You must be logged in to rate content!
17 minute(s) of a 202 minute read
11-11-2013
11-11-2013
Around the time I started doing the wiring my roommate decided he wanted to buy a 240 hatch if the right one came along with minimal rust and no accidents. When people say they want to find something I take it as a challenge and within a week I found and he bought a nearly rust free roller with 0 accident history so the FD had a garage companion. We towed this thing 2 hours with bald and dry rotted tires, on a dolly, at night in, the snow.
It came with K-Sport coilovers worth more than he paid for the car.
Within a few days we had it stripped to nothing but a bare shell
Back to the FD now. My semester ended, I graduated and was hired full time where I had been working as an intern for two years and I wired all summer. I got the wiring back to stock while I was at my apartment and when I got it home I had a terrible idea. Wire Tuck. The main harness running around the front was always something that bothered me so it had to go.
I didn't actually just hack it in half. I cut wires one by one, calculating where I should cut it to be able to have the easiest time reconnecting it through the cabin.
All cut and marked for reconnection
One of the many mock ups for wire lengths
Lights working much better than they did before the wire tuck. There was no questioning whether the headlights would turn on with the switch and the running lights weren't constantly on.
11-12-2013
Here is the nearly completed wire tuck harness, my trusty sidekick enjoys walking all over things. Even though I don't have A/C or fog lights and some other things I wired it all up just so I knew there were no wires crossed up. I can always go back later and cut things out.
I also had to break open my twin power to fix a wire with a broken case. I made a thread on this. It wasn't complicated, just cut and spliced in a matching wire and shrink wrapped it. Then filled the case back up with silicon to seal it.
Then came formula D at Wall New Jersey. Naturally I was attracted to the Nexen Rx8 which was the lone rotary running that day. Unfortunately the engine let go in the first round.
With the wiring harness pretty much set It was time to try to start the car. The good news is that it started right up. The bad news is that it still had a surging idle. I eliminated two of the only other weak links I knew of by replacing the ISC gasket and getting a fast reacting IAT.
When I pulled the ISC off I cleaned it up the best I can and while I was doing this I noticed something strange in the ISC. Really have no idea what it is. Its's a very hard rubber piece.
Bolted everything back up and started it up with the same results. I have verified that the TPS is in spec Numerous times. Here are some videos. Don't mind all the wires hanging out, they are all for lights or properly hooked up but just not routed in an organized fashion. Also have massive exhaust leaks.
I thought the PFC was learning idle and I was going through the steps of the learn process but it really never did. the car would settle down and sound ok and then it would go back to whatever it wanted to do.
With the car still not running correctly I got pissed and you might say I got a little carried away but I decided to ditch the stock ignition and the PFC and go in the route of a complete standalone with direct fire. This will simplify the system and all wires for the engine will be new and fresh so the 20 year old wires will not be a factor. I started by pulling the motor again. This took all of like 3 hours.
Then I pulled the Heater core and carpet. Deep down I knew there was still something off about the frame of the car and when the carpet came up this was confirmed.
So I got in touch with my co-worker's friend who owns a collision shop and set up a drop off time to have it looked at and possibly pulled, correctly this time.
11-13-2013
I had been thinking about converting to a manual steering rack for a while to clean things up in the engine bay because I love simplicity. I never really had a real reason to do it though until I dropped the power steering pump during removal and broke the pulley. I had two options Option 1: make a replacement. Option 2: convert to a manual rack. While making a pulley would've been simple enough I decided to go manual rack since it would cost nearly 0 dollars. While I was waiting for the date to drop the car off for frame assessment was the perfect time to do it.
These lock washers for the inner tie rods are impossible to find
I also did the mod to the door handles that relieves the stress on the worn linkage for easy opening and ease of mind that I wont snap them off.
Then it was time to drop the car off at the frame shop to have its fate decided. When I dropped it off I was hopeful and after looking it over with the owner of the shop it seemed like the car really wasn't in bad shape. I informed him to measure it and then call me to decide whether it is worth fixing or not.
I thought so too but the car had been aligned at Speed 1 and I measured the wheelbase on both sides of the car before it wen to the frame shop. The rough measurements showed the driver side wheelbase to be roughly 0.750-1.000" shorter than the passenger side. And I can tell the driver side front corner was bent up because the car never sat on all 4 corners on jack stands.
Here is a picture from before the first time I had it pulled. You can see something is pretty off. I didn't notice this when buying the car because the wheel was always turned.
I also feel like the whole car is crooked. I took these pictures to try to capture it with the wheels dead straight. My calibrated eyeball says the driver front sits inside the rear and the passenger front sits outside the rear.
Driver
Passenger
1-19-2014
An Update!!!
Over two months ago my frame guy informed me that he wasn't confident that he could get it right because of the plate welded to the rail and that it some other oddities that he found. I didn't see it to be a good investment to put money into a car that wasn't in anywhere near good shape to begin with and have no guarantee it would be straight afterward. Yes the car would still have a clean PA title but if I were to sell it I would sell it as an R title because I have morals. So the search began for a suitable replacement.
Originally I was searching for a stripped chassis. This was nearly impossible to find so I began looking for a roller. My requirements for a roller were clean body and nothing else but finding a reasonably priced roller with a clean body is pretty tough as well. I then started looking at upper end rollers and at 7-8k I was turned off. In this period of time I made contact with many owners with rollers, non-running, and running cars. one of the cars I stumbled upon happened to be no more than 5 miles from my apartment. This was as close to a barn find I will ever see when it comes to Rx7s. This car was modified right around 2001 in the F&F days, had 44k on the clock, and had been stored for the last 3-4 years. I pursued that car for a while but the owner was delusional about its condition and value.
I then went back to a car that I previously passed by since it was a complete running car. I had a friend that lived no more than 15 minutes from the cars location go check it out for me before I made the drive. He put it through its paces, snapped a bunch of pictures, and gave it his seal of approval. I then arranged my own visit yesterday and ended up leaving with the car.
Details on the car:
93 touring with tan interior
77k miles
nearly stock
almost everything works.
Mods:
Blitz nur spec exhaust
B&M short shifter
Pettit Racing ECU
The bad:
Engine mounts, What engine mounts?
Oil pan leaks like a champ
no undertray
front left spring seat is dry rotted and basically non existent.
Clear coat on back bumper is peeling
Driver's windshield wiper does whatever it wants
Plans for the car are:
Fix the oil leak
Swap the AST for an aluminum one which I have
Find an undertray
change the engine mounts
Change all fluids
Swap coilovers and suspension from the other car
Drive the hell out of it in stock form for a while
I will drive the car in this form and work on making the built single turbo motor bulletproof in the meantime.
2-2-2014
I got a chance to dig into the new car today. I have to swap over the suspension components from the old car so I began with getting it up in the air to get a good look at what I was working with. As expected it's 77k miles with 20 years of grime on it and has never been touched. I also confirmed that the driver side front upper spring seat is basically nonexistent, dry rotted all the way through, which is causing the sag (not that it matters since I have coilovers for the car).
Crust on top of dirt, on top of spider webs and bodies, on top of more dirt.
Demolished spring seat.
I sprayed all the suspension bolts down with some PB blaster to loosen them up. Then I got to work figuring out what was going on with the driver side windshield wiper. The nut holding it on was brand new and barely tightened. I think the real issue is that the hole in the wiper arm is opened up a little and wont grab anymore. While investigating this I got side tracked and started taking the cowl cover off because I saw an abundance of dirt in it. It looks like a bunch of pieces of acorns in there so something was living in or near the car. It was parked under a tree so this all makes sense.
I get side tracked easily so while I was fiddling with the suspension and the windshield wipers I also stated to track down the oil leak. I knew the oil pan was going to be the ticket. I crawled under the car and confirmed that the oil pan is part of the oil leak. The OEM paper gasket is still present and doing absolutely nothing. I also noticed oil grime on the side of the block on the turbo side. I assumed it was coming from the OMP. So I began to remove some things from the engine bay to be able to access that area of the engine.
Found some petrified stink bugs hanging out in the battery tray.
I also found this little treat,
Oil in the intake track. It's both pre-turbo and post turbo which confuses me since I would think bad turbos would only spew oil into the post turbo side of the intake track. Also, the pre-turbo side only showed oil on the primary turbo intake. Next time I get out of the garage I will dig deeper into this issue.