RX7 Hillclimber Build Thread

Thanks for the encouragement. I look at it and I'm disappointed, mostly due to timelines. There's light at the end of the tunnel though.

Messed about in the garage while my buddy finished wiring up light fixtures (1,500 watts of T5HO).

Had never put the new TII aluminum hood on the car, so I did. I like.

Then I broke out the noisy tools and continued my war against weight.

These doors are so damn heavy. Off with the bottom!

Hmmm, still feels heavy. Off with the sides!

Still to0 heavy. So I started cutting the window channel off the top before I realized it was 11pm and I needed to be up at 4:30 to do farm chores before leaving for work.

There are places on the door where 4 layers of steel combine. It's 1/4" thick! Ugh Mazda. Ugh.

that's why that little car is so heavy, for its size. the front end is thin as all hell but the cabin area is stupid sturdy. Id say its probably saab safe.

This is exactly the kind of thing I want to do to our Chump car! Are you worried about rain and stuff coming in through the gap into the car at the bottom of the door?

Lets see more material removal!

Thanks for sharing!

Rob R.

I don't have windows, so rain and junk isn't a major consideration for me haha

I'll be drilling holes in the reinforcement bar as well to drop some weight out of it. I want to keep it so the door remains somewhat rigid. In the future the door may be completely replaced with fiberglass/carbon.

The heaviest part of the door is that beam. 11 lbs! You would have been better off cutting it out and keeping the metal that creates the door jamb area around the edges to hold its shape. You will see around 6 spot welds on each end. Drill them out and put a vertical cut most of the way through the beam and you can fold it up as you pull it out.

I got my caged FC under 2000 lbs.

We don't have windows either. However, even with the bottom of the door intact on our car, all sorts of crap comes in the gap at the bottom (mostly pieces of rubber). I figured it would get worse with the bottom trimmed.

Did you take out your heater core and all the behind the dash stuff? If so, did you weigh it? How much did it weigh?

Thanks!

Rob R.

jgrewe wrote: The heaviest part of the door is that beam. 11 lbs! You would have been better off cutting it out and keeping the metal that creates the door jamb area around the edges to hold its shape. You will see around 6 spot welds on each end. Drill them out and put a vertical cut most of the way through the beam and you can fold it up as you pull it out. I got my caged FC under 2000 lbs.

Pics and instructions please!

I dug up this old thread, not a lot of tech details. I'll see if my old laptop will fire up and pull some newer pics out of it.

http://www.rx7club.com/race-car-tech-103/eprod-car-born-517245/

I didn't weigh the heater core or dash, but none of that is in the car or going back in it.

Too tired from work to do real loud work on the car, so I installed the rest of my lights.

And then I sang the blues

heater core is about 10 lbs. I require one because defrost is key when racing on a frozen lake. also heat is nice for winter rallyX

Didn't get any work done on the car this weekend between yard work and a beer tasting. I did however pick up an AEM A/F ratio unit for $100, a heater for the garage and some more shelving.

Hahahahaha I loved this event. You get to see me in some Dinky Di action! https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=UU8FBfniYNHDS9Izu8diHH7A&v=Gay_v8yn8Sc

Me gusta

Getting more organized for the winter. 16' of shelving put up and a little more to go.

In other news, I picked up 10 or so 3' sticks of 3" nylon that was getting tossed. Not sure what its durometer is but it seemed like it would make good bushing material. Any thoughts on ways I can test it to see if it's good to use for diff mounts etc? If it's good I'll be selling off custom lengths of the stuff for cheap to GRMers to make their own bushings. Like $5 a foot.

Glad to see this thread back up top.

Not sure how the chemistry of nylon works when a force is applied, but I remember reading about a challenge car build thread where the guy used bathroom dividers made out of High Density Polyethylene and machined bushings. I did a bit of research into it as I thought it was crafty.

I was initially excited when I realized the durometer value was incredibly high. As it turns out, in the long run it would be a terrible idea to use HDPE bushings because unlike a Urethane, HDPE does not retain its same form after a force is applied. Slop would develop in the suspension after a period of use. I am by no means a chemist but I would look into how Nylon reacts to an applied force.

In reply to Cool_Hand_Luke: that was me/us. We challenged the car 3 times over 4 or so years, sold it to the FIRM who beat on it a bit as a track car, bought it back from them, sold it again, and then SvRex bought it and we challenged it this year. Poor setup kept us to 3rd in the autocross. Sometime this year we will pull apart some suspension parts to see how the bushings look. No obvious problems from a handling standpoint but I am curious to see how they look.

I'm not looking at making suspension bushings, more like transmission and rear diff bushings. I already have delrin engine mounts.

So when I bought this house just over a year ago the shop was divided into two spaces, one 20x35 wood working shop full of incredibly shoddy home made cabinets and storage "things" and a 25x35 two car garage with no wiring, lights or insulation. It was open studs.

Today the shop is almost a single large space, with a 10x15 area with three walls for a welding area (keep the mess contained).

The shop is fully wired, insulated and drywalled. 1,500 watts of T5HO lights have been hung and I've got 30' of shelving up. The last 8' of which I built today.

Next up is removing all the POS wood furniture the previous owner built, which is also full of mouse houses. So after I got everything cleaned up and pretty, I made a bigger mess pulling out all this stuff and getting it ready for the mother of all bonfires next weekend.

At least the mice won't have a place to live anymore.

Dude, that sounds exactly like my garage. Woodwork shop with questionable storage attacehd to a large 2 car garage. WEird.

I like the mice in my garage. They keep me company when I am out there alone.

I'd be fine with the mice if they hadn't chewed holes through the gaskets on my garage doors and E36 M3 everywhere

And now I'm waiting for Mazdaspeed to approve this year's racing results so I can order more parts. They're so slow about this stuff.

I once had an email responded to 15 months after I sent it to them.

get that in engine already! or make sure your storage is dry. I don't want moisture to seize the side seals in the rotors.

My shop is a more insulated than my house. It's a completely finished space so no worries about moisture. I put a little MMO in it and turn it over a couple times each time I'm in there. Lovely even thumps.

I need a transmission mount to throw the engine in the car and mazdaspeed is holding me up. I have a new S4 TII tranny mount, but need an S5.

Just keep it cool boy, real cool.

No more melting my shoe on the transmission tunnel.