I finally decided to take my RX7 to the drag strip to see what she would manage. I was pleasantly surprised that it ran a 15.955 on my first pass. 2nd and 3rd passes were a 17.2 and 16.5 respectively (wheel spin).
4th pass got interesting. As I tripped the lights, I notice there are flames coming out between my hood and cowl section. Yeah, that's not supposed to be like it is (but it do). Slowed down, shut it off on my way to the return road, and parked it at the tower. Pop the hood as I grabbed my extinguisher from inside the car, lift and spray. The alternator (and some of the surrounding stuff) was on fire.
By the time the track safety guy came out of the tower, I had it out. We BS'd for a minute while I surveyed the damage, got the jitters out, and tried to figure out a cause. The battery cables looked fine, the only things melted were my temp sensor wire, alt signal wire, and the wires for my trailing ignition on the distributor. He hung out while I fired it up, and I kept the remainder of my extinguisher in my lap as I drove back to the pits.
I was able to drive it home after some quick wire patches. Alternator was seemingly charging fine, nothing seemed amiss, so I drove it home (with some friends in tow). I ran new wires to replace the burnt ones, and yesterday I put the electrical tester on my alternator to see if I could figure out what was going on. Apparently the rectifier/bridge in my alternator went bad, either it blew up and caused the fire or it was already bad and decided to spark up. Either way, I'm charging at 30VAC, so I guess its time for a new alternator.
Lesson (and TL;DR): Carry an extinguisher.
