The Saga of my RX-7 (one of three)
Discussion
Well I'm bored.... so I'll write a post.
I actually joined this forum for a love of TVR's and to buy one, but I'm a big RX-7 fan
so I'll write a post to pass my time here in Jap chat.
I used to own three rx-7's until yesterday when I sold my favourite 7 (an 85 FB) to make
way for the TVR 390SE I'm going to bring home. (the other two 7's are a '82 GSL and a '88 GXL)
Now I only own two with one in the shop.
The car that's in the shop is there because I blew the
apex seals out the exhaust like so many of us do. I really can't complain as I only bought the car
for $900 from the local wreckers. ($1100 after taxes) It looked like it has sat in some farmer's field for a dozen years
because it was literally coated baked on dust. This is how bad it looked...
http://control-alt-delete.ca/images/7
To get the car going, all I had to do was charge the battery, and replace the master brake cylinder for
$84. That got it legal, and once I saw another FC at the wrecker's I grabbed its struts as my suspension
was as stiff as a wet spagetti noodle. That cost about $70 for all 4 corners. The used stuts were
on their last legs.
Now I'm into the car for $1250
I drive my new toy enjoyably for about 2000 kilometers before the exhaust system falls off the car.
Okay, what do you? Custom fab job is going to cost $1000, but the RacingBeat headers/exhaust is $1700
and adds 20 HP? Guess what, now I'm into the car for $2950. LoL
That was a great upgrade the exhaust was! If I wound the engine out to 6k to 8k and my nice shiny racingbeat
exhaust cans were hot, I'd pop some flames in synchronicity out the dual exhaust. I received a lot of compliments
for that while stopped at red lights.
It's quite the pop too. You feel the explosion reverberate throught the
car and through the seat of your pants.
Well my nice popping car only lasted 4 months until the 224,000 Km clutch gave up the ghost, It was a bonus in disguise
because I always coveted the 80% less interia (& 50% less static weight) flywheel the racingbeat aluminIum model provided. So, if you're going to do the clutch you may as well upgrade the parts right? Right. That's what I did by buying a heavy duty disk and a tougher preasure plate.
Now I'm into the car for roughly $4150
Ahhhhh... I said to myself... all is fixed. So I went out on the freeway at about 3:00 am when there's nobody on the road and began to
test out the car with the AluminIum flywheel. Between the flywheel and the straight through exhaust I'd put on the car I could really feel the difference from when I bought it... I was having fun. I got off one highway and as I got onto another I wound out 2nd gear to roughly 7250 RPM when unexpectedly I blew my apex seals on one rotor and had to nurse the car home on the remaining rotor. (I'd put on less than 300Km since the new clutch)
Well, shit... what do I do now? I'd got $4150 invested in what started to be a $900 car!
It was a make or break decision for me. Pragmatism dictates that you quit throwing good money after bad but logic dictates that IF you fix
the engine there's not much left to break having replaced 50% of everything else. I took the plunge and went for the engine rebuild instead of scrapping the car or parting it out. I wanted a good reliable daily driver anyhow but loath car payments, so a rebuilt "used" seemed in order.
When the car's motor blew I nursed it about 50km to my mechanic's shop. A place called RX7Specialties here in town,(Calgary, Canada) and one of only a few places in North America where you'd want to take your rotary engine for a rebuild. I am lucky to have such a facility in my city.
Sorry to digress, but I needed my engine rebuilt. This would have cost me roughly $3k (all sotck) plus the shop time but if you're going to rip it all apart, and put it back together with better parts yeah? Well that's what I did.
The engine was the stock 6 port 13b to begin with. When it's reassembled it will contain pieces from three different generations of the 13b INCLUDING the rx-8's Renesis engine. Front/Mid/End housings will likely be my originals provided the apex seal breaking didn't score them, if not replacements. The rotor housings will be new FD twin turbo housings since the chroming to the housing stands up better than previous versions as well as the exhaust port has no baffle in it like what came with the car. (ie: exhaust breaths better) All the internal spinning bits like the e-shaft, rotors, bearings, thrust assembly et. al. are brand new rx-8 pieces. By switching rotors it takes my compression from
the stock 9.4 to 10.1. Obviously this will equal dramatically increased performance. In addition to that I've also had the new rx-8 rotors ceramic coated for less heat and carbon build up as well as race clearanced.. The grooves for the apex seals have also been regrooved for accepting 1 piece custom seals which are far tougher, and should I ever add a SC/TC, tolerate more boost too.
The intake has been ported and polished to match the housings for opening size and as well the actual ports themselves have been to the maximum
size advisable before low end torque (rotary? torque?..lol) suffers a loss. She's got an "aggressive" street port. These bigger ports are fed now by 550cc secondary injection.
At this point a $3k rebuild began getting out of hand so I figured, wtf, go for broke, fix everything and commit to restoring it to showroom
condition. So, in addition to getting just the motor done, I ordered some KYB struts and racingbeat springs to replace the used junk I'd put on it. (drops 1", variable rate) Since rx-7specialties has all this shiny stuff around their shop and me being Mr. Impulse buyer, I also ordered the stainless steel clutch/brake/radiator hoses too.
All I really need now is a new paint job... I hope. The engine's supposed to be going back in the car tomorrow. All in all the new engine, suspension and shiny things cost $7100 installed. If I add that to the $4150 already spent on the car, I've now thrown $11250 at a car that had a $900 sticker in its window.
I must be insane? By the time I'm done my TVR will have cost less.
I actually joined this forum for a love of TVR's and to buy one, but I'm a big RX-7 fan
so I'll write a post to pass my time here in Jap chat.
I used to own three rx-7's until yesterday when I sold my favourite 7 (an 85 FB) to make
way for the TVR 390SE I'm going to bring home. (the other two 7's are a '82 GSL and a '88 GXL)
Now I only own two with one in the shop.
The car that's in the shop is there because I blew the apex seals out the exhaust like so many of us do. I really can't complain as I only bought the car
for $900 from the local wreckers. ($1100 after taxes) It looked like it has sat in some farmer's field for a dozen years
because it was literally coated baked on dust. This is how bad it looked...
http://control-alt-delete.ca/images/7
To get the car going, all I had to do was charge the battery, and replace the master brake cylinder for
$84. That got it legal, and once I saw another FC at the wrecker's I grabbed its struts as my suspension
was as stiff as a wet spagetti noodle. That cost about $70 for all 4 corners. The used stuts were
on their last legs.
Now I'm into the car for $1250
I drive my new toy enjoyably for about 2000 kilometers before the exhaust system falls off the car.
Okay, what do you? Custom fab job is going to cost $1000, but the RacingBeat headers/exhaust is $1700
and adds 20 HP? Guess what, now I'm into the car for $2950. LoL
That was a great upgrade the exhaust was! If I wound the engine out to 6k to 8k and my nice shiny racingbeat
exhaust cans were hot, I'd pop some flames in synchronicity out the dual exhaust. I received a lot of compliments
for that while stopped at red lights.
It's quite the pop too. You feel the explosion reverberate throught the car and through the seat of your pants.
Well my nice popping car only lasted 4 months until the 224,000 Km clutch gave up the ghost,
It was a bonus in disguise because I always coveted the 80% less interia (& 50% less static weight) flywheel the racingbeat aluminIum model provided. So, if you're going to do the clutch you may as well upgrade the parts right? Right. That's what I did by buying a heavy duty disk and a tougher preasure plate.
Now I'm into the car for roughly $4150
Ahhhhh... I said to myself... all is fixed. So I went out on the freeway at about 3:00 am when there's nobody on the road and began to
test out the car with the AluminIum flywheel. Between the flywheel and the straight through exhaust I'd put on the car I could really feel the difference from when I bought it... I was having fun. I got off one highway and as I got onto another I wound out 2nd gear to roughly 7250 RPM when unexpectedly I blew my apex seals on one rotor and had to nurse the car home on the remaining rotor. (I'd put on less than 300Km since the new clutch)
Well, shit... what do I do now? I'd got $4150 invested in what started to be a $900 car!
It was a make or break decision for me. Pragmatism dictates that you quit throwing good money after bad but logic dictates that IF you fix
the engine there's not much left to break having replaced 50% of everything else. I took the plunge and went for the engine rebuild instead of scrapping the car or parting it out. I wanted a good reliable daily driver anyhow but loath car payments, so a rebuilt "used" seemed in order.
When the car's motor blew I nursed it about 50km to my mechanic's shop. A place called RX7Specialties here in town,(Calgary, Canada) and one of only a few places in North America where you'd want to take your rotary engine for a rebuild. I am lucky to have such a facility in my city.
Sorry to digress, but I needed my engine rebuilt. This would have cost me roughly $3k (all sotck) plus the shop time but if you're going to rip it all apart, and put it back together with better parts yeah? Well that's what I did.
The engine was the stock 6 port 13b to begin with. When it's reassembled it will contain pieces from three different generations of the 13b INCLUDING the rx-8's Renesis engine.
Front/Mid/End housings will likely be my originals provided the apex seal breaking didn't score them, if not replacements. The rotor housings will be new FD twin turbo housings since the chroming to the housing stands up better than previous versions as well as the exhaust port has no baffle in it like what came with the car. (ie: exhaust breaths better) All the internal spinning bits like the e-shaft, rotors, bearings, thrust assembly et. al. are brand new rx-8 pieces. By switching rotors it takes my compression from the stock 9.4 to 10.1. Obviously this will equal dramatically increased performance. In addition to that I've also had the new rx-8 rotors ceramic coated for less heat and carbon build up as well as race clearanced.. The grooves for the apex seals have also been regrooved for accepting 1 piece custom seals which are far tougher, and should I ever add a SC/TC, tolerate more boost too.
The intake has been ported and polished to match the housings for opening size and as well the actual ports themselves have been to the maximum
size advisable before low end torque (rotary? torque?..lol) suffers a loss. She's got an "aggressive" street port. These bigger ports are fed now by 550cc secondary injection.
At this point a $3k rebuild began getting out of hand so I figured, wtf, go for broke, fix everything and commit to restoring it to showroom
condition. So, in addition to getting just the motor done, I ordered some KYB struts and racingbeat springs to replace the used junk I'd put on it. (drops 1", variable rate) Since rx-7specialties has all this shiny stuff around their shop and me being Mr. Impulse buyer, I also ordered the stainless steel clutch/brake/radiator hoses too.
All I really need now is a new paint job... I hope. The engine's supposed to be going back in the car tomorrow.
All in all the new engine, suspension and shiny things cost $7100 installed. If I add that to the $4150 already spent on the car, I've now thrown $11250 at a car that had a $900 sticker in its window. I must be insane? By the time I'm done my TVR will have cost less.
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