really shouldnt have asked to go with the car not being in great condition, really showed up when i needed it the most.
Im sure with boost, set of 888 tyres and decently set up suspension i would have won the sprint competition so need to address these issues
got some pics off my mates phone, god the quality is poo!!
few from sprinting
Watched the formula 1 today and even though it was 530pm the sun was still out so decided to fit my new radiator.
Heat is a major factor on a rotary engine so getting the temps down makes a big difference. As you can imagine, running flat out for around 32secs with 700bhp will put alot of heat into the system, hopefully this should keep it in check.
Ive gone from the standard 35mm thick one to a 52mm ali rad, its an ebay one but has been proven to cope much better when the engine is pushed, a friend runs one that was getting 120c temps on a stock rad on trackdays, changed to this and hasnt been above 105c
Have a quick look at my online workshop guide on how to remove the rad, better to know what your doing before you come to do it.
After looking at the picture, it says i have to remove the undertray and the anti-roll bar.....bugger that i thought, ill try from the top!
removed intercooler
removed fans.....they are awesome from factory so will keep them
removed radiator, actually just pulled out from the top, dead easy, not sure why it says from the bottom!
Big Space!
Came to put the top rad hose back on and because the outlet didnt stick out as much as the stock one i couldnt get it on with my spring clamps, so cut a little bit of the plastic away, you cant see it at all so made no difference to me
Again, bottom part didnt line up as you can see
All in and sorted, the angle it sits is not as horizontal, the reason for that is because it hits the chassis when you try to go to the point where the original rad sat, you can get around this by fitting the rad from underneath but i couldnt be bothered for the case of 1-2* more angle
Its been a bit of a pain and not an oem fitment, but to be honest i didnt expect it to be, only seen people run this rad upright in the past so wasnt 100% sure what to expect, but for £100 compared to £300 for a branded one im happy to mess about fitting it as my time is free.
Just going to duct off the sides of the rad now so all the air hits the rad first
Heat is a major factor on a rotary engine so getting the temps down makes a big difference. As you can imagine, running flat out for around 32secs with 700bhp will put alot of heat into the system, hopefully this should keep it in check.
Ive gone from the standard 35mm thick one to a 52mm ali rad, its an ebay one but has been proven to cope much better when the engine is pushed, a friend runs one that was getting 120c temps on a stock rad on trackdays, changed to this and hasnt been above 105c
Have a quick look at my online workshop guide on how to remove the rad, better to know what your doing before you come to do it.
After looking at the picture, it says i have to remove the undertray and the anti-roll bar.....bugger that i thought, ill try from the top!
removed intercooler
removed fans.....they are awesome from factory so will keep them
removed radiator, actually just pulled out from the top, dead easy, not sure why it says from the bottom!
Big Space!
Came to put the top rad hose back on and because the outlet didnt stick out as much as the stock one i couldnt get it on with my spring clamps, so cut a little bit of the plastic away, you cant see it at all so made no difference to me
Again, bottom part didnt line up as you can see
All in and sorted, the angle it sits is not as horizontal, the reason for that is because it hits the chassis when you try to go to the point where the original rad sat, you can get around this by fitting the rad from underneath but i couldnt be bothered for the case of 1-2* more angle
Its been a bit of a pain and not an oem fitment, but to be honest i didnt expect it to be, only seen people run this rad upright in the past so wasnt 100% sure what to expect, but for £100 compared to £300 for a branded one im happy to mess about fitting it as my time is free.
Just going to duct off the sides of the rad now so all the air hits the rad first
for your work on the car 
for the tread. great readWell decided to have a play on the rollers today, basically to see if the little bit of tuning i had learned from mostly reading actually works....im hoping to get a proper wideband next month so wanted a controlled condition to have a mess till then.
So stuck it on the roller, not expecting alot as its still on the basemap.
Start running up on the rollers and it runs lean, holds about 11.9-12afr in boost to high rpm, so back off.
Go to PIM voltage and changed to 110% for anything above 3v on the map sensor.
Do a quick pull to see where we stand and its 10.3-10.5, so super rich but gives us something to play with.
Do another full run, still on nearly stock boost(11psi) and does 326bhp@7300rpm and 287lb, but after looking at the graph power was still rising, only by maybe other 5bhp though as the torque is starting to drop off
So next run i try a bit more boost, from 0.75 to 0.81 on the power fc....try a run to find when the second turbo kicks in the wideband goes nuts and for the rest of the day we cant fix it, seems to pull a bit harder at first getting 299lb but then the boost started to drop off when the second turbo kicks in, meaning we only make 290bhp
Since i knew i only get 3 runs to perfect it this is my last run, because of this me being rather daft didnt realise how much fuel this messing about with things would use.....now got my fuel light on
So fiddle with the boost again to try and equal things out a bit.
Do the run, still cant tell what the high rpm fuelling is like but we guessed low 10s....so plenty more power to be made when i get a wideband.
Pulls cleanly till 6350rpm and then get a big misfire because the fuelpump has picked some air....meaning that im out of fuel haha.
Looking at the graph for the run, its much better, the torque hasnt dropped off and is level right until the misfire.
On that run it hit 270lb at4700rpm and held it flat to 6350rpm, the reason it was lower as i was hitting 0.1bar less on the first turbo but then holding the boost all the way.
At 6350 it made 334bhp with the power still sharply rising(as you can imagine with the torque being flat)
Looking at my other graphs at 7500rpm it would be making about 250lb which would be 357bhp....not sure if i can make it to that before i run out of injector though.....thats running potentially low 10 afrs aswell so with a low 11afr it is possible with even more power.
This is of course all hipothetical mind, but shows the engine has potential even at 0.8bar with a rubbish map.
Im sure if i had a proper mapping session with it(with a working wideband) then could get alot of power out of this.
The next thing that will be holding me back is im on completely stock fueling(pump, injectors, fpr)
Little update, wideband arrived in the post today.
Got it from a company named txautoplex on ebay from as you guessed it, Texas.
Ill have to admit, im always very unsure about buying from abroad, would be very easy for the company to rip you off as you cant go visit them.
But true to the guys word it was shipped out as soon as i paid and gave a tracking number so i could keep an eye on it.
He included free shipping so it only cost me £145 brand new in total and also put on the shipping docs a really low value so i didnt have to pay taxes....didnt ask him to do that so awesome!!
Id recommend buying from him as hes £30 cheaper than anyone else and gives great customer service
some random pics, ill do a full installation next week when i get warren to help me with wiring!
Gauge, was expecting it to have more depth than that which is a bonus
Bosch Lambda sensor
once i get it in ill start doing some proper tuning as my engine could really do with sorting out
So stuck it on the roller, not expecting alot as its still on the basemap.
Start running up on the rollers and it runs lean, holds about 11.9-12afr in boost to high rpm, so back off.
Go to PIM voltage and changed to 110% for anything above 3v on the map sensor.
Do a quick pull to see where we stand and its 10.3-10.5, so super rich but gives us something to play with.
Do another full run, still on nearly stock boost(11psi) and does 326bhp@7300rpm and 287lb, but after looking at the graph power was still rising, only by maybe other 5bhp though as the torque is starting to drop off
So next run i try a bit more boost, from 0.75 to 0.81 on the power fc....try a run to find when the second turbo kicks in the wideband goes nuts and for the rest of the day we cant fix it, seems to pull a bit harder at first getting 299lb but then the boost started to drop off when the second turbo kicks in, meaning we only make 290bhp
Since i knew i only get 3 runs to perfect it this is my last run, because of this me being rather daft didnt realise how much fuel this messing about with things would use.....now got my fuel light on
So fiddle with the boost again to try and equal things out a bit.
Do the run, still cant tell what the high rpm fuelling is like but we guessed low 10s....so plenty more power to be made when i get a wideband.
Pulls cleanly till 6350rpm and then get a big misfire because the fuelpump has picked some air....meaning that im out of fuel haha.
Looking at the graph for the run, its much better, the torque hasnt dropped off and is level right until the misfire.
On that run it hit 270lb at4700rpm and held it flat to 6350rpm, the reason it was lower as i was hitting 0.1bar less on the first turbo but then holding the boost all the way.
At 6350 it made 334bhp with the power still sharply rising(as you can imagine with the torque being flat)
Looking at my other graphs at 7500rpm it would be making about 250lb which would be 357bhp....not sure if i can make it to that before i run out of injector though.....thats running potentially low 10 afrs aswell so with a low 11afr it is possible with even more power.
This is of course all hipothetical mind, but shows the engine has potential even at 0.8bar with a rubbish map.
Im sure if i had a proper mapping session with it(with a working wideband) then could get alot of power out of this.
The next thing that will be holding me back is im on completely stock fueling(pump, injectors, fpr)
Little update, wideband arrived in the post today.
Got it from a company named txautoplex on ebay from as you guessed it, Texas.
Ill have to admit, im always very unsure about buying from abroad, would be very easy for the company to rip you off as you cant go visit them.
But true to the guys word it was shipped out as soon as i paid and gave a tracking number so i could keep an eye on it.
He included free shipping so it only cost me £145 brand new in total and also put on the shipping docs a really low value so i didnt have to pay taxes....didnt ask him to do that so awesome!!
Id recommend buying from him as hes £30 cheaper than anyone else and gives great customer service
some random pics, ill do a full installation next week when i get warren to help me with wiring!
Gauge, was expecting it to have more depth than that which is a bonus
Bosch Lambda sensor
once i get it in ill start doing some proper tuning as my engine could really do with sorting out
Well recieved my water pump pulley yesterday so decided to get it fitted.
Now you might think this is just a bit of bling but this has a fundemental change to the belt system on an rx7
due to the nature of a rotary engine, they require alot of fuel to pretty much do anything, which means when idleing they put out alot of crap.
very strict emmisions around the world has caused problems for the rotary engine so what the designers did was fit a belt driven pump onto the engine that pumps pure air into the exhaust system to fool the MOT places into thinking the casr pumps out very little fumes.
It also has the effect of helping to cool the cat, an average piston engine when pushed very hard will get up to 1300-1400f exhaust gas temperatures, a rotary will put that sort of temps out cruising, and can get up to 1800f flat out, as you can imagine its very easy to cook a cat in that situation, infact its a very common thing on rotarys that they can cause the cat to infact collapse from this.
Now on my engine i have removed the cat, so pump is purely a parasitic loss that is just pumping air to an open ended pipe under the car, plus it will be in the way when i fit my big turbo
If you look at where water filler cap is, you can just see the pump the left hand side of it with a pipe coming off the top which feeds the pump its fresh air.
This is then removed and looks like this, weights 5kg aswell so another little weight saving cant hurt.
Leaves this gap here, you can now see the front turbo and another black bracket that helped hold the pump, this is then removed.
we then remove the original water pulley, the reason this is removed is because the pulley runs off the outside of the belt, while normally this is fine as 60% is in contact so theres no slippage, with the pump removed this becomes an issue.
so we replace the waterpump pulley with one that has rougher outer edge as you can see from the picture to gain back some of that friction
installation is pretty easy, just use the 4 new bolts provided and bolt back up
next up is replacing the alternator pulley, this is partially to make it look better than the stock one and also because the pulley is larger it makes choosing a new belt much easier as you can use a standard 78cm belt.
This was a bit of a pain in the arse to get off, ended up using a mates impact gun as i bent a screwdriver trying to hold the alternator internals in place while unscrewing the bolt.
]
once bolted up i put my new belt on
one issue ive had with my new radiator is that because the inlet pipe doesnt stick out enough, my air filters have been pushing on the waterpipe which meant the rad fan was catching the pipe....as you can imagine thats gonna end in disaster so now i have all this extra space with the airpump gone i decided to move my airfilters back into the engine back to relieve the pressure on the water pipe.
started it up and all sorted, i know its only a small update, but slowly getting there
Now you might think this is just a bit of bling but this has a fundemental change to the belt system on an rx7
due to the nature of a rotary engine, they require alot of fuel to pretty much do anything, which means when idleing they put out alot of crap.
very strict emmisions around the world has caused problems for the rotary engine so what the designers did was fit a belt driven pump onto the engine that pumps pure air into the exhaust system to fool the MOT places into thinking the casr pumps out very little fumes.
It also has the effect of helping to cool the cat, an average piston engine when pushed very hard will get up to 1300-1400f exhaust gas temperatures, a rotary will put that sort of temps out cruising, and can get up to 1800f flat out, as you can imagine its very easy to cook a cat in that situation, infact its a very common thing on rotarys that they can cause the cat to infact collapse from this.
Now on my engine i have removed the cat, so pump is purely a parasitic loss that is just pumping air to an open ended pipe under the car, plus it will be in the way when i fit my big turbo
If you look at where water filler cap is, you can just see the pump the left hand side of it with a pipe coming off the top which feeds the pump its fresh air.
This is then removed and looks like this, weights 5kg aswell so another little weight saving cant hurt.
Leaves this gap here, you can now see the front turbo and another black bracket that helped hold the pump, this is then removed.
we then remove the original water pulley, the reason this is removed is because the pulley runs off the outside of the belt, while normally this is fine as 60% is in contact so theres no slippage, with the pump removed this becomes an issue.
so we replace the waterpump pulley with one that has rougher outer edge as you can see from the picture to gain back some of that friction
installation is pretty easy, just use the 4 new bolts provided and bolt back up
next up is replacing the alternator pulley, this is partially to make it look better than the stock one and also because the pulley is larger it makes choosing a new belt much easier as you can use a standard 78cm belt.
This was a bit of a pain in the arse to get off, ended up using a mates impact gun as i bent a screwdriver trying to hold the alternator internals in place while unscrewing the bolt.
]
once bolted up i put my new belt on
one issue ive had with my new radiator is that because the inlet pipe doesnt stick out enough, my air filters have been pushing on the waterpipe which meant the rad fan was catching the pipe....as you can imagine thats gonna end in disaster so now i have all this extra space with the airpump gone i decided to move my airfilters back into the engine back to relieve the pressure on the water pipe.
started it up and all sorted, i know its only a small update, but slowly getting there
dom9 said:
Do you know what that air pump flows? They make great superchargers for gokarts and small motorbikes!
I saw a few US guys use V8 engine pumps to do it!
Great project by the way, very cool!
Looking forward to seeing you do 200mph!
honestly im not sure, enough to offset the massive amount of emmisions coming out of the exhaust so i would imagine a fair bit, never seen one used for anything performance though, be great to see some picsI saw a few US guys use V8 engine pumps to do it!
Great project by the way, very cool!
Looking forward to seeing you do 200mph!
Dale19 said:
I think I saw you yesterday by the shell garage next to the flyover doing a spot of fettling?
that might have been me, i havent been on this thread in ages but theres only 1 red rx7 in stoke so probably wasWell im sitting here trying to put into words what has happened in the last few days and how grateful i am that you get chance to meet certain people in this world.
The person or may i say the group are Enhanced Performance, never have I met a bunch of guys willing to go massively out of their way to help someone with a project, its the type of thing that really makes a company in my eyes!
Earlier on in this thread I mentioned that they were going to help me fit an intercooler, so we booked it in for wednesday to come down and get it done.
Leaving at 400am in the morning i head down south so that i can be there for when they open, on the way down i did a bit of mapping on the cruise parts of the map.
Holding 15.8-16.2afr at 70mph meant im now getting 29mpg which is alot better than most get, it being my daily driver its important to get some sort of economy!
So i arrive at 8am, watch 30mins of a movie on my laptop and then Luke arrives.
Straight away im offered a drink and we start chatting ideas, i have a look around the workshop and im amazed at the variety of cars there.....from the famous escort of dannys to an impreza, celica gt4 and even an old lotus elan.
We start stripping all the old tiny intercooler off and removing the rad outside(to stop water filling the garage)
Very small cooler, would be great for a kitcar with a turbod engine id imagine
Nice big space to work with
Once that was off we stood the radiator upright...it normally sits almost horizontal, then extended the brackets to encorporate this, once that was done a short couple of cuts to the rad hosing to twist them around into position and bobs your uncle.
In the afternoon a fella turned up with a stupidly mint old school yb powered escort, now to say this thing was mint is a bit of an understatement, it had come from malta so you know what they are like over there.
The reason for its visit was he had blown his turbo pretty much on the first day......fairly unlucky id say, so Luke found him another one and we got on with fitting it.
Now ive fitted turbos to all sorts of things over the years but never have i had so much problem doing this one.
the turbine housing had been left on and the owner had put the turbo back into the housing and was trying to bolt it back together.
First thing i did was adjust the centre section so the oil would flow perfectly vertical, tightened the bolts then adjusted the comp housing so that silicone pipe wasnt restricted.
feeling pretty happy with myself at that point was my big mistake of the day!!
Once i come to put the oil return pipe on we found it hit the manifold.......so i had to then loosen the bolts and clock the centre around, we then had to then reclock the comp housing back to the right position.....felt like it took forever as theres alot of bolts to play with!
Anyway once it was all done, luke stuck it on the rollers.
Now there has been a bit of debate on these forums about power out of such and such etc but im not one to blindly follow a tuner war and watched this session with an open mind.
Now i have seen alot of dyno graphs, including afr.....or lamda as luke kept reminding me haha.
Ill be the first one to call someones mapping crap, i pick no bones about it, if your crap ill tell everyone to avoid you and have in the past mentioned maybe 7 or 8 companies on forums who ive actually watched map a car and wouldnt touch with a bargepole, if id have seen crap mapping that day it would be the last time id ever visit them.
After watching luke map i can honestly say i was very very impressed, for a start the dynodynamics rollers are a work of art, so much better than anything else ive come across, you can really see why they are rated the best in the world, lukes afr figures were spot on and flat like a billard table, no up and down like a yoyo as ive seen on other peoples, id highly recommend him for mapping pretty much anything, the amount of equipment he has and the knowledge he has doesnt seem at all to be limited to the usual ford engines, give him pretty much any car with a crank in it and he will successfully map it, for example they have mapped a 1000bhp supra drag car and at that level if your crap things go wrong very quickly!
Well that was pretty much day 1 of my southern road trip, luke very kindly lent me his skyline so i could drive to the local premier inn(hardest bad in the world!) for the night........i dont think i know of anyone who would lend a young lad they hardly knew a rwd skyline to drive around in, was actually pretty nice to drive......but yes its a skybus, the M25 is a small circle than the steering wheel on it, it was HUGE!
The next day i arrive at 830am ready to get the car finished.
The biggest issue was the intercooler to be honest, i actually feel really guilty about it because i didnt really tell the guys how much of a massive job this was going to be, but in there professionalism they cracked on with it anyway.
the intercooler is an ebay GTR replica, they have already been run on 1000bhp skylines so i know they will take the power......plus i only paid £78inc shipping for it brand new, the real greddy version are around £1500.....so a big saving!
After discussing multiple ways we could fit it we narrowed it down to 2 choices, either fit it in the engine bay or fit it in the bumper, eventually we decided to fit it in the engine bay, which is where alot of time has been spent.
The reason for this is 4 fold.
1. It shortens the pipework with saves weight and can help with throttle response.
2. Because the cooler weighs around 14kg, you want it as far back as possible to maintain the cars perfect 50/50 weight distribution, the car has already lost 90kg over factory figures and most of that is from the rear so having even more weight further forward wont help matters, ive removed the front bumper bar to help out but the closer to the centre of the chassis the better!
3. If you were to be involved in a minor accident, say someone reversed into it while its parked, because its so large there would literally be about 5mm of plastic between it and the offending car, which could easily ruin your brand new cooler.
4. Because im using the original bumper you are very restricted in terms of the airflow allowed to the engine and running a cooler this thick can cause issues, now if we fitted it in the bumper what would happen is air would only be able to pass through about 30% of the cooler as the rest would be blocked by the bumper.....also any that did hit the intercooler would be spilled over the sides and over the bonnet and to the oil coolers, as the air will just get backed up infront of the cooler like so:
As you can see from my dodgy drawing once the air has entered the bumper there is physically nowhere for it to go but through the intercooler hence im making maximum use of the limited opening
the big problem with fitting it into the engine bay is that its so wide that it physically wont fit.
Here below is a picture to give you an idea
the bottom arrow dictates that the chassis rails are 710mm wide and that the cooler is much bigger.
so the end tanks were cut off and new ones made from scratch, the only issue with doing this is that air likes to take the path of least resistance and if we basically just 'backdoored' the cooler you would find the bottom of the cooler wouldnt actually cool the air properly.
quick Paint pic to help with new idea
So what we decided was to fit the inlets pointing down into the cooler, that way the flow of air will be directed to the lower parts of the cooler and be more effecient, the idea came from rods cooler that he had done.
Infact the physical size of the core is very similar to rods, just a bit thicker(4.7in vs 3.8in) so it should be pretty comparable
The person or may i say the group are Enhanced Performance, never have I met a bunch of guys willing to go massively out of their way to help someone with a project, its the type of thing that really makes a company in my eyes!
Earlier on in this thread I mentioned that they were going to help me fit an intercooler, so we booked it in for wednesday to come down and get it done.
Leaving at 400am in the morning i head down south so that i can be there for when they open, on the way down i did a bit of mapping on the cruise parts of the map.
Holding 15.8-16.2afr at 70mph meant im now getting 29mpg which is alot better than most get, it being my daily driver its important to get some sort of economy!
So i arrive at 8am, watch 30mins of a movie on my laptop and then Luke arrives.
Straight away im offered a drink and we start chatting ideas, i have a look around the workshop and im amazed at the variety of cars there.....from the famous escort of dannys to an impreza, celica gt4 and even an old lotus elan.
We start stripping all the old tiny intercooler off and removing the rad outside(to stop water filling the garage)
Very small cooler, would be great for a kitcar with a turbod engine id imagine
Nice big space to work with
Once that was off we stood the radiator upright...it normally sits almost horizontal, then extended the brackets to encorporate this, once that was done a short couple of cuts to the rad hosing to twist them around into position and bobs your uncle.
In the afternoon a fella turned up with a stupidly mint old school yb powered escort, now to say this thing was mint is a bit of an understatement, it had come from malta so you know what they are like over there.
The reason for its visit was he had blown his turbo pretty much on the first day......fairly unlucky id say, so Luke found him another one and we got on with fitting it.
Now ive fitted turbos to all sorts of things over the years but never have i had so much problem doing this one.
the turbine housing had been left on and the owner had put the turbo back into the housing and was trying to bolt it back together.
First thing i did was adjust the centre section so the oil would flow perfectly vertical, tightened the bolts then adjusted the comp housing so that silicone pipe wasnt restricted.
feeling pretty happy with myself at that point was my big mistake of the day!!
Once i come to put the oil return pipe on we found it hit the manifold.......so i had to then loosen the bolts and clock the centre around, we then had to then reclock the comp housing back to the right position.....felt like it took forever as theres alot of bolts to play with!
Anyway once it was all done, luke stuck it on the rollers.
Now there has been a bit of debate on these forums about power out of such and such etc but im not one to blindly follow a tuner war and watched this session with an open mind.
Now i have seen alot of dyno graphs, including afr.....or lamda as luke kept reminding me haha.
Ill be the first one to call someones mapping crap, i pick no bones about it, if your crap ill tell everyone to avoid you and have in the past mentioned maybe 7 or 8 companies on forums who ive actually watched map a car and wouldnt touch with a bargepole, if id have seen crap mapping that day it would be the last time id ever visit them.
After watching luke map i can honestly say i was very very impressed, for a start the dynodynamics rollers are a work of art, so much better than anything else ive come across, you can really see why they are rated the best in the world, lukes afr figures were spot on and flat like a billard table, no up and down like a yoyo as ive seen on other peoples, id highly recommend him for mapping pretty much anything, the amount of equipment he has and the knowledge he has doesnt seem at all to be limited to the usual ford engines, give him pretty much any car with a crank in it and he will successfully map it, for example they have mapped a 1000bhp supra drag car and at that level if your crap things go wrong very quickly!
Well that was pretty much day 1 of my southern road trip, luke very kindly lent me his skyline so i could drive to the local premier inn(hardest bad in the world!) for the night........i dont think i know of anyone who would lend a young lad they hardly knew a rwd skyline to drive around in, was actually pretty nice to drive......but yes its a skybus, the M25 is a small circle than the steering wheel on it, it was HUGE!
The next day i arrive at 830am ready to get the car finished.
The biggest issue was the intercooler to be honest, i actually feel really guilty about it because i didnt really tell the guys how much of a massive job this was going to be, but in there professionalism they cracked on with it anyway.
the intercooler is an ebay GTR replica, they have already been run on 1000bhp skylines so i know they will take the power......plus i only paid £78inc shipping for it brand new, the real greddy version are around £1500.....so a big saving!
After discussing multiple ways we could fit it we narrowed it down to 2 choices, either fit it in the engine bay or fit it in the bumper, eventually we decided to fit it in the engine bay, which is where alot of time has been spent.
The reason for this is 4 fold.
1. It shortens the pipework with saves weight and can help with throttle response.
2. Because the cooler weighs around 14kg, you want it as far back as possible to maintain the cars perfect 50/50 weight distribution, the car has already lost 90kg over factory figures and most of that is from the rear so having even more weight further forward wont help matters, ive removed the front bumper bar to help out but the closer to the centre of the chassis the better!
3. If you were to be involved in a minor accident, say someone reversed into it while its parked, because its so large there would literally be about 5mm of plastic between it and the offending car, which could easily ruin your brand new cooler.
4. Because im using the original bumper you are very restricted in terms of the airflow allowed to the engine and running a cooler this thick can cause issues, now if we fitted it in the bumper what would happen is air would only be able to pass through about 30% of the cooler as the rest would be blocked by the bumper.....also any that did hit the intercooler would be spilled over the sides and over the bonnet and to the oil coolers, as the air will just get backed up infront of the cooler like so:
As you can see from my dodgy drawing once the air has entered the bumper there is physically nowhere for it to go but through the intercooler hence im making maximum use of the limited opening
the big problem with fitting it into the engine bay is that its so wide that it physically wont fit.
Here below is a picture to give you an idea
the bottom arrow dictates that the chassis rails are 710mm wide and that the cooler is much bigger.
so the end tanks were cut off and new ones made from scratch, the only issue with doing this is that air likes to take the path of least resistance and if we basically just 'backdoored' the cooler you would find the bottom of the cooler wouldnt actually cool the air properly.
quick Paint pic to help with new idea
So what we decided was to fit the inlets pointing down into the cooler, that way the flow of air will be directed to the lower parts of the cooler and be more effecient, the idea came from rods cooler that he had done.
Infact the physical size of the core is very similar to rods, just a bit thicker(4.7in vs 3.8in) so it should be pretty comparable
So what we decided was to fit the inlets pointing down into the cooler, that way the flow of air will be directed to the lower parts of the cooler and be more effecient, the idea came from rods cooler that he had done.
Infact the physical size of the core is very similar to rods, just a bit thicker(4.7in vs 3.8in) so it should be pretty comparable.
once the cooler was in and the rad bolted up the fun part was welding on the inlets, that probably took the most time to make sure we got everything angled correct, to say it was a tight fit was an understatement!
The next part was fun, because the car only comes with 2.75in pipework from factory and ive still got the stock twin turbos on there we had to work out how to 'upscale' as such from turbos to cooler.
Luckily i had brought with me a piece of the old intercooler kit that i never bothered with, it was just what we needed, unfortunately it was made from the worst aluminum known to man, so there was alot of grumbles to be heard while the tig welder was in force!
But happily he came up with this.
Because the original end was such a wide angle, we cut a slice in it to tighten the angle so it wouldnt pop out of the turbo outlet
We then connected up the pipework from the intercooler to the throttle body, if you look back a few pages you will see that i attacked the aftermarket elbow to increase its size from 70mm to 80mm inlet size just for this day so that the there would be no restrictions in flow
then we moved back tot he turbo side and used a long 3inch silicone pipe to connect them up.
The reason for this is because silicone pipe is a worse conductor of heat than metal, this means that when the car is at low rpm or has been left standing still you wont have heatsoak problems, as the heat from the turbos heats up the turbo outlet pipe you can physically feel the silicone pipe getting colder as it heads towards the intercooler, last night i couldnt even touch the turbo pipe yet 20cm down it was cold to the touch, well before the intercooler entry
At this point we were coming up to 7pm and since we had been on it since 9am in the morning it was decided to try and finish it, the wiring loom had been removed out of the way while we were designing it and to save time we cable tied it between the engine and the rad, which means ill be taking everything out next week when i get chance and routing it all in properly, the reason we couldnt do it at that time was we needed to extend alot of wires and it was late in the day, so ill have better pics of the intercooler when i take it out to sort that out which ill show you but overall i think it looks amazing!!!
in this picture below you can really see how thick this thing is, everyone laughed at the madness of a 120mm core
And in this one you can really see what i was on about when i mentioned about where to put the intercooler, look how small the opening is in the bumper, would have struggled to get any decent air contact over the cooler!
So if you have read all this so far, well done i appreciate your interest!
But its all well and good fitting something like this but the most important question is does it actually work.
I can categorically say it works better than i could have imagined!
I did some testing the previous weekend running 17psi of boost on v-power fuel. I recorded 49c inlet temps and knock of around 35-40 on the power fc commander.
With the new setup running the same boost, when it come on boost the knock went down to 8, but only on 95ron aswell which is madness!!
Cruising along the motorway gave me 21c inlet temps(used to be 37c) but the best thing about it is that when i pull up to 17psi of boost the actually inlet temps drop to around 19c, which means the sensor is reading 21c cruise because of the inlet manifold keeping it warm!
Id imagine with my 20psi of planned boost for the twins while i save up for the rest of the bits im looking at 25c max inlet temps in boost!
One other concern that people have shouted at me is water temps, that running such a thick cooler will mean no air to the rad and that it will overheat, again this was proven false because most rx7s run the cooler in the bumper which ive previously mentioned causes very small amount of air to enter the engine bay, by far this setup of mine fixes those issues.
cruising to Enhanced gave me 86c water temps.....thats with the rad getting the full use of the incoming air to its entire surface, on the way home with the big intercooler i was sitting at 86-87c so it made no difference and infact i wasnt running the undertray(put it in the boot for me to refit when i get chance) so putting that back on will probably help improve it even further!!
So what have i learnt from my 2 days experience.........well its hard to put it into words really, ive never ever been impressed with any company like i have with Enhanced Performance, the quality workmanship, the hard work ethic and most importantly there customer service skills, Luke really has been a revelation in terms of someone to deal with, for example driving half way around the south of london getting pipework for me at 9am in the morning to make sure the car looked the best it possibly could be, ive met alot of tuners and most talk to you like your retarded, but here they listened to me, expanded on my ideas and treated me with respect and that is what every tuner should do by default.
Would i recommend them after this, 110% I would, from the wealth of experience they have I dont think theres nothing they could do, from Luke and Ike mapping skills.....i think Ikes amazing, the things hes done and still doing blow my brain...hes worth the visit across the country just to speak to him, hes built and mapped quite a few rotarys aswell.
Pretty much any type fabricating you can think of, whether its exhausts, manifolds, intercoolers, radiators, custom camshafts ,rods, pistons...they can pretty much create anything for any car.
And to finish it off you wont meet a nicer pair of guys between Luke and Danny whatever you go to them for, rotary or not
Infact the physical size of the core is very similar to rods, just a bit thicker(4.7in vs 3.8in) so it should be pretty comparable.
once the cooler was in and the rad bolted up the fun part was welding on the inlets, that probably took the most time to make sure we got everything angled correct, to say it was a tight fit was an understatement!
The next part was fun, because the car only comes with 2.75in pipework from factory and ive still got the stock twin turbos on there we had to work out how to 'upscale' as such from turbos to cooler.
Luckily i had brought with me a piece of the old intercooler kit that i never bothered with, it was just what we needed, unfortunately it was made from the worst aluminum known to man, so there was alot of grumbles to be heard while the tig welder was in force!
But happily he came up with this.
Because the original end was such a wide angle, we cut a slice in it to tighten the angle so it wouldnt pop out of the turbo outlet
We then connected up the pipework from the intercooler to the throttle body, if you look back a few pages you will see that i attacked the aftermarket elbow to increase its size from 70mm to 80mm inlet size just for this day so that the there would be no restrictions in flow
then we moved back tot he turbo side and used a long 3inch silicone pipe to connect them up.
The reason for this is because silicone pipe is a worse conductor of heat than metal, this means that when the car is at low rpm or has been left standing still you wont have heatsoak problems, as the heat from the turbos heats up the turbo outlet pipe you can physically feel the silicone pipe getting colder as it heads towards the intercooler, last night i couldnt even touch the turbo pipe yet 20cm down it was cold to the touch, well before the intercooler entry
At this point we were coming up to 7pm and since we had been on it since 9am in the morning it was decided to try and finish it, the wiring loom had been removed out of the way while we were designing it and to save time we cable tied it between the engine and the rad, which means ill be taking everything out next week when i get chance and routing it all in properly, the reason we couldnt do it at that time was we needed to extend alot of wires and it was late in the day, so ill have better pics of the intercooler when i take it out to sort that out which ill show you but overall i think it looks amazing!!!
in this picture below you can really see how thick this thing is, everyone laughed at the madness of a 120mm core
And in this one you can really see what i was on about when i mentioned about where to put the intercooler, look how small the opening is in the bumper, would have struggled to get any decent air contact over the cooler!
So if you have read all this so far, well done i appreciate your interest!
But its all well and good fitting something like this but the most important question is does it actually work.
I can categorically say it works better than i could have imagined!
I did some testing the previous weekend running 17psi of boost on v-power fuel. I recorded 49c inlet temps and knock of around 35-40 on the power fc commander.
With the new setup running the same boost, when it come on boost the knock went down to 8, but only on 95ron aswell which is madness!!
Cruising along the motorway gave me 21c inlet temps(used to be 37c) but the best thing about it is that when i pull up to 17psi of boost the actually inlet temps drop to around 19c, which means the sensor is reading 21c cruise because of the inlet manifold keeping it warm!
Id imagine with my 20psi of planned boost for the twins while i save up for the rest of the bits im looking at 25c max inlet temps in boost!
One other concern that people have shouted at me is water temps, that running such a thick cooler will mean no air to the rad and that it will overheat, again this was proven false because most rx7s run the cooler in the bumper which ive previously mentioned causes very small amount of air to enter the engine bay, by far this setup of mine fixes those issues.
cruising to Enhanced gave me 86c water temps.....thats with the rad getting the full use of the incoming air to its entire surface, on the way home with the big intercooler i was sitting at 86-87c so it made no difference and infact i wasnt running the undertray(put it in the boot for me to refit when i get chance) so putting that back on will probably help improve it even further!!
So what have i learnt from my 2 days experience.........well its hard to put it into words really, ive never ever been impressed with any company like i have with Enhanced Performance, the quality workmanship, the hard work ethic and most importantly there customer service skills, Luke really has been a revelation in terms of someone to deal with, for example driving half way around the south of london getting pipework for me at 9am in the morning to make sure the car looked the best it possibly could be, ive met alot of tuners and most talk to you like your retarded, but here they listened to me, expanded on my ideas and treated me with respect and that is what every tuner should do by default.
Would i recommend them after this, 110% I would, from the wealth of experience they have I dont think theres nothing they could do, from Luke and Ike mapping skills.....i think Ikes amazing, the things hes done and still doing blow my brain...hes worth the visit across the country just to speak to him, hes built and mapped quite a few rotarys aswell.
Pretty much any type fabricating you can think of, whether its exhausts, manifolds, intercoolers, radiators, custom camshafts ,rods, pistons...they can pretty much create anything for any car.
And to finish it off you wont meet a nicer pair of guys between Luke and Danny whatever you go to them for, rotary or not
quick little update for anyone, decided to sort out my engine loom today as it looked a big mess being cable tied between the engine and rad.
First job was take out the rad and cooler, put the cooler to one side so people could see what i mean from my dodgy Paint drawings.
as has been mentioned with the spec r cooler about coming in from the top, full 3 inch access with no restrictions as you can see below, its common place all over the world but as usual seems to be ford owners are only just catching up, suppose its like twin scroll turbo/manifolds jap cars have been doing it since the 80s
put all the wiring loom back in its original position, had to cut and remove alot of the plastic covering then retape all the loom, alot of trial and error which took along time, but finally got everything back in, flipped the fusebox upside down and bent a couple of brackets to put it back in its origional position to save cuttign anymore wires, which then warren extended my radiator fan wires while i worked on a few other bits and bobs(putting a filter back on the second turbo as no room before with wires everywhere)
wiring all back in and covered with protection nicked from warrens weird ford collection of parts.
next update
Picked up my diff and gearbox braces today, got them half price of what they are new
the standard gearbox can take an awful lot of power on a rx7, plus it can happily be thrown through the gears without delay...ive seen 900bhp being run through one, but with that sort of strain you will get movement in the chassis, this brace helps keep it in position to stop breakages.
the diff brace helps 2 fold, firstly that because again theres less movement you will have a much stronger transmission setup and also rx7s suffer with axle shake when you launch them, this solves that problem, its normally the shaking that breaks these diffs
that now covers my transmission, another thing ticked off the sheet, i have no plans at dumping the clutch at 700bhp as the gearbox will take it but the stock diff wont but these braces will help keep everything together as i squirm onto the main straight at brunters
First job was take out the rad and cooler, put the cooler to one side so people could see what i mean from my dodgy Paint drawings.
as has been mentioned with the spec r cooler about coming in from the top, full 3 inch access with no restrictions as you can see below, its common place all over the world but as usual seems to be ford owners are only just catching up, suppose its like twin scroll turbo/manifolds jap cars have been doing it since the 80s
put all the wiring loom back in its original position, had to cut and remove alot of the plastic covering then retape all the loom, alot of trial and error which took along time, but finally got everything back in, flipped the fusebox upside down and bent a couple of brackets to put it back in its origional position to save cuttign anymore wires, which then warren extended my radiator fan wires while i worked on a few other bits and bobs(putting a filter back on the second turbo as no room before with wires everywhere)
wiring all back in and covered with protection nicked from warrens weird ford collection of parts.
next update
Picked up my diff and gearbox braces today, got them half price of what they are new
the standard gearbox can take an awful lot of power on a rx7, plus it can happily be thrown through the gears without delay...ive seen 900bhp being run through one, but with that sort of strain you will get movement in the chassis, this brace helps keep it in position to stop breakages.
the diff brace helps 2 fold, firstly that because again theres less movement you will have a much stronger transmission setup and also rx7s suffer with axle shake when you launch them, this solves that problem, its normally the shaking that breaks these diffs
that now covers my transmission, another thing ticked off the sheet, i have no plans at dumping the clutch at 700bhp as the gearbox will take it but the stock diff wont but these braces will help keep everything together as i squirm onto the main straight at brunters
quick update for the front, change of bumper and bonnet, keeping the stock bonnet and bumper in my shed though as ill use them on the run since less openings the better for aero purposes.
you can tell i could do with some sideskirts as the front is really aggressive compared to the rear and sides
had alot of people look around my car in the last couple of weeks and it seems my car is very well known in the area so was getting a bit nervous, hence the purchase, plus being 6ft3 causes me issues with driving an rx7, as you cant move your legs properly when driving as your knees hit the steering wheel.
I changed my wheel from 370mm to 320mm to see if it helped and it did a little bit but then i was unable to see half my clocks, so after ordering a new set of bucket seats to lower me down and send me further back so im more comfortable i decided to get my hand in my pocket and buy a driftworks quick release.
I have to say the guys are spot on, everything i asked he got back to me straight away, even ordered it yesterday and it arrived today being sent by normal 1st class post...awesome.
i had a quick look on there to see if there was any guides to fitting one and since there wasnt i thought id stick some pics up to help anybody else who might want one for there trackcar
little box arrives this morning
open box to find goodies, also look at instructions that are in japanese........felt so jdm haha
[
original boss with wheel attached to give a reference of position from console
bolted onto wheel, had to use spacer that i had on the car as the bolts were so long and wasnt bothered about cutting them off, also you can see the 2 thin metal plates between them, thats for the horn, you can see them in the picture earlier
original boss to bolt to
[
bolted new part on with allen bolts suppied in the kit, i like how its not on a spline like motorsport ones because ive heard of the cars getting pinched with a set of molegrips!
wheel massively closer to me, i can actually see the clocks properly now!! also theres more room around my knees to heel/toe, no point being flat out and unable to see when to change gear when looking at the dash
you can see the difference the 60mm makes
My next update is what ive been saving for the last couple of months, to save some weight, my safety and also improve my driving position.
First up it was time to sort out the battery, ive basically took the big stock battery and box and bolted it into the boot just under the strut brace.
This has been fine and theres been no movement but its heavy and you can hear the liquid sloshing around, also in the event of a crash theres a chance that it could fly forward and kill someone.
So i decided to get myself a little battery and box.
Upon having a look around being the tight fisted guy i am came across the solution on ebay(where else)
got the 20ah battery for £50
and the box for £20
so took out my old battery/box and weighed it, came to 17kg
and replaced it with the new battery and box, came to 5.4kg which saved me 11.6kg!!
Now i feel a bit safer incase of an accident plus saving weight is never a bad thing.
Next thing was to sort out a pair of seats.
The biggest issue i have had is being tall, im 6ft3, now thats not a monster in the normal world, but in the rx7 world its not great.
This is when i started talking to jon at atomicrex, well what can i say about the bloke, one of the nicest guys ive met in a while, always happy to talk about anything and makes time for you even if he doesnt know or not if you will buy from him.
After deciding to go down and see him after looking at his seat rails online we found that they just wont work for someone my height.
But thats not an issue, jon decides to have a custom set made for me, which im over the moon with.
The issue was that with the standard rails he does im about 60mm to close to the dash, which means i cant move my legs or see any clocks.
After chatting about it for while he comes up with the solution and gets them made, this was about a month ago, but due to my work problems i was unable to get back down there to do a proper fitting.....until saturday just(yay)
Jon opens his shop just for me and we spend the day fitting them, i really appriecated all his help because he was meant to be going gliding but instead put this customer first.
Passanger seat when in fine, took a few tweaks to get it sitting correct and we realised that because i still have full sound deadening and carpet you have to bolt seats in the correct order else you run out of room.
After that we move onto the drivers side, this unfortunately became an issue, due to me modifiing the stock seat so that it goes back as far as possible it decided today of all days it was gonna lock up and not go forward to give me access to the rear bolts.
So out came the angle grinder much to jon amusement as i cut a perfectly mint stock seat into 24 different pieces before finally getting access to the rear bolts!!
Anyway because of my height this side is now using his new 'lanky bugger' seat mounts, or as jon nicely put 'extended'
These rails have 3 adjustments for peoples height and in my opinion are set at:
6ft-6ft2
6ft2-6ft4
6ft4-6ft6
we first tried it at 6ft4-6ft6 setting and i could just about reach the pedals and the seat was pretty much set vertical, to let you know how close it is between the back of the seat and the car, there was 3mm.
When trying to recline the seat back to lower the head height slightly we found that the rear of the seat would touch the sound deadening there......if you are 6ft4-6ft6 and want more reclining then you will need to remove the little bit of deadening there which would take 5mins.
but because im only 6ft3 we moved the seat one position forward and dropped the back of the seat down 1 peg.........this was perfect, i was comfortable and could finally see all of my rev counter, also i was sitting further back than my old modified stock seat so my knees were nowhere near the steering wheel,he has some of these rails in stock if you are interested in information or buying them, im sure he will post some pics of them for everyone to see.
The seats im running are corbeau pro series 3 carbon/kevlar in stock size.....and im 15st and 34in waist for reference if anyone needs seats, they fit but they are very much the limit interms of size which full interior.
This first image shows you my new battery/box fitted, the 2 threaded holes that are on the chassis from factory are used to hold the box in place.
You can also see how ive reclined the seat further back to give it more of a GT feel for comfort and to bring my eyeline lower in the car compared to the passenger seat which is a stock atomicrex rail
This one shows in the middle position how much further the seat goes back than the stock seat, also the recline aswell, i may int he future recline the passenger one slightly if i get many complaints.
Quick picture of how it looks from the outside
So overall im very happy with the setup and would recommend it for any tall or even short guys if you choose the right rail, i drove 3hrs back from jons and felt fine when i got out.
the good thing about the rx7 is that even though the rx7 comes with 2 fuel rails, the primary rail(the one that is used for idle/cruising) can be easily modified to take larger injectors.
the rx7 comes with 2x550cc injectors in the primary rail and 2x850cc injectors in the secondary rail.
the secondary rail is operated when the primary injectors reach a certain level of duty(normally 40%)
Now ive fitted a set of 850cc secondary injectors into the primary rail.
this takes my total fuel capacity to 4x850=3400cc from the 2800cc you get from factory.
this means i have enough fuel for 430bhp which will keep me going as i collect more parts.
anyway an update to keep it moving until i get paid.
I managed to get a great deal on a new secondary fuel rail, now im gonna be running 2x2200cc injectors and as these are top feed and not side feed like the stock ones then a new rail is needed.
Normally these are around £120 but a bit of hunting got one for £80 brand new!!!
Box comes so feel excited.
new shiny rail, fully anodised in red(to match the car) with nice little bit of engraving.
compare that to a really crappy £150 one that leaks from america and its a bargain.
You can just see the holes at the end of the rails for the injectors and the threaded connections for the fuel lines to bolt to(currently covered in tape for protection)
because the injectors are different shape than the stock ones you fit these sleeves to the injectors so you get a tight seal, hence it came with these, notice the little rubber rings to help seal
well thats it for now.
at the end of the month ive decided to buy my 2 fuel pumps, fuel tank and fuel pressure regulator, trying to get the main boxes ticked now!
you can tell i could do with some sideskirts as the front is really aggressive compared to the rear and sides
had alot of people look around my car in the last couple of weeks and it seems my car is very well known in the area so was getting a bit nervous, hence the purchase, plus being 6ft3 causes me issues with driving an rx7, as you cant move your legs properly when driving as your knees hit the steering wheel.
I changed my wheel from 370mm to 320mm to see if it helped and it did a little bit but then i was unable to see half my clocks, so after ordering a new set of bucket seats to lower me down and send me further back so im more comfortable i decided to get my hand in my pocket and buy a driftworks quick release.
I have to say the guys are spot on, everything i asked he got back to me straight away, even ordered it yesterday and it arrived today being sent by normal 1st class post...awesome.
i had a quick look on there to see if there was any guides to fitting one and since there wasnt i thought id stick some pics up to help anybody else who might want one for there trackcar
little box arrives this morning
open box to find goodies, also look at instructions that are in japanese........felt so jdm haha
[original boss with wheel attached to give a reference of position from console
bolted onto wheel, had to use spacer that i had on the car as the bolts were so long and wasnt bothered about cutting them off, also you can see the 2 thin metal plates between them, thats for the horn, you can see them in the picture earlier
original boss to bolt to
[
bolted new part on with allen bolts suppied in the kit, i like how its not on a spline like motorsport ones because ive heard of the cars getting pinched with a set of molegrips!
wheel massively closer to me, i can actually see the clocks properly now!! also theres more room around my knees to heel/toe, no point being flat out and unable to see when to change gear when looking at the dash
you can see the difference the 60mm makes
My next update is what ive been saving for the last couple of months, to save some weight, my safety and also improve my driving position.
First up it was time to sort out the battery, ive basically took the big stock battery and box and bolted it into the boot just under the strut brace.
This has been fine and theres been no movement but its heavy and you can hear the liquid sloshing around, also in the event of a crash theres a chance that it could fly forward and kill someone.
So i decided to get myself a little battery and box.
Upon having a look around being the tight fisted guy i am came across the solution on ebay(where else)
got the 20ah battery for £50
and the box for £20
so took out my old battery/box and weighed it, came to 17kg
and replaced it with the new battery and box, came to 5.4kg which saved me 11.6kg!!
Now i feel a bit safer incase of an accident plus saving weight is never a bad thing.
Next thing was to sort out a pair of seats.
The biggest issue i have had is being tall, im 6ft3, now thats not a monster in the normal world, but in the rx7 world its not great.
This is when i started talking to jon at atomicrex, well what can i say about the bloke, one of the nicest guys ive met in a while, always happy to talk about anything and makes time for you even if he doesnt know or not if you will buy from him.
After deciding to go down and see him after looking at his seat rails online we found that they just wont work for someone my height.
But thats not an issue, jon decides to have a custom set made for me, which im over the moon with.
The issue was that with the standard rails he does im about 60mm to close to the dash, which means i cant move my legs or see any clocks.
After chatting about it for while he comes up with the solution and gets them made, this was about a month ago, but due to my work problems i was unable to get back down there to do a proper fitting.....until saturday just(yay)
Jon opens his shop just for me and we spend the day fitting them, i really appriecated all his help because he was meant to be going gliding but instead put this customer first.
Passanger seat when in fine, took a few tweaks to get it sitting correct and we realised that because i still have full sound deadening and carpet you have to bolt seats in the correct order else you run out of room.
After that we move onto the drivers side, this unfortunately became an issue, due to me modifiing the stock seat so that it goes back as far as possible it decided today of all days it was gonna lock up and not go forward to give me access to the rear bolts.
So out came the angle grinder much to jon amusement as i cut a perfectly mint stock seat into 24 different pieces before finally getting access to the rear bolts!!
Anyway because of my height this side is now using his new 'lanky bugger' seat mounts, or as jon nicely put 'extended'
These rails have 3 adjustments for peoples height and in my opinion are set at:
6ft-6ft2
6ft2-6ft4
6ft4-6ft6
we first tried it at 6ft4-6ft6 setting and i could just about reach the pedals and the seat was pretty much set vertical, to let you know how close it is between the back of the seat and the car, there was 3mm.
When trying to recline the seat back to lower the head height slightly we found that the rear of the seat would touch the sound deadening there......if you are 6ft4-6ft6 and want more reclining then you will need to remove the little bit of deadening there which would take 5mins.
but because im only 6ft3 we moved the seat one position forward and dropped the back of the seat down 1 peg.........this was perfect, i was comfortable and could finally see all of my rev counter, also i was sitting further back than my old modified stock seat so my knees were nowhere near the steering wheel,he has some of these rails in stock if you are interested in information or buying them, im sure he will post some pics of them for everyone to see.
The seats im running are corbeau pro series 3 carbon/kevlar in stock size.....and im 15st and 34in waist for reference if anyone needs seats, they fit but they are very much the limit interms of size which full interior.
This first image shows you my new battery/box fitted, the 2 threaded holes that are on the chassis from factory are used to hold the box in place.
You can also see how ive reclined the seat further back to give it more of a GT feel for comfort and to bring my eyeline lower in the car compared to the passenger seat which is a stock atomicrex rail
This one shows in the middle position how much further the seat goes back than the stock seat, also the recline aswell, i may int he future recline the passenger one slightly if i get many complaints.
Quick picture of how it looks from the outside
So overall im very happy with the setup and would recommend it for any tall or even short guys if you choose the right rail, i drove 3hrs back from jons and felt fine when i got out.
the good thing about the rx7 is that even though the rx7 comes with 2 fuel rails, the primary rail(the one that is used for idle/cruising) can be easily modified to take larger injectors.
the rx7 comes with 2x550cc injectors in the primary rail and 2x850cc injectors in the secondary rail.
the secondary rail is operated when the primary injectors reach a certain level of duty(normally 40%)
Now ive fitted a set of 850cc secondary injectors into the primary rail.
this takes my total fuel capacity to 4x850=3400cc from the 2800cc you get from factory.
this means i have enough fuel for 430bhp which will keep me going as i collect more parts.
anyway an update to keep it moving until i get paid.
I managed to get a great deal on a new secondary fuel rail, now im gonna be running 2x2200cc injectors and as these are top feed and not side feed like the stock ones then a new rail is needed.
Normally these are around £120 but a bit of hunting got one for £80 brand new!!!
Box comes so feel excited.
new shiny rail, fully anodised in red(to match the car) with nice little bit of engraving.
compare that to a really crappy £150 one that leaks from america and its a bargain.
You can just see the holes at the end of the rails for the injectors and the threaded connections for the fuel lines to bolt to(currently covered in tape for protection)
because the injectors are different shape than the stock ones you fit these sleeves to the injectors so you get a tight seal, hence it came with these, notice the little rubber rings to help seal
well thats it for now.
at the end of the month ive decided to buy my 2 fuel pumps, fuel tank and fuel pressure regulator, trying to get the main boxes ticked now!
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