I do love distractions... sure, lets make the RX-7 run!

Well now that patches is up and running I began to turn my attention to the midge.

I had started putting a 13b in this guy long ago, before a move, a wife and two babies got in the way. So whats one more obstacle? 

As I was pondering my next step, I said to myself, "Self, that rotary has been sitting there for 8 years now... and you've never seen it run."

So I was thinking, before I do any more on the midge, I should check that the Rotary works as claimed.  

Well, how am I gonna test it? I think the easiest approach would be to slap it into that full engine test bed sitting in the background. 

Cue the Tetris music! 

While I was moving all of this around, my wife came out and asked what the hell I was doing. 

So I 'splained' it to her. And told her I could then drive the RX around a bit and enjoy it. 

She was...not impressed. I believe her wording was, "that looks like every terrible crap car from the 90's that nobody wants."

At which point I told her that it was an excellent crap car from the 90's that nobody wants.

still unimpressed somehow... 

BirgerBuilder said:

 

She was...not impressed. I believe her wording was, "that looks like every terrible crap car from the 90's that nobody wants."

 

 

My wife is someone from the 80s that nobody wants, but I keep her around still :D

Nice RX7

tell her a 2018 Challenger RT that everybody wants is $34,000 --or $680/mo. RX7 starts looking a lot better....

I'll have to let her know that the GRM community was very offended by her blasphemous remarks!

Well, I finished my game of Tetris and was able to get a small amount done before work today. 

It's not much but I got the cooling system and AC all out of the way. The intake and EGR and whatnot had already been removed, Before...

And After...

I have near 10 days off of work for the holidays so the plan is to get the engine swapped and make this beast drive before the end of the year. 

Wish me luck. 

Awesome! I love FC RX7s. Looking forward to seeing you get this one running. 

Personally I think you should have put the effort into the Midget. Midgets with rotaries are a lot of fun. The low torque and high rpm suits the chassis.

Pete

everyone wants an FC.  Or everyone SHOULD. haha

NOHOME said:

Personally I think you should have put the effort into the Midget. Midgets with rotaries are a lot of fun. The low torque and high rpm suits the chassis.

 

Pete

Long term plan is to still put the 13b into the midget. But I want to ensure the motor runs well in it's intended location first. (We also have a potential move coming up and more running cars makes for an easier time.)  After that I'm thinking some kind of modern V6 in the RX-7, anything with over 300 herspwrs but light weight is a plus. 

After that I'm thinking some kind of modern V6 in the RX-7, anything with over 300 herspwrs but light weight is a plus. 

Ah, don't do it, leave the rotary in the 7 and blow the carbon out of it!

Well, turning the "Broken" motor over by hand is easy and I hear no unusual sounds... I can even hear little pop, pop compression noises. So maybe I have two 13Bs...

80s. That's an S4, so 80s. I don't suggest correcting her on that point, though.
 

In reply to BirgerBuilder :

I think a very similar remark was made when my FC first came home. "It looks like an 80s piece of E36 M3," or something to that effect .

Furious_E said:

In reply to BirgerBuilder :

I think a very similar remark was made when my FC first came home. "It looks like an 80s piece of E36 M3," or something to that effect .

You don't need that kind of negativity in your life.

Disregard females. Acquire Mazdas.

it's turning into a Bill Burr monologue here. 

am I the only one thinking this naked picture of the Midget has some potential a la Caterham?

GIRTHQUAKE said:

Disregard females. 

Hallelujah 

GIRTHQUAKE said

You don't need that kind of negativity in your life.

Disregard females. Acquire Mazdas.

I do seem to be following this mantra; Well, disregard female's opinions at least. The female herself I'll probs keep around.

In reply to nutherjrfan :

The Midget is pretty much there from the factory. If you stripped a Midget to its bare essentials it gets even closer. 

Pete

BirgerBuilder said:

GIRTHQUAKE said

You don't need that kind of negativity in your life.

Disregard females. Acquire Mazdas.

I do seem to be following this mantra; Well, disregard female's opinions at least. The female herself I'll probs keep around.

This approach has worked well for me. She's supportive of my hobby, my tastes are just a bit too, uh, 'sophisticated'  for her liking sometimes 

Not too much progress yet as I keep getting distracted from this distraction. 

But to make working in the auxiliary garage more bearable, I set up this fabulous bit of Redneckism.  

We are hitting White Trash levels that shouldn't even be possible, folks. 

I did end up throwing a coat of paint on it, at least, and I'll take it down when I go back to work after the new year. 

I also got side tracked by my Christmas gift. 

Fun.

Anyway, back on topic, I decided to see what state the fuel tank is in, since the car has been sitting for 8 years or so. 

First off, the top of the pump cover is held on by Philips head screws. Who thought that was a good idea?

Being very careful, I managed to turn 3 out of 8. All the rest stripped faster than a West Virginia high school drop-out.

I drilled the rest and pried it open... Well the good news is that it isn't full of varnished, spoiled old fuel. 

But on the other hand, that means there wasn't anything to inhibit rust build up either...

So, the story with this car is that I bought it so that I could swap the engine over into the MG. After driving it around my driveway and back alleys every now and again, it died, then wouldn't start again. I knew nothing (and still don't) about Wankles so I didn't even try to fix it. I found a recently rebuilt motor that had been in a crash, and that sealed the deal. Looking at this tank, and the fact that the fuel float was rusted in place at the half-way mark now leads me to believe that the motor was fine (8 years ago) and I just ran out of gas. Is the motor still fine? I guess I have to try and find out now. 

BirgerBuilder said:

First off, the top of the pump cover is held on by Philips head screws. Who thought that was a good idea?

They're probably Japanese Industrial Standard screws, which are ALMOST like Philips head, but just different enough to strip about 5/8 of the time. I didn't know about that until somebody told me. Using the JIS screwdrivers made a pretty remarkable difference on subsequent RX-7 projects.

I suggest pouring a bit of oil (or, if you want a real smoke cloud, ATF) in the spark plug holes, turning it to the next face, pouring some more and so on until you have all six faces with a bit of oil on them and then letting it sit a bit before you fire it up. Then, turning it over with the fuel disconnected and the pedal to the floor is also a good idea before you actually run fuel to it.

Now I'm having rotary flashbacks. Good times.

Marvel Mystery Oil I think was the oil rotary guys advocated when ressurecting a rotary.

JIS screws are special, yeah. I'll try digging up a link to a special set of drivers for them.

I asked for a JIS hammer type screw driver but Santa forgot it. I think the real issue was that the screws were real frickin rusty. So I'm not sure any type of screwdriver would have saved them. I mean, they turned to dust, instantly. 

I have heard great things about Marvel Mystery Oil so I'll probably  pick some up today. I have not heard about the no fuel, wide open cranking so thanks for the tip!

The no fuel, WOT is to distribute and eject the oil you've been dumping in the chambers. 

Do you know about turning it by hand and listening for the chuffs?

In reply to Brett_Murphy :

It's blowing air out of the spark plug holes and making nice little chuff chuff sounds, is there anything else I should know?

So I finally got a full day working on the car. First of all, all 4 tires would only hold air for an hour tops so I needed some new rubber. After an extensive classifieds search I finally found 4 used tires, mounted and balanced already, on steelies. 

Patches and I picked em up on a rainy day. 

The two hours of driving went fine but I'd never had the car out in the rain before. Two things. These skinny little snow tires do not have adequate traction and you have to take it pretty easy to avoid spinning them all the way through 1st and 2nd gear. (which I did not do). And second of all, I may have a leak...

I vacuumed more than a gallon out of the passenger side of the car then propped the carpet up to dry. Seems like I missed something vital as it is definitely coming up from the floor.

Super fun times.

Oh well, back to the story at hand. 

Check em out! 

Just kidding, but this car has the nicest spare tire I have ever seen. Gotta cut weight! 

So at some point, before I even moved to this house, I started stripping off the accessories and whatnot to use on the donor car. 

Well that was 8-10 years ago and those parts have been sitting around, waiting to go back together. 

Like a big jigsaw puzzle!

Except you lost some parts, like all of the hardware...

And there are parts from other puzzles mixed in...

And the pieces have been strewn around the house and then moved to a completely different house. 

And, you get the idea. So it was very slow progress. A lot of putting parts on, realizing they are from the wrong year, or that I forgot something underneath and taking it back off. Really it would be nice if I knew next to anything about these motors. I did get it mostly back together though.

ALSO, I get that the weight distribution is awesome and all but it is SUPER annoying to have a tiny engine in a huge engine bay and then have ALL of that engine squashed into the back 1/3. 

Rant over. Here's the other problem, while modifying this engine to go into the MG, I cut and then fiberglassed the intake plenum backwards to make more room. 

Well in this car, the stock config would be way better, obviously. Also, there is a firewall in the way. 

So I did find a stock one on ebay for 35$ and it's in the mail along with a fuel pump. 

I was planning to stick this guy in a Jerry can for testing purposes, but I don't have a fitting like this... I don't even know what kind of fitting this is. Any ideas? 

So looks like I'm stuck for a few days while parts arrive. Though I still have to drop the fuel tank and get all of the rust out of it. Yay. 

Maybe I'll have time to spray the underside of the V-dub with some water and see where the hell it's leaking.