'86 RX7 Rally Car

Quick update- I'm still waiting on parts, and two different ebay sellers have now wasted my time by being out of their FC radiators. I just paid twice as much for a name brand one instead of a chinese knockoff, hopefully that one actually exists.

Got to work on the car a little more today, here's the scary looking repair that the passenger trailing arm had:

Looks like the hole got destroyed at some point and somebody just zapped washers to it until it was sort of solid again. That came off and was replaced with a good, used part:

That's all for now, the rear suspension is back together and the car is on the ground again so I can work on other things. I'll be back to wrenching on this in a week or so, hopefully.

your images don't work

In reply to irish44j:

Huh, I can see them just fine. BTW, I'm having to put this aside right now because I need to work on a stupid berkeleying BMW

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ wrote: In reply to irish44j: Huh, I can see them just fine. BTW, I'm having to put this aside right now because I need to work on a stupid berkeleying BMW

I can't see them either.

Holy guacamole Batman. I saw this thread when you first got the car and thought it would never run again, it certainly wouldn't if I owned it. I saw it was complete and not just finished, but finished the rally well. Amazing come back, amazing skills. My hat off to you sir. WELL berkeleyING DONE.

In reply to Adrian_Thompson:

Thanks! To be honest, I thought the same thing at the beginning, but thrashing away on hopeless crap is sort of my M.O.- as Josh put it at the end of WMWR, "It's probably about time you had good luck with a car for once."

Oh, another thing I forgot to mention- WMWR was the last entry in the car's original (issued in 1987!) logbook. Last as in THE LOGBOOK WAS FULL! Every page has a rally, which is incredible when you consider how much punishment the car sees in just one event. After consulting both Rally America and NASA tech resources, it was determined that the best path forward would be to get another SCCA logbook for the car as a continuation to the original.

When I got in touch with the SCCA, the director of Rally/Solo was so impressed by a full logbook on a rally car that he sent me a new one for free! Thanks Howard

That is awesome.

The more I see of this car, the more I think you really had a LOT of luck to finish WMWR, lol...

In reply to irish44j:

Does that mean my pictures work now? Also, fully agree.

In reply to ¯_(ツ)_/¯:

Working for me now! That is a scary ass repair...

I think it's time for an update! A bunch of my wrench time was taken up by the DRZ and this thing:

But I've been back at it and making progress again. First order of business was to pull the radiator and intake manifold, and get rid of all of the ancient vacuum garbage:

As a bonus, when you have the radiator out of an FC you can stand like this while you work on the engine:

After pulling the intake I discovered some cracking in the lower airbox. I couldn't get good photos, but I hope I didn't pull too much dust and dirt in through there. Might explain why the car is easier to flood now though... or maybe it was injectors. Old vs new:

Ancient emissions stuff removed:

Blockoff plates, new fuel lines, and repaired wiring harness going back on:

And magically all back together with a snazzy new double alternator pulley:

I didn't find anything glaringly wrong in the wiring while I had the manifold off, but some of the vacuum lines were worn through and I replaced a few crispy wires. Next order of business was to figure out a fan solution for my snazzy aluminum radiator. The fans that came with the car are junk, and the fans RedGT gave me unfortunately don't fit well either, so it was off to the junkyard, where an unlikely donor had exactly what I needed:

These vans have a massive fan which is nearly exactly the right dimensions for an FC radiator:

It has two speeds but I wired it up to run on high any time it's on. A little trimming, some homemade brackets, and we have a fancy aluminum radiator with a sweet van fan:

I moved the thermoswitch to the thermostat housing to hopefully get a more accurate temperature:

That connector also has an extra prong on it so I can plug it in if the thermoswitch stops working to run the fan constantly. I have the fan run off of two relays in parallel to hopefully minimize the chances of failure.

Speaking of electrical failure, remember those wires that ripped out of their connectors at WMWR? They now have a new ground location, better strain relief, better connectors, and adhesive lined heat shrink. Hopefully this works:

Today I pulled the rear coilovers:

These were adjusted as high as possible while the fronts were in the middle of their travel at the same ride height- this was solved with some nifty spring spacers to get the rears back into the middle of their adjustment range so that I can go full monster truck if I have to:

I also chopped off the exhaust just before the Y-pipe:

I know it looks solid, but those mufflers are just flopping around on there and there are numerous holes.

Then came removal of the rear skidplate- made extra fun by the bolts that were ground away to nothing:

I don't know if that one was a phillips, allen, whatever, but it might as well be a rivet now. When I finally dropped the skidplate this fell out:

And the plate itself:

It's pretty thin stuff, and has some nasty rips and dents in it. I'll be making a new one.

While I was doing that, the codriver was cutting out some new door panels to replace the duct tape and cardboard monstrosities we made to get through tech at WMWR. Textured ABS plastic is pretty easy to work with and doesn't look too bad:

I still need to make some sort of door pulls. They look even better when closed:

looking good man. So what's the double alternator pulley all about? Are you going to run two alternators or is it for something else?

When you take the smog pump off of these cars, you're left with one belt running the alternator/water pump. The double pulley gets two belts back on the water pump so it doesn't slip at 8000 rpm.

Ah ok.....rotary problems ;)

When is the next rally you guys are running? Also, just for laughs you should come run in the Eastern Championships at Frostburg in July with us....see if the real rally cars can beat the dedicated rallycross cars in MR

Well, I thought it was going to be Hyperfest, but now that's at VIR instead of Summit Point. Not sure if it's worth the 7 hour tow, but they do have a "duathlon" class where you can run both a car and a bike...

I think we're not going to run STPR due to cost. I've contacted the Magnum Opus scrutineer to make sure the car is legal for that rally.

If there's one Frostburg event I think is worth it, it's the 2 day in July. I'll try to be there.

Yep, that's what I'm talking about. Actually I think it's a 3-day (test and tune on day 1). STPR cost and general disinterest in RA is driving us not doing it too. Hopefully you're planning for Black River so we can run against you :)

Absolutely planning for Black River- it's by far my favorite of the rallies I've been to so far.

For the skidplate, I have some stainless which is a piece of a workbench that was being scrapped at work. If you look closely you can see that I used some of it already for the radiator fan mounts. The plate beginning to take shape:

And about an hour of hammering, bending, and riveting later:

But wait- when Josh gets a stainless skidplate, it has cool brand names and E36 M3 etched into it. Obviously mine needs to be at least as legit...

Much better!

Installed:

Now to figure out how to make an equally heinous exhaust- I have purchased what I believe to be the largest quantity of brand-new mufflers one can buy for $40, but I'm concerned the car may still end up extremely loud. Hopefully the stock cat and thermal reactor provide some muffling on their own.

lol....well, you get cool etchings when a sponsor makes it for you and wants to promote the product, lol ;) Of course, they're all covered in mud anyhow, lol.

Yours needs some 80s-tastic slogans on it like the front of your hood!

Exhaust!

That is 5 Speedway el cheapo mufflers in a row- the car is loud but not terrible with this setup, I'm pretty sure it's quieter than most of the open class cars. The exhaust is not the lowest part of the car at any point, although I had to squish the pipe into an oval shape where it goes under the subframe to achieve that. It also tucks up much further into the bumper at the back:

That spot was conveniently already broken, I just had to tear the zip ties out and rip a chunk of plastic off. I still need to make more hangers since this is only supported in two places as it currently sits.

I live near a Tractor Supply. Thoughts on this?

You need stacks coming right out the hood like a demo derby car if you want to run those flappers.

Awesome progress. I am curious what the budget exhaust sounds like.

From my point of view the pics in (March 27, 2016 11:29 a.m.) post do not work but all the others before and after do, and seem to be hosted in the same place.

Agree with pic comment. Weird.