1993 Rx7 + Tesla Motor

**rjmcdermott81** · 02-27-2025, 09:06 AM

Couple years later and the wrap looks like poop.

Removing this is a PITA. Lots of heat, lots of time, and pulling some paint with it. Good thing I'm painting the car.

**rjmcdermott81** · 02-27-2025, 09:09 AM

I've always wanted to try out PDR. Trying my hand at some of the small hail dents first. The ones on the door panel came out perfectly. I had a harder time getting the hood right.

(Notice the e30 head on the table too :). From our Lemons race car)

**varg** · 02-27-2025, 04:28 PM

Glad to see an update, PDR is something I'd like to learn but the couple of small dents on my FD are so hard to find that I am not going to try and learn on my nicest car! I'm especially glad to see the weigh in. I was one of those curious about that earlier, though any estimates were highly dependent on battery capacity and I've forgotten and did not see on my second visit what your finished battery capacity and type was. Was that weigh-in with the car 100% assembled, with the cluster posted later and AC, PS, and such? It definitely lost significant weight vs the automatic13B, and shifted the CG forward which is not terribly surprising. The FD has that 20gal tank and it's way out back which serves the balance of the car well.

As an aside, I'm curious what mine weighs, it's a base vs your automatic touring. Supposedly they're below 2,800lb but who knows what the fuel load was. Road and Track's old weigh in of their Bose equipped 5spd Touring FD was 3,040lb, Autoweek's R1 was 2,815lb. Other mags seemed to use book figures.

**rjmcdermott81** · 02-27-2025, 07:44 PM

varg - Good question.
The original weigh-in was fully kitted out, full tank of gas, full interior, etc. That Bose snake is hella heavy. I did have the weigh-in done by a pro at a speed shop.

The second weigh-in was obviously done by myself at home. Honestly though, for the price of 3 digital scales on Amazon I think it worked pretty well. During that weigh-in it had a full interior, etc. Since then it has gained a rear seat and power steering. (it doesn't have an A/C compressor).

I think it would be a neutral weight difference, which, to me, feels like a win.

The car has a 42kwh lithium battery. A Tesla on the road has a 60-100 kwh, so it has roughly half the range. But it would be impossible to fit any more batteries in this small of a car without stacking them in the interior space and making it a monstrosity.

**varg** · 02-28-2025, 05:49 AM

42kWh, that's smaller than I seemed to recall. Did you ever do any performance tests? Drag strip or dragy or anything? I imagine, if that battery pack can provide enough current to make full use of the Tesla motor, it is a pretty quick car. 362hp or whatever you got in the end isn't a ton, but the car is light and doesn't need to shift. I went back to the original posts and looked through and you weren't getting full boost when it was still original, that's not only not surprising but I can't imagine how slow an automatic FD feels at 6psi, I know how mine felt at 6/7psi when I forgot the restrictor pills in the wastegate lines after replacing all of the hoses and it's lighter and a manual.

I love the FD's optional Bose setup, I kind of wish my base had one, but complete systems (the tube and associated trim and carpet, not necessarily the electronics) are hard to come by. I'm ok with having the lightest FD variant in the end and don't need a fancy stereo

**rjmcdermott81** · 02-28-2025, 12:02 PM

Sadly I've never done any serious testing. Honestly, I do a quick loop on 2222 near my house, which is a fun, windy road.

The batteries I have will easily put out 1,000 Amps, which will put down a ton of power. I expect my car to have similar performance as the TeslaBimmer that did 0-60 in the 3-4 second range. To do that test I'd have to abuse the car a bit more than I really want to.