Archive for November, 2009
Rx-7 Bodywork
Nov 27th
After removing the tranny, I decided that I definitely need to take care of all the surface rust in the engine bay, first things first, take off all the body work. I thought it would take me an hour for the head lights, fenders and bumper, funny how it managed to extend itself into a 2 day fiasco.
First of all, what the hell is this:
2 of these bolted in the bumper into the bumper support, I have no idea how Mazda expects me to get this out, or what kind of tool is required for it. The first one came out after 15 minutes of banging on the edge with a flathead screw driver, the 2nd one took much longer. Eventually PB Blaster + vice grip worked their magic after a few hours. I was actually thinking about cutting away the bumper tab where it connects. Seriously, worst engineered car ever. Even the forum community I turned to didn’t know what screws I was talking about, I suspect all the cars are now on their 3rd, 4th, 5th+ owner; once the bumper is removed and these screws come out, there’s no way anybody is putting them back in, so not too many people have to deal with it.
This is how the car sits now, after another stripped screw and breaking some tabs on the headlight cover, I finally got all that crap off. Next step is to completely strip the engine bay, I really hope I can put everything back together.
On another note, I was very impressed with the roller, before this, the fenders have never been removed from the car, paint is all original, and I suspect the bumper and headlights have never been removed either. Clean is an understatement!
Dana Point Turkey Trot 5k
Nov 27th
Just did a 5k yesterday, as far as my pseudo running career goes, this wasn’t as bad as I expected. I pretty much did everything wrong this time around, didn’t train enough or properly hydrate, I was expecting to get above 30 min. I somehow pulled a low 28, my PR is somewhere in the high 24 / low 25 range, I don’t quite remember.
I did, however, manage to drag my coworkers out to this event, for a few of them it was their first event. We had a pool going, unfortunately, one of them turned out to be a track runner, he finished in 23, I was a distant 2nd at 28. Oh well, it was good doing something like this again, I know that I would’ve just gotten lazy otherwise. Maybe I’ll start heading in another direction and try to gain a bit of mass for now.
New Rx-7 Project
Nov 24th
On 10/12/09, picked up yet another ugly Montego Blue FD, the difference between this one and the last one is the engine, or lack of. As rollers go, it was extremely clean, pretty much everything except for the longblock, accessories, and radiator came with the car. I used a paint meter on it, everything was within stock specs, nothing was repainted.
Apparently, the car has quite a history, it was owned by a respected rotary enthusiast on rx7club.com, he pretty much did all these is to do to the car and blew it up about 3 years ago. It’s been sitting in his garage until his job relocated him earlier this year which forced the sale. It went to another guy who parted out the entire car, definitely making it worth his while, before ending up in more or less stock form, in my garage.
So far, I’ve yanked out the tranny, with plans to strip the engine bay for a repaint as there’s some surface rust which will never get taken care of if not now. As for the motor, the best bang for your buck is still the LS1/T56 combo. I was looking into the LS2 (c6 longblock) and LS6 (c5 zo6), but in the end, the price of the stock LS1 and potential for power with just cams and heads would be more than enough in a car that weighs about 2800 lbs. In stock form, I’ll be looking at ~330whp/tq, with the heads and cams, 400+, definitely enough for me.
I considered building a rotary for a while, but after my first experience, I decided I wouldn’t be able to justify putting money into an engine that could fail anytime. I was already experiencing overboost issues on the stock twins with just ~3k on a rebuilt engine, all it takes is 1 case of detonation and you’ve got yourself a paperweight in the garage. Single turbo is also a pretty popular way to go, but the cost of a single turbo FD is comparable to an LS FD, hp #’s are similar but the v8 puts out low end tq like no other. Other benefits include not randomly blowing up. That was the end of the debate for me.