1983 RX7 on $100 a week

Holy crap it's a long way from Atlanta to Houston. Safe and sound. Unload tomorrow. Sleep now.

Saturday morning found me in the parking lot of a warehouse nibbling Chick-fil-A in the dark. Something about waiting in the dark makes things more exciting. Opening day of deer season, Christmas morning, wedding night, all of that stuff is dark and exciting and magical. I was kind of excited. I had an email ring in that let me know I was on the wrong side of the building. Oops. I drove around to see this is the early morning mist.

It was beautiful. Stunning. What a car. Then I hopped out and got closer. Ok, it's not perfect, but it's pretty good. Then as Simon and I chatted it got lighter out. Hmm, it's a little rough around the edges. Then I really started poking around. It's solid, but it's no where near too nice to rallycross. It'll do.
Can I drive it? He says it's my car, so I might as well. I fired it up and belted in. It's loud. Really loud. Nice and loud. I take it for a spin around the neighborhood and it works just like a car should. Revs to the moon (I'll need to be careful with that) and makes some lovely sounds on deceleration. Turns, stops, the whole bit. I'll take it.
Our first attempt at loading it on the trailer let us know that there was no way that we were going to get it on while it was wearing that beautiful air dam, so we took it off and loaded it up.

I asked Simon about what he bought to replace the 7 and he showed me his new Mazda3 GT4 car. It's pretty cool. The warehouse had a beautiful Opel GT and a half dozen flat fender Jeeps and some other cool stuff. I wanted to poke around and talk racing, but I had almost 900 miles to go. Paperwork and handshake and off to Texas. The drive back only took 14 hours which was better than the 15.5 there. Tired and stinky and back home.

I woke up this morning to the sounds of my kids slamming the door to go out and look at daddy's new race car. Knowing I had to start it to get it off the trailer, and knowing what sorts of noises the car makes I told the kids what we were going to have to eat some pancakes first and wait for a reasonable hour. I snapped a picture of the car on the trailer because the act of tying down the car compressed the car to stancetastic levels and quite frankly it looked awesome. Never have 205's filled out a car so well.

I fired it up and rolled it off the trailer. I got a thumbs up from my wife indicating that she found the noise acceptable. She also said something, but I couldn't hear it. I let it warm up and then took it around the block. Again, it did everything a car should do. It drove and stopped and turned and felt just fine. I need to get it someplace where I can drive it hard. On the ground the rear came up, but the front is still pretty low. I won't say that it's too low to rallycross, but higher would be better. I'll address this later.

Dat hiney.

So it has a motor.

The air filter says it's a rotary. Air filters never lie. Right?

Adjustable brake stuff. I'll probably get this wrong eventually.

Pretty much every vacuum line is gone in the car. For some reason I feel like the vacuum advance should be hooked up though. Thoughts?

Don't tell anyone, but I drove on the street with these wheels. I'm all hardcore like that.

Spares. Lots of spares. I'll just post the pictures and you and try to identify things. There are lots of things.

I will mention the airdam. It's awesome. Simon said it's rumored to be a factory Mazda IMSA piece or something. I don't know. it's very light and fits perfectly. It has just a few cracks in the gel coat on the bottom but it appears to never have been cracked. This was coming off before rallycross no matter what. I'm not sure what the future of it is. I feel like I should buy another RX7 just to put it on.

Last one for now. Anyone who looked at the pictures and still thinks it's too nice to rallycross, this is a picture of the drivers side under the car. I can only imagine that there were a LOT of curbs hopped at some track somewhere in the cars history. I can't imagine what else could have happened to cause this sort of damage.

Really enjoyed your earlier build-thread, so I'm looking forward to following this one. This one looks like a perfect platform for all sorts of fun!!!

BTW, I have one of those air-filter covers that I'm going to turn I to a clock for my shop.

Good luck with the project!!!

I have one of those air filter covers hanging on my garage wall.

I'm totally digging the car and looking forward to following along. May I humbly suggest swapping out the photo in the first post or adding a new one?

In reply to cghstang:

I'll put up a better picture after the rallycross in two weeks.

Ok it isnt too nice to rallyx.

That airdam is kinda rareish and desirable for the it7 guys.

Let me know when you want a 13b as I have the mount plate to make it happen.

A couple of things:

The distributor is almost certainly locked at full advance, so no vacuum needed anymore.

The damage to the "frame rails" is from jacking the car there - they are not strong enough for that - obviously. You should jack the car on the stock jacking points at the body seam at the bottom of the fenders. Under the rear diff and front crossmember work too.

Nice score, car looks good. Mine has been a blast.

Budget. First off, this is completely arbitrary. The real purpose of $100 a week is that it's a level that keeps my wife from wanting to stab me. It tends to slow down my spending and make me save up for things. It keeps me from taking every quarter in the couch cushions and immediately declaring it race car money. In theory, it keeps the project sane. In theory.
I though about it on the trip back and decided to start the budget on the day that the 2 was declared dead. That was October 5 which gives me $600 in my budget so far. I ran a rallycross after that where I paid for my entry and for the entry of the car that I was driving, so that's $100 off since it was a racing expense. I also spent $263 on the new tires. $40 that I just spent getting them mounted, and $16 on a gas can for premixing gas.
+$600
-$419
$181 left in the money bucket.

As the car sat, there were two things that I felt I needed to get done before I rallycross the car in two weeks. The first was tires. Those are mounted and are going on the car as soon as I finish this cup of coffee. Success. The second had to do with the front ride height. Since the car was already on jack stands I poked around a bit and found this.

I don't know if you can tell, but at full droop the springs are just hanging there rattling around. That's not right for a rallycross car. Droop is very important. Logically, I need longer springs, but I don't have longer springs. What I do have is these guys left over from mucking about with the 2.

Coil spring spacers. They even fit! Well, they fit after I cut them to fit. Pretty much the same thing. I popped the struts off the car, compressed the springs and put the spacers on top of them. It looks like it will work. Threw it all back together and we're ready to rallycross!

To be honest i'm dubious about that spring spacer installation. Seems like it would want to squash outward under heavy load or squirm off to one side. Might be a total non-issue, though, and even the most fail-y failure possible there is just going to make the car ride crooked until you look under there and see you lost a $10 spacer part somehow. The stakes are low!

Your retroactive budgeting is hilarious even though it makes sense.

Vigo wrote: The stakes are low!

And that's why I did it.

New tires on on. For reference, this is the wheel gap before I put those questionable spacers in.

This is the wheel gap now.

This is the gap under the front cross member. I have about a pop can and a half. It should be enough. I need to check toe though with that much lift on the front. Also note that the radiator is just hanging out there waiting to die. I might need to fabricate some sort of protection or something. We run on a pretty gentle course, so I think I'm good for now.

The previous owner had the oil injection thingy blocked off and had been pre mixing cheap two stroke oil at one ounce per gallon. The motor is alive, so it seems to work, but is there a better way?

Nope. That is the way to do it.

The OMP can fail and you wouldn't know it.

Pre-mix is arguably the best way to make the engine live a long happy life.

Rob R.

Premix.

Yup, premix. I order Idemitsu Rotary pre-mix oil, but it may be overkill.

A middle of the road option to pre-mix: http://www.rotaryaviation.com/oil_injector_pump_adaptors.htm

McTinkerson wrote: A middle of the road option to pre-mix: http://www.rotaryaviation.com/oil_injector_pump_adaptors.htm

That's pretty cool. I'll keep that link around for later. Thanks.

The big thing the car needs to make it road legal is turn signals. The rear ones are there, the front ones aren't and an initial inspection led me to the conclusion that the wiring wasn't hooked up to the back of the switch for some reason. I hunted it down and found this.

It looks like someone has had a little trouble with this in the past. Getting it sorted should be interesting. I pulled out the trusty dusty multi-meter and I do have 12V to the proper wire so that's a start. The flasher unit is missing so I need to drop by the parts store and get one of those to start with. The service manual has a fairly comprehensive set of wiring diagrams so I think I should be able to get it to work. In the mean time, the state of Texas has seen fit to grace me with a 30 day temporary plate! Now I can legally drive it around the neighborhood and make super loud braaaap noises until my neighbors call the cops.

McTinkerson wrote: A middle of the road option to pre-mix: http://www.rotaryaviation.com/oil_injector_pump_adaptors.htm

I have one on my RX8. Works great. I also do a light pre-mix (0.6 oz per gallon) each fill up.