Dream car acquisition; my FD RX-7 adventure

[varg]

Thanks, I do not tire of looking at this car.

So jealous of your snowless January. Michigan is sub 30 degrees and snow. All the cars are tucked away for winter. The Racing Beat exhaust looks good on there, very subtle. That reminds me, I need to go through the fuel system on my e30 and take care of all the old rubber. Planning on swapping out the factory wheels anytime soon?

Snowless, but it's looking like my FD will be down for the rest of January while I wait on a few parts. As for wheels, unless I win the lotto and can fit a set of MS02s in my budget, it's not getting different wheels any time soon. It's a good thing I actually like the stock wheels. I'm preaching the value of replacing old fuel hoses in these old fuel injected cars because too many cars burn down. If your 30 year old car has any original fuel hoses on it, you should replace them with OE or equivalent. I even bought Oetiker clamps and an Oetiker brand crimper for this job so I can secure the new fuel hoses that run across the top of the engine with something "permanent" and don't have to worry about lines that are basically impossible to inspect without removing the upper intake manifold or using a borescope.

[varg]

That took longer than it should have. I had my FD down for a few months to do a bunch of old car maintenance; replace coolant and fuel hoses, fuel system o-rings, fuel filter, oil filler and oil level sensor o-rings, clean and test the fuel injectors, flush the brake fluid, and heat shield and install my catless downpipe. I also got a late model Y-pipe and crossover tube, and replaced the clamps with some nice constant tension clamps I had laying around, which I also used on the radiator hoses. The engine bay as it now appears (I need to figure the most single stage engine bay paint safe way to get that rust proofing goo off of the strut towers):



I spotted this weeping coolant hose the first time I took the Y-pipe off and put the coolant hoses on the to-do list.



The old coolant came out looking perfect, which was a good sign.



There's a vise-like tool for this, but I don't have it. I'm not a fan of these spring clips because of stuff like this. Most are reachable with my angled pliers but not this one.



I uncovered another dealer mechanic mistake, someone broke the insulator on this coil in the past and moisture must have crept in and caused the terminal to seize. The boot would not come off and when I pulled on the wire it came out with very little force. A used coil and spare spark plug wire went in its place and all of the insulators got some dielectric grease.



Fuel injector test results.



The hoses I couldn't replace with the rack in the car got replaced when I had the rack out.



My DIY spot welded heat shield for the downpipe. This is embossed stainless sheet wrapped and spot welded over some 5mm ceramic wool. It's a laborious thing to do, but this heat shielding works well to reduce radiant and convective heat transfer in the engine bay. The materials are available on ebay, and I used a battery spot welder I got on amazon because my old harbor freight MIG machine didn't have enough fine adjustment to work for this. This type of heat shielding made its way from aerospace to motorsport and is now becoming popular on people's builds, it's quite expensive to have done by a shop. Some versions of it use inconel which I think is a completely unnecessary expense, at least on street cars. The only reason to use inconel would be if your exhaust is going to get hot enough to "cook" the stainless, since there's no requirement for extra strength at high temperatures or creep properties for a mere heat shield.



Installation of this old catless downpipe is a pain and the fit is not very good. I had to loosely secure it to the midpipe, align it with the turbo exit flange, and install the studs with it in place then the little bolt for the bottom rear hole. The downpipe could do with a bit more of an inboard bend to clear the transmission tunnel a little better. This was my best option though because of the price I paid and the discontinuation of the HKS downpipe.



Prototyping a two piece tow hook because sometimes Mazda make no sense, they will correctly spec expensive fasteners for the exhaust but think you should have to resort to pulling your sports car by the suspension instead of spending a few bucks per unit on simple stamped steel tow hook receiver front and rear. I'm also working on a rear tow hook, fire extinguisher mount, cup holder, and mounts for my PFC commander and DL-340XB.



And a pic of my car because I just like to look at it.

[Dj Buttchug]

Love it!

[econti]

Vacuum line setup is diabolical on them. Smart move on the spring clip with the G clamp, can't believe I never thought of that. Hate those little fuckers they go in the bin at every opportunity