FC RX7 5.0 race car thread

[Teeson1111]

Once again, lol been putting off and forgetting to post an update. But that means theres a lot to tell.




Been kinda listening to this Weeknd guy. Not my usual taste but so good to work to, great beats. Though every song seems to be about cocaine in one way or another. Much catchy.

Where I last left off I had a couple brilliant unnecessary make work project ideas.



I've never liked how these cars look with the rear tire well hanging below the rear bumper. (also side note the rear crash bumper has some spring things in the mounts and not only do they do nothing, they weigh a lot) So I decided to make it more S Chassis like, cuz those cars look good with no bumper and no crash support.





I forgot to take pics of the finished product, but needless to say it was a lot of grinding and welding thin crappy metal. And I later drilled a drain hole, as now its a great water catch.

I started tackling the firewall and the rest of the engine bay smoothing



I don't know why it took me so long to buy a few of these magnet helpers. They are so handy.









Basic process was take some scrap metal, hold it behind and draw the outline of a circle on it. Then cut and grind till it fit inside, then magnet and weld. The smaller holes I just fill welded and grinded flush. All of it will still need some filler to be perfect.

I've been on the fence about tubs. I really grew to like the look recently. But up until this point I had decided to not do them and had designed and built the tube front with that in mind. Buuuuuuuut I kinda changed my mind.



So while these were on sale I went and scooped one up. Managed to somehow fit it in the toyota..

I knew this was going to add a lot of fab time onto my schedule but I deemed it worth it. Keeps the engine bay a bit cleaner and makes the car that much more street style. I figure worst case I can always cut them out.
A tip given to me by a guy who's crashed a car or two and has seen what they can do told me to not do them. He said if you get in a crash it can pull the strut tower out of whack. I'm planning on holding each in with a bunch of tack welds and seam sealing it all for a seamless look.



So many hours of deciding, and using cardboard to help figure out (these pics are actually from when deciding whether to do them or not) I had a game plan











Spent a lot of time making sure the gaps were stupid tight. Which will be a waste of time after the first time I tap the car into something I'm sure but oh well thats drifting.





Then ran out of gas and moved onto something else.



Long way off but trimmed the cubby frames around the cage.



Picked up bottle #3 of this project



Also had the metal place bend up the pieces for the tub fills while I was there. A little 1' lip on a big sheet that I will trim down to fit.



like so




Heres a pic of the bending rig I came up with to do the one corner



The spot where the fill meets the fender and the tube was kind of an awkward one. But I strived to make it as small an area as possible, and am pretty happy with how it came out.



keeping the gaps real tight



angle of this pic makes the gap look really big but its not much larger than the others. That was a tough area to kinda guess where to cut then bend it, struggle to fit in place, shave down some more and then find out you went too far in one area. Did some adding to a few edges.



But came out good. Once its seamed and painted I'll never be able to tell.



I'm big on how this car looks when fully dressed but also while its fully naked and the steps in between.



Around here I was very into how it looked with the tubs and nothing else on. It looked fine with the fenders and headlight in but not when those were off. Not too interested in throwing all that work in the bin yet I decided maybe it'll grow on me and carried on.

I've been reading through Engineered to Slide's hilux build, not only inspiring work the hours that dude put in were crazy. He is also completely not afraid of cutting off a piece he's not happy with regardless of how much work it was to make. That kinda added a new element to how I was looking at my own work.







I'm refusing to weld them in yet, until I have some primer to put on them right away. With the tent situation the way it is the car now hides in the tent but under a tarp. We have been getting a ton more snow than expected and when its not snowing it's raining. The car has started building up light surface rust all over the bare areas. As much as this pains me theres little I can do about it yet.





So that done, the next thing was to cut more car out.



first had to take out the fuel lines and the subframe



And remove all of the bump in the bottom of the cubbies. When you install Parts Shop Max subframe risers, the toe arms, trailing arms and subframe move closer to the car. This combined with how low a ride height I want to be at and running 0 camber means the floor can't be there. Last time I took a hammer to it but I wanted to be better this time. I also plan on mounting the battery and a few things in the cubbies so a flat floor makes it easier.

Finished cutting and trimming the pieces to fit, (but lol forgot to take a picture naturally) and decided before I do any final welding I should test fit the subframe. Which is on the missile car. Which is parked outside...



So thats gonna have to wait till like march lol.

Before I forget, boxing week brought upon me great deals. I needed some 18V drills for work and love the M12 stuff I have from Milwaukee already. Local place had a deal on where you buy the drill set and get a free grinder. Nice having 2 grinders again and the cordless part it handy. Its a shame it rips through batteries so fast haha.



Have a whole family now. The impact actually has enough torque to remove lug nuts so thats sweet.

Per Gaelen's recommendation about tubs he also told me to make the bash bar out of a really thin wall tube. It took only like 6 weeks to get (kinda silly), and I wish they had some on hand first because when I picked it up it was really thin. I figured we use .095 wall and thats pretty strong so the next size down .065 wall is like exhaust tubing lol. Gave it a shot aaaaannnnndd



nope.

fun fact, with some creativity you can fit and 8' tube in a sedan.



So stole some 1.5 0.95 wall off Neil and bent up 2 pieces based off templates I made using the bumper.



Went and started fitting the bumper, now I don't really know what I'm doing here as I've never fit a kit before. But it doesn't seem like rocket science. Big surprise though, rep kit fits like a rep, poorly



With the bumper in place a lot closer than it was I released a problem that I somehow missed before.



The mounts for the bash bar are a little bit close for the centre vent. Now I could have shaved the vent and cheated the angle of the tube a bit but thats not howI roll.



So out comes the grinders and to take it back down to nothing



And fixed. First location was keeping the tubes all merged in the same place. This is still pretty close to that but now has the bash bar mounts more inline with the frame rails, so I guess thats an added plus.







Then start to fit the bash bar in place to realize another problem. The bottom of the bumper flares out considerably more than the stock bumper. But this flare starts at the top. I gave myself some room inside the bumper when making the template, just to be on the safe side. But the metal factory fenders are right in the way. Some trimming of the, will probably have to occur as well, but I'm going to have to re do the top bar. I can get it in place if I wiggle it in there, and then put the crumple pieces in, but I'm not ok with that.



It also just barely contacts the headlight surround trim. The difficulty of bending a piece when the tube bender is in the next town.

However



Me and my welder buddy Andy have bought a Jd2 bender between us. He has been doing side work for off road vehicles and wanted one to make stuff for that. I wish we had done this like a year ago but I can still do my bash bars front a rear and do any future repairs with it.

His company is now Heavy Artillery Fabrication if you wanted to check him out on instagram.

Then I started on the part I've been dreading doing. Rust repair. Its always on of those things that you think "oh it won't be that bad" and then you start and keep finding more and more and more.







It's also gross and rust bits rain down from above, and the metals thin and covered in primer paint and or this wax stuff that they fill the rockers with so it welds poor. This car had it in basically each corner, I was expecting it here under the drivers feet because it seems like every S4 has rust there. Also under the antenna where the wheel well meets the interior.







Patched it up best I could keeping each layer there and connected at the pinch where it should be. Weld thru primer is your new best friend as well as a good wire wheel.



Passenger front side



Driver rear was really bad too.









I still have the passenger rear corner to do. Not sure how bad it will be yet, but my dad is redoing the kitchen so I can't make a dirty mess in the garage right now to finish it.

Got some new new though



Not totally sure about these, but I'll give them a try. White line says they change camber at the knuckle, which will hopefully allow me to get all the way past 0 degrees and allow my camber bar to not be maxed out. I fear they might rotate in the knuckle but we'll have to see.



Now I ordered this based on specs. I knew it was gonna be rather big but on paper it outflows basically all other fuel filters, has a 7 micron filtering and is serviceable. Once I received it I now see its actually meant for like gasoline pumps, and has a max rating of 50 psi. Not sure if I should use it but provided my fuel pressure is fine and stays at 40 I don't see an issue besides finding a place for the it to fit. Had to laugh when I was looking up info on it though, apparently its a very common DIY weapon silencer.

Got the thing I was in real need of to mockup the rad mount, these Derale fans





I knew when I ordered them they were gonna take some trimming to fit. But between the two of them they flow 4000 cfm. I've got some ideas, I'll make them work.

I'll be re-using these again



60 amp max current relays. The fans come with some cheapo ones but meh.



Got these done (finally). Tried 2 different plasma CNC tables and neither of them were up for it, so I had to find a laser. Local place I hang out at sometimes Serial Nine gave me the info for the guys that cut all their metal. So big ups to the guys at Brenco for helping my out with this.



Very excite.

So like I mentioned, dad had the garage on lockdown for his kitchen reno, I had to keep it clean. So I moved onto the next thing up the to do list that didn't involved cutting, welding or grinding.

Pulled down and organized the interior pieces I have



Trimmed the ECU bracket to fit. conveniently my old 5.0 eco bracket fits on it so I guess ill use that.



Trimmed kick to fit



Started the rear panels





Threw the cubbies in a trimmed up the carpet. I knew this already but the cubbies won't be able to flip open anymore. Going to have to come up with a solution to remedy this. Thinking black Dzuz fasteners or try use the key lock on them.



Going to use velcro once the interior is painted to hold the carpet all nice and together and in place.



It was a battle but got the headliner to somewhat fit. Only took cutting it into 2 pieces.



Picture doesn't do it justice but these side panels juuuust fit in there. Have to kinda force them in but it all fits.



Here's another pic with the A pillar gussets in place. You can see I also started trimming the dash top piece but stopped until the gusset is actually welded in place.



tiny little piece of A pillar being used up there. Kinda unnecessary but can't help it.



the rest of the A pillar that I can actually use



Have another thing to figure out. The vents that blow air at the windshield obviously don't fit anymore with a roll cage in the way. They are pretty close but I'm likely going to have to cut and glue to get something that will fit.

Have spent tons of time grovelling over what I should do behind the tubs...

Theres a little corner I had to hammer for wheel clearance, so now what to do with the space.





A full rear tub is cool but takes up too much space that I need to mount things. Also makes getting at the rear of the engine too difficult.



Tried a larger piece of fender



And a smaller one.

I don't like any of it. I thing ill go with a flat ish piece that curves over where the corner was. Make it look oem ish.

I will try to update more frequently. Maybe. Probably not though. But maybe

[Teeson1111]

What a story man. Damn... But at least you have learned a ton from those setbacks. I'm hitting that subscribe button in the top right corner now. So please keep them updates coming

I'm so glad you're still around and still working on an RX7.

Total bummer about the first one flipping and going to hell in a handbasket, but good on you for sticking with it and not giving up.

Here's to hoping you have a prosperous holiday and a successful build.

Thanks guys!

[MommysLittleMonster]

I'm so glad you're still around and still working on an RX7.

Total bummer about the first one flipping and going to hell in a handbasket, but good on you for sticking with it and not giving up.

Here's to hoping you have a prosperous holiday and a successful build.

[loekaaz]

What a story man. Damn... But at least you have learned a ton from those setbacks. I'm hitting that subscribe button in the top right corner now. So please keep them updates coming

[Teeson1111]

Merry Christmas everyone!




I've been back into the 1975's newest album. I didn't like the singles, didn't like it the first time I heard it, grew to like it, stopped for a while and now I'm into it again.
Really 80's in some songs, I still don't like the sappier acoustic stuff I really don't feel like thats what this band excels at. This has some good songs, but I do still like their first album better. Worth a shot, just don't expect to fall in love with it instantly.

Getting time to work on the car has been a bit difficult again lately. Had a few people ask me whats taking so long or a question to that effect, and really its time. I no longer have the ability to just walk out my back door into the garage and work on it. It takes about 25 min to drive there from my house and then I have to get the car inside etc. Don't mistake this for complaining, I'm still very blessed to have the shop and a place to keep the car. It just takes a little more effort then it used to I guess. Let's me spend more time thinking before I tackle something on the car.

That said, I had my local metal supply place Metaltropolis bend up some 14ga sheet for my headlight brackets.



Tacked them in place to where they needed to be.





Then debated how to make them look "cool" and not just square flat things.

I did other things, slept on it and came back to cut a bunch of it off.





3 captive nuts, and a bunch of it missing looks much more race car to me.



When the headlights are on you can't even see them. They mimic the factory bracket mounting so I have the ability to adjust the fit like I would if it was OEM.

I also much to my annoyance had to notch the drivers side down tube just a little bit to get the light to clear. I guess the front end isn't perfectly symmetrical, not surprising really.

Once both headlights were done and fit time to move onto the motors.









Now the first way I did this the forward most point ended up being too weak, well the weld was. I tried welding a nut on the end of a 3/8 rod and them shaving it down with an angle grinder in a vice while the rod was on a drill. Took too much out and became weak, looked crap anyway.




They now fit, are study and are fully functional. I've really grown to like the look of 1/4 rod and 3/8 for things. Especially with the tube front it fits the look much better than other ways to do brackets.

I trial fit the front bumper (it needs some shaving to fit properly, which I haven't done yet) to get an idea of what i'm gonna have to work with for the rest of the front end pieces.







Because I can't waltz into the garage I now take a lot of pics of everything I do and test fit. That way when Im supposed to be at work or something I can glance at the pics and think through how I'd like to do something. Aesthetics are important as well as strength, but an even larger part of the design goals is crash ready. Easy to rebuild and keeping important components far out of the way of any crumple zone or other car or wall.

I've recently been really liking tubs in engine bays. It just looks so clean and tidy, keeps the engine bay more free of road grime than open tubs.

















I'm stuck on the fence doing these or not. If I do have a serious crash they will be hard to repair, though it will likely be replace in that case. The car is so nice to work on with open tubs, you can reach the entire front end.

I want it to look good with the body work removed and with the body work on. When I originally did the tube front I had decided against tubs, but now that Im rethinking I wish I had done it differently, event though that would have made the headlights even harder. I strongly dislike the look of dimple die plate that joins the tube and the tub. If anything ill do it how my cardboard template is and weld to the underside. Then its a new set of challenges to fit the intake and the reservoir bottles etc in the bay.

I'd like to say I haven't made up my mind yet but when trailer fenders went on sale locally I bought one.
I've been reading Engineer'd To Slide blog on his Hilux build. The amount of metal he cut off after putting a ton of work into it when he wasn't happy with a piece for what ever reason is kinda inspiring. Worst case I'll tack it on and wait to finish weld.



Added a rear fender mount point, it was kinda flimsy with out it. Might have made it stronger than I wanted, but in a crash the fender is gonna get ruined anyway.



You can see my revised headlight motor mounts here.

Then I started figuring out the centre bar





This was a bit tricky as a lot of things needed to be considered. I wanted a stock style hood to fit just to keep my options open for aftermarket hoods. Rad had to fit and have room for fans and things. Couldn't impede headlights or ideal hood pin locations.

The white tape is the approximate location of the crank pulley. Sits quite far forward off the engine.






Grabbed some off cuts of EMT from work and guessed at the bend angle then bent it till it kinked in my vice at home haha. But it gave me a good idea what was going to fit. Made a
cardboard template and bent the real thing back at SCG performance.

Sometime later







Spent far too long measuring and staring at it to make sure it was straight and parallel with the tubes around it and the firewall/rest of the car.



Then something awful happened.



R.I.P. job mate grinder
2011-2016

My buddy Andy gave me this grinder as a hand me down when he got a better one from work, it served me quite well over the years. But the motor kinda gave up the ghost and I laid her to rest.



Next up was to drill some holes in hopefully the right places (lol jk i measured twice)



And quickly make some of these.

While theres been a lot of learning new things doing the front end, The pedal box was one area where i've been there done that and had a pretty good idea how to do it.



Remove pedal box, which I purposefully did not weld to the cage this time, and remove most of it leaving a small upright section for strength (something I didn't do last time)



I drilled out the holes on the pedal set just enough to bolt through 3/8 ready rod (also scrap pile from work). It will hang on these and be much easier to remove than supporting from the bottom like last time. They are also height adjustable this way.



Tack a plate with the correct spacing drilled out





Check position and fitment a few times, I liked where I had it before just to the left of the steering column. I didn't find braking awkward and it made left foot much more comfortable and easier.

Then weld the top nuts and weld the plate fully to the box. I didn't take pics because it really wasn't pretty welds. Strong but not very consistent.


Now while I do like in the Great White North I live near Vancouver BC and we usually just get rain for winter. Maybe a small snowfall or two. But this year has been different, and thats added a new challenge to working on the car.



Wet heavy snow is terrible for pushing through.



Solution is to quickly borrow the farm truck, or the tractor.

This gets worse though, after a bit of freezing sub zero nights, combined with rain, thawing more snow and more sub zero I had a lot of wet, heavy snow stuck to the tents.



they didn't like it.



My dad texted me about it and I cancelled my plans for that evening and went over to deal with it. Car was full of snow but thankfully it was the back where I don't have a lot of bare metal showing. Pulled it inside and spent the next few hours with a heat gun and an air sprayer getting as much of the water out as I could. Wrapped the car in a tarp and put it back in its home.
The missile had straight water in it from the last track event, I totally forgot about that. So the rad is frozen solid and so is the water pump. Not sure if rotaries have freeze plugs but it did start, I'll deal with it in the spring. Even if the motors gone in it Im not that broken up about it.

These two things have kinda killed my motivation, that and work is crazy as we are nearing our deadline for the project. Taking the holidays off from it and praying the weather gets better. So heres to progress in 2017 lol. Fab work feels like its almost done, until I decide I want to shave the firewall or something right?

[Teeson1111]

gahdamn there is some really high quality FC content here in this last post. Very nice! I just bought my first FC, and I'm already thinking about buying another, as mine is a bit more rough than I initially thought. Keep it up tho man!

thanks man!
pretty typical of 25+ year old cars to have some bad spots. nice thing about these is they are pretty cheap though.

[I_Haz.:R32]

gahdamn there is some really high quality FC content here in this last post. Very nice! I just bought my first FC, and I'm already thinking about buying another, as mine is a bit more rough than I initially thought. Keep it up tho man!

[Teeson1111]

well things can change in a moment

I suppose the music chose this update should be a sad song, but thats not what I've been listening to.



Been trying out the new Coldplay album A Head Full of Dreams. Honestly not as good as hoped but still has a decent amount of tracks I like. Didn't prevent me from buying tickets for when they come to Vancouver next year.



Was coming home in traffic one day, stopped behind a truck, car behind me stopped behind me and the minivan behind it didn't.



Thankfully everyone involved was ok (at least to my knowledge, car behind had a baby in it and went to the ER right away but for privacy reasons I'm not allowed to know more than that) but my car was towed away from the scene. Which was kinda unnecessary, it wasn't leaking and still started/ran, even the signals were working. But the cops didn't want to risk anything so they towed it.

So I saw it off in the traditional manner



My back was quite sore the next day, and only got more and more stiff. I spent the next 2 weeks off work, seeing a chiropractor and eventually transitioned back to work. As a result I couldn't physically push the drift car out of the tent by myself and didn't work on it for over 2 months.

But in the meantime I had other things that needed dealing with....



They towed the car to the yard for the insurance adjusters to look at, where they left the ignition on for like 10 days and ruined the lip and proceeded to lowball me over the phone. Some arguing later I came and took the car home, still not sure what the settlement was going to be.

At this point I was pretty pissed with the whole situation. I'll avoid complaining about the monopolized insurance that we have in BC. But I dragged it home and slowly pulled everything that I could use for the new car off of it.



Time to make some decisions. I was now way off my time line for the new car, still mostly unable to work on it, and I hadn't had much of an income since the accident and had no extra money to play with cars.
So I said screw it, Pumpkin Smash was coming up and I wanted to drift again. I tore apart my garage and all my spare parts, wrote it all down and sold everything I didn't need.





As of typing this I still have a few items left, including my gauge cluster. Felt good to clean up my work space (lol yet again) (made my dad happy I had less crap) and free up some money to drive pumpkin and continue working on the new car.

Somewhere in the midst of that I got my new car, a 1996 Toyota Mark 2.



I bought it off a friend of mine. I was looking at importing one but he decided maybe it was time to sell. I liked this option better, I could see and drive the car before buying it, it had also been well maintained and had a lot of work recently done on it. The only catch was it had a dent from a hit in a parking lot fender bender that had to be taken care of first. So I brought it back to the only auto body place I trust Candy Automotive (same shop that did my RX7 fender last year). Helps that my sister started working there when she was finishing her auto refinishing school.

It didn't take me too long to start playing with it





I ended up sticking with the Works. I also put my Grip Royal in there and my quick release.

Have to say I like these cars. Much different from my FC but a much more suitable car to daily drive. VVTI 1JZ is pretty fast, 4 doors and a roomy backseat is convenient, automatic trans is something I want to change but its not terrible. RHD isn't that bad to live with either. New challenges are learning to source parts and research. JZX100 doesn't have a stateside equivalent, its a mix of other toyota's and lexus's and even some that are specific to it only. Parts for it are also expensive and generally imported. But I happen to live 15 minutes away from Serial Nine, the toyota sedan kings.

Moving on, had some prep to do before I could go drifting.



Put some led's I had laying around around, threw my little batteries in it as the yard killed my old battery and flooded the engine to the point where I had to remove the spark plugs to de-flood it. More on that later.

Seeing this as an opportunity to learn from this, as I had a car I did not care what damage happened to it, I swapped rear subframes with the shell and put my Villains knuckle kit on.



Needless to say this kit is good. 0 ackerman and more angle than most wheel tire setups can clear. But since I have no fenders, 8" wide wheels, and basically what ever size spacer I need I found more.



By grinding the control arm a little, the knuckle moves further and the stop point is now the ball joint extension bracket.



I didn't measure it but there more angle (well after some hammering to the frame) available then I had the last time I measured the kit on the shell. Over 60* is my guess.

Knowing I had little horsepower and would need all the help I could get, I put 60 psi in all my spares and welded the n/a diff I had.



This is the auto diff the blue car came with, a 3.93:1 ratio. Hoping it will help the gearing with the V8 car. I also have quite a few n/a axles if for some reason it breaks them.


So put plastic over the back wall, cut the silencer out of the exhaust tip, threw a spare set of tail lights on and loaded it on the trailer.




Now I was far too busy driving that weekend to take pics but maaaaan what a time. And all that fun with maybe 100 hp to the wheels. I learned a completely different way to drive. It quite changed my perspective on a lot of things.

Spent the morning of day 1 however with the car not running right at all. Was overheating, had no power, smoking a ton and felt like one rotor wasn't firing. But I had spark and fuel, had tested the compression not too long before. Had a few friends who know rotaries better than I helping diagnose and it almost seemed like it had a blown coolant seal. We had a lunch break and the track officials gave me a few minutes to use the back straight to see if I could get it working (as waiting in the line up, failing and limping it back to the pits wasn't efficient). I ate something, said a prayer I didn't drag a a broken car all the way there, and stared at it again. I'm like "I'll just check the plug wires, cuz I took them off" and sure enough I had switched rotor 1 and 2. With that sorted it was time to actually have some fun.

Learning the angle kit was weird/scary for the first bit, as the steering is so fast and sensitive. I did the usual amount of wheel movement on the first initiation and was instantly backwards. a couple laps later I began to get a feel for it.



End of day one I could hang with the rest of them and had some really close tandem runs. Car actually got a lot of looks for what it was, and not everyone was revolted by how missile it was.

Day two was a different layout, was faster in some spots and was really hard to link for me in one or two areas. Had some friends come visit and do some ride alongs and filming (lol you can see mikey in that pic).



Had a great time all around though. Slept in my truck, went through like only 1 set of tires, watched my friends break their cars and wheels, met some new people and would do again.

When life gives you lemons make lemonade. Reminds me the big man upstairs has a larger plan than I can see sometimes. I still **** missile cars, not proud of how it looked but glad I could use it to learn. That weekend literally changed my perspective on style, car setup and car building. So much so I'm thinking of selling my V8 setup next year and going back to the plan I had when I started building my first drift car.

I have gotten back to building the new shell, started with the rear over fenders.



Cut the fenders after measuring and mocking up with the fibreglass overs



Then tacked them together



Fully welded



And cleaned up



The inside too, though the pic makes it look much more wrinkly than it is. Its decently smooth, to the point i'm not worried if the tire makes contact with it.



Then my sister brought my some sealer primer which I painted on with a brush. She's adamant this is better than spray can primer. She also has gotten me on sanding and using weld thru primer on the back of things. One issue I had with the old chassis was that rust was present after 1 winter. PNW climate is not the friendliest.

But then I forgot to take a pic of the finished product

Moving on to the tube front



made these sway bar brackets, though I don't think I will ever be able to run a sway bar in the stock location and have a decent amount of angle. Another thing learned from the missile.



Welded them on, my welds have been getting decent since getting a gas bottle for the lincoln welder me and my dad split some time ago.



like I was saying. I may make a bump stop that is similar to PSM's control arms with a bolt on as the stop. That I can run the sway bar on the street but it will still be quick and easy to remove when I want to take it to the track. I don't like even highway speeds without a front sway bar, but drifting I don't even notice without it. If anything less understeer without.



made a piece for the fender to bolt onto



made a small bolt on piece for holding the bottom of the fender in place with the idea that it will get wrecked and is kinda sacrificial. Might change them a bit to hold two bolt holes and where they are at the moment they might interfere with the splitter mounts.



Front end is starting to come together. This weekend I hope to do some stuff in the interior and the headlight mounts and if I have time the headlight motor mounts as well.

[Skervey]

Im so pumped after seeing this!! I was afraid you had moved past cars or something!

Can't wait to see more!!

[Aethium]

but how do you really feel tyson?

No one cares Neil

[whacka]

I have an 89 fox body and a 92 E32 i would love to 5.0 swap BUT 5.0 SWAP THE WORLD!!!!!!

[DER E30]

Bravo

[SCG Performance]

I call him a good friend

but how do you really feel tyson?

[extra_slick]

just spent half an hour reading through this thread.

twas a half hour well spent.

good build, good sir.

[Teeson1111]

Woooooooooooow, it has been a long time.

Many things have happened since I have last posted, lots of work to my daily, lots of shows and events and lots of ideas and inspiration has been taken in. For all the skimmers and pic people I apologize for the next part becuase its going to be a lot of reading.

I kind of had a fall out with social media and really posting my work/car anywhere on the internet. I don’t really care what people think and I wasn't into hearing opinions of how I should spend my time and money etc. It wasn’t like I had a bunch h8ters telling me things or people knocking me (lol I’m not at all a big deal) but in general I was just the state of the internet and cars. So i didn’t post anything for a while, I just put my head down and got to work. The elephant in the room is why i’ve decided to re-shell instead of fix the old one and keep on drifting. Well, let me explain; I had 3 options well 4 really.



1. Fix the roof, bash it and glue a windshield back in.



2. Cut a roof off a clean shell and weld it in



3. Re shell into a different car without roof/front end damage



4. just quit all together and part it out.



Obviously number 4 wasn’t going to happen. Fixing the roof and having a missile car? no, thats not my thing. I don’t like beaten looking cars and they are often frightful to drive. I will say too that pictures do not do the damage justice. It was much worse once you saw it in person upon close inspection. The cage I believe was largely unaffected, but the front end was ruined, and basically every panel of the body had a dent in it. The more i dug through the chassis the more broken stuff I found. Now i could make the car 100% again, fix every panel and weld on a new roof, but frankly a roof swap is beyond my body work skills. I could learn but i don’t think i would be happy with the final product. I could pay some one to do it, but thats also not really my thing.

I have learned a lot from building the 1st car, and my fab skills and knowledge only continue to progress. I take pride in what I do, I put effort into things no one sees and I don’t take shortcuts very often. Owning a missile car is not something that interests me. There was a decent amount of things I was unhappy with or felt like I rushed on the last chassis (with the intent to go back and re-do). Don’t get me wrong I love drifting and do miss it/have missed it this summer and really want to get back to doing it. But I know I can do better work than I did all that time ago. My driving progressed, and so will my car.

My view on how a car should be built and what I like style wise has changed drastically over the last 3 years. When I built the 1st car I was after a pro-am style race car with license plates. Now Im more about the street style D1-esque cars that drive well but look good doing it. Ive learned that you don’t need a high horsepower light weight fully built car to go out and drive well and have fun. I also have lost basically all interest in other motor sports. AutoX is still appealing but I am building a drift car this time, not a jack of all trades type.

Thats what its about at the end of the day is having fun. Part of my fun having is in building the car, not just driving it. Progressing in my knowledge in building and car setup is fun to me as is getting better as a driver. People have accused me of giving up on learning how to drive and building a car that only looks good but that just ain’t the case. I drove that car as hard as the steering angle, lack of functional e brake and frankly terrible drift spares would let me. My plan for the winter was an angle kit hydro and better wheels, parts of which i had collected.

I also knew full well that I couldn’t afford to drift a car and build a car. I needed a large majority of the parts to mockup and build things as well. While the image the internet paints is that I’m rolling in money when building these cars, thats far from the truth. I find ways to bring costs down where ever possible and take the long road if its cheaper. I also have the gracious help of friends along the way and in turn I try to help them where my skill set is.

Upon much deep reflection I realized a few things regarding the event I crashed at. For starters I need to get better at the head game that is involved, my mental state after 2 days of barely sleeping and long days of driving and such was not a state of focus. Even at other events before it I was pushing myself hard to get every last minute of track time and fatigued myself. Having a lunch break or food break is a great moment to slow down and relax. I get too excited and lose sight of where my limits and the cars limits are. Basically all of the bumps or off’s I had were a result of being too excited and throwing the car in too hard or similar. I need to focus on being a driver and be more responsible about it. I also need to be better at letting the car cool off and not driving it when it’s broken. After day 1 of pumpkin smash I should have taken more time to diagnose the car and perhaps would have found the broken engine ground. Instead I went back out and modified my driving style to suit. While thats great, I didn’t have the skill or the rest of the car functioning as needed to do that. In hindsight sometimes its better to throw in the towel and do better at the next event.



but

Now for the fun part.

Actually wait, theres tradition first



There is much new music to let you all know about but I'm going to start with Nothing But Thieves. Their debut album is amazing through and through save for one or two songs I still haven't grown to like. A few have made it onto a local rock station. Its good modern rock and gets into even a slower Muse like sound.

Before I get into what I've done, let me lay out the goals.

IMG_0631 by Tyson Floris, on Flickr

Thanks to the magic of Stuner I made this I think even before the crash. now obviously that doesn't do it complete justice, and I'm still unsure about a few things but thats the goal.

5.0 is going back in

All the suspension parts I had before Im going to re-use

Still like the 1552 wheels, want to use them again

Going to re-use the pedal set and as many things as I can from the old shell

Cooling system needs to be addressed, not only was it kinda low and in a bad spot it wasn't really keeping up for more than a few laps at a time.

Need angle. bad.

Need e brake that works. bad.

Going to have an interior and a radio and things; think street car with a roll cage instead of full on race car with license plates.

Would like to get away from a stock body look too, time for some broken fibreglass

I wasn't interested in ruining another stock front end, they are hard to fix and I can't fit the things id like in one.

Which brings me to the first thing that I did:

IMG_0563 by Tyson Floris, on Flickr

You'll have to forgive me as my pictures are somewhat incomplete after all this time. I worked a decent amount under time constraints, picture taking and documenting kinda got lost after a bit.

IMG_1109 by Tyson Floris, on Flickr

This time around I wanted to bend my own cage and get fancy. First however I needed to learn how to use the bender and bend some stuff. Did a mock tube front end on the rolled shell, planned to put it to use crash testing an idea me and Neil developed.

Have to take a minute to thank this foo,

IMG_0339 by Tyson Floris, on Flickr

I call him a good friend and I thoroughly enjoyed the month and a bit I spent working long hours on my car next to him doing the cage in his cressida. The shop and bender and many tools are also his. Here he is doing all important helmet clearance testing. No he was not expecting me taking this pic.

IMG_0564 by Tyson Floris, on Flickr

So basically the initial idea was to have a piece that gets crumpled instead of the entire front end. Many people build these elaborate strong tube fronts joined to strong bash bars and instead they transfer the force of a crash to the important part of the car, the area between subframe pick up points. A piece thats easy to replace and cheap and easy to make is most ideal. This way if a small love-tap type crash occurs you can just replace a simple part and zip tie your bumper back together and carry on. It would stop a small crash from ruining your day as did the wall tap I had on day 1 of pumpkin smash.

We needed to figure out what strength material we could use and how fast of an impact it could be effective at. Having a cage shell similar to the one I would later build was quite convenient.

Rx7 crash test from Tyson Floris on Vimeo.

Here is a video I made with all the crash footage we have (hat tip Anthony Bell for use of his iPhone with slo-mo). Its crazy to see the rest of the body ripple and tweak, things you can't see with the naked eye.

We tried using 1/16th aluminium first, though I did not think it through very well and made the crumple zone 5" long.

IMG_0565 by Tyson Floris, on FlickrIMG_0566 by Tyson Floris, on Flickr

Instead of it crumpling it just bent up and out of the way and basically did nothing.

Small think later and I had this:

IMG_0560 by Tyson Floris, on Flickr

As you can see my welds aren't great. but I moved the joining points to the corner where the tubes all meet, the strongest point. The crumple zone is now only 2" long, and the aluminum inside goes all the way in. I also added a few degrees of toe out to help it crumple.

Then when the science testing part was over, my next question was "what happens when you crash really bad?"

So we ran into the wall I think 4 times as fast as we could with the bash bar and crumple zone folded out of the way.

IMG_0561 by Tyson Floris, on FlickrIMG_0562 by Tyson Floris, on Flickr

The inner fenders folded up on themselves twice. The plates I made to attach the lower tube front to taco'd in and distorted everything behind them. Subframe still came out easy however, the FC front subframe is a strong piece. Other than that the tube front was forcing it down the top's were in decent shape. All in all it did far less damage to the rest of the chassis then I had expected.

But once the fun was over, Neil cut the roof off and took the cage out. Plan is to cut it up for internal bracing and other projects.

IMG_0001 by Tyson Floris, on Flickr

This was right before he dropped a supra shell on it and took it off to the recyclers.

So actually some time before that, I had pickup a shell from my buddy Joey and stripped it down to almost nothing.

IMG_0777 by Tyson Floris, on Flickr

IMG_0779 by Tyson Floris, on Flickr

(iphone = potato at night)

Bone stock, 86' or 87' (lol can't remember rn) S4, auto, 1 mismatch wheel, aftermarket stereo was the only thing not oem on it. Front brakes had seized after it sitting for like a month, so getting it on the trailer was not enjoyable.

But it was clean and straight so I take it. Of the 3 Rx7's I've been through to this extent its the cleanest of the three underneath. The paint is horrible and it has rust in 2 of the usuals (rocker/footwell and driver's side rear fender corner) but other than that its good.

Borrowed a set of rears of Neil and went to NissanFest (in a mazda), had a grand time with the boiz. We rented an entire house and spent the weekend not sleeping and watch the the island dudes (Husky Situations) clean up the team tandem competition.

IMG_0013 by Tyson Floris, on Flickr

In among that I bought an angle kit from Villains. Nate's a solid dude, gave me a deal for bringing him 3 sets of FC cores. Got their dual caliper kit as well.

Immediately played with it when I got home

IMG_0062 by Tyson Floris, on Flickr

IMG_0061 by Tyson Floris, on Flickr

There's so much stock stuff in the way, even with a spacer on. They use 40mm ball joint extensions so some fender work is going to have to occur.

Ideally I'd like to do something like this.

IMG_0063 by Tyson Floris, on Flickr

Villains actually buy fibre glass fenders, trim them and rivet them onto metal ones. This way the hood and door lines are still clean and you get a wider fender. I may use 2 metal ones but we'll cross that road later.

IMG_0242 by Tyson Floris, on Flickr

Once removing the wheel from the equation, and using the rack spacers I still had from Abercrombie I could get around 60* of lock out it all. rack still has room for more, this is my issue

IMG_0243 by Tyson Floris, on Flickr

The tie rod hits the control arm. If I can get the wheel to fit then I'll still need some smaller tubular control arms to get more. But if I get even 50* thats plenty.

Got some body kit happening. Many in the PNW will have heard of Rocketz, I am impressed so far with the fit for being rep stuff. It obviously needs some work here and there but its no all warped or completely off.

IMG_1072 by Tyson Floris, on Flickr

IMG_1073 by Tyson Floris, on Flickr

IMG_1074 by Tyson Floris, on Flickr

I couldn't wait to see what it looked like so I taped it onto the daily. A week or so later I mocked it up somewhat properly with the M sports rep bumper I had just received. Many thanks to Anthony Bell and C&S performance for the deal they gave me. If you need parts or anything hit up C&S' website, he was able to drop ship me the bumper and all for a reasonable price.

IMG_1080 by Tyson Floris, on Flickr

IMG_1082 by Tyson Floris, on Flickr

Right before it left I took some time to fab up a new radiator setup that will probably get used in a different car. Will update on that as it happens

IMG_0138 by Tyson Floris, on Flickr






So I dragged the car to Neil's shop to bend up the cage.

IMG_1076 by Tyson Floris, on Flickr\

A bunch of us ordered metal together, we had 700ft of 1.75" .095" wall DOM tube at one point.

Did the tube front on the other car first (kind of out of order here now) and then got started on the new cage.

IMG_0271 by Tyson Floris, on Flickr

As you can kinda see I did the boxes very similar to how they were last time. But with some newly learned tricks from some experienced cage builders I was able to make it much tighter.

IMG_0272 by Tyson Floris, on Flickr

The top too. You'll also notice the sunroof assembly is still in there. The old way I did, while simple and convenient, leaked and actually lifted at speed a bit. So I swapped the working one in there with the seized one in my daily. Then gutted it and made in manual. Still need to be inside the car for it to pop up but no power assembly to break. Cuz it aint ever gonna come out now lol.

IMG_0317 by Tyson Floris, on Flickr

IMG_0318 by Tyson Floris, on Flickr

IMG_0319 by Tyson Floris, on Flickr

After a few attempts to get these how I wanted (about 4 too many) they were looking good.
Not thrilled using up that much material but I wanted it perfect and the silver lining is that all those pieces can be cut up and used for internal bracing later on. I called it the "I don't want to talk about it pile". These door bars are closer than the one ones, they follow the car better. They are also sat at just the right angle so my view is the least amount impaired. Last cage I could see through the gap from the A pillar to the cage from the driver's seat.

IMG_0341 by Tyson Floris, on Flickr

Did some more stuff. Some of the coping I'm most proud of is where the X in the rear meets the transverse bar above my head. Having all the bars merge in one spot is much more difficult and takes more time but looks so much better and is stronger than not.

IMG_0340 by Tyson Floris, on Flickr

Front boxes are similar again, thought a little taller in order to drop the cage for how I did my door bars. Also happy with the solution I found to having the heater core and blower fan remain in place and have a cage fit around them, rule book legal. Tight fit though. I even got the fresh air vent pieces to fit (well hammer tap in lol) behind the front down bars.

IMG_0344 by Tyson Floris, on Flickr

I wanted to do parallel style bars this time. I think they look cool and make getting in and out of the car easy compared to my stupid high X bars last time. I designed them to still allow the carpet and the door scuff plates to fit under them.

IMG_0346 by Tyson Floris, on Flickr

Debated a little on these. There's nothing in the FD rulebook saying I can't do this, even though the proper conventional way is straight vertical. I made to match the angle of the door bar going up the main hoop.

IMG_0503 by Tyson Floris, on Flickr

IMG_0508 by Tyson Floris, on Flickr

Checking driving position often, as well as making the harness bar the right height.

IMG_0511 by Tyson Floris, on Flickr

IMG_0512 by Tyson Floris, on Flickr

While I liked the look of the cross bar I did last time, it killed a lot of head room and frankly just wasn't safe for my taller passengers. So I decided against doing anything up high. Contemplated doing bracing between the main hoop and front down bars but it would have ended up right over my head and then I would have to pad it and it would look dumb.

IMG_0510 by Tyson Floris, on Flickr

For the rear I did a kinda busy setup. Wanted a strut bar but I know better than to run the rear down bars to it. Many people do this and it is 100% wrong and tech should never allow cages like that. It puts the weld in shear under the force of a roll over. So the rear down bars go to the bottom corner of the strut tower, a bar runs between them and then an X above that. I made small pieces to join it all together to the 'frame rails' that run along the rear of an FC. Last time I ran my down bars right to them. They are a strong part of the unibody and I felt tying it all together with the strut tower would make it good and stiff.

IMG_0507 by Tyson Floris, on Flickr

Then borrowed some big boy wheels (just kidding they are Rota's with a crack in them but they were an ideal size 18") to check wheel clearance before doing the forward intrusion bars

IMG_0525 by Tyson Floris, on Flickr

Then out came the engine and subframe, guess whats next

IMG_0529 by Tyson Floris, on Flickr

Here is Kris making engine noises

IMG_0530 by Tyson Floris, on Flickr

FC's have a unique feature in that nothing past the strut towers is actually needed or really structural. S chassis for instance have tension rod mounts that have to stay there and are hard to make in tube. I see people make FC tube fronts but don't cut all this off and I don't understand why not.

IMG_0542 by Tyson Floris, on Flickr

great time to show off that angle

IMG_0546 by Tyson Floris, on Flickr

IMG_0543 by Tyson Floris, on Flickr

IMG_0544 by Tyson Floris, on Flickr

IMG_0545 by Tyson Floris, on Flickr

made boxes for the front lower, after learning what happened in testing to just a plate. Checked wheel clearance again and decided on angling the front lower hoop in a little bit. Triangles are good. Though its only about an 1" taper.

IMG_0548 by Tyson Floris, on Flickr

Then mocked it all up again with the fenders and bumper and decided on a radiator location that will fit, fit my ideal rad fans I haven't bought yet, be safe for it and that works with the rest of the tube front.

IMG_0549 by Tyson Floris, on Flickr

Bought an awesome radiator somewhere along the way too. Core is only 2 inches or so shorter than a fox mustang one, but its dual pass. It looks small because it has tiny little end tanks to fit the VW golf its intended for. But it fits in the space, though I kinda wish it was 2.25" instead of 1.5". Worst case if its not up to the job, I'll get a bigger one. The beauty of the tube front Is that I can make the mounts for the radiator removable and just build new ones as my setup changes.

IMG_0558 by Tyson Floris, on Flickr

Daily driving the same car you're building has its perks, I ran a string in the same location on the daily to make sure I wasn't going to interfere with headlights or anything else.

IMG_0556 by Tyson Floris, on Flickr

When I was all done I had this.

Next thing to do was take it home for welding.

IMG_0577 by Tyson Floris, on Flickr

Since last time me and my dad had bought a decent welder but I am still not good enough to weld a pretty tech inspection passing cage. So Andy came out again and gave me a hand for a few evenings.

IMG_0575 by Tyson Floris, on Flickr

However there is still tough spots to reach, but none like last time.


Just as my skills have improved, so has his. The cage was built much better and I had the order of what to weld much more figured out. It went much smoother than last time and the end result shows. Andy has started a local business doing fabrication mainly on jeeps and off roading type vehicles. If you're a local and interested in having a professional welder do some work for you find him on instagram at @604fabrication. He has even posted a few pics of this cage on it.

IMG_0599 by Tyson Floris, on Flickr

a few evenings and a few Monsters later we were done with this. Now before I rolled it back into its tent to let the bare metal rust I wanted to prime it.

First had to clean it up and put it on stock suspension (don't want no paint on shiny things)

Here is the final product, bare metal

IMG_7287 by Tyson Floris, on Flickr

IMG_7288 by Tyson Floris, on Flickr

IMG_7289 by Tyson Floris, on Flickr

IMG_7290 by Tyson Floris, on Flickr

IMG_7291 by Tyson Floris, on Flickr

IMG_7292 by Tyson Floris, on Flickr

IMG_7294 by Tyson Floris, on Flickr

IMG_7293 by Tyson Floris, on Flickr

Was able to weld the cage to the car in a few areas, goal met.


After I cleaned everything up, I brought it down to my sister who works at what I consider to be one the best paint shops in the area, Candy Autobody. They did a collision repair after a truck tried to grave digger my daily 2 days before FD last year. Funny how things go, she went to school after and got a job a bit later. Her boss allowed us the to use the booth for small fee on a holiday monday.

IMG_7295 by Tyson Floris, on Flickr

IMG_7296 by Tyson Floris, on Flickr

IMG_0632 by Tyson Floris, on Flickr

IMG_0633 by Tyson Floris, on Flickr


Some sanding and spraying later, we had a good layer of epoxy primer on everything that needed it.

Frankly I was great having a professional product that I couldn't do on my own in my garage. I take pride in doing as much of a build myself as I can but there are some things that I'm thankful can count on my friends for. In turn I trade them my skills in areas that theirs aren't. I had a conversation recently with a friend how cars aren't just built by individuals, they are built by a community around an individual. Even comparing ideas and drawing inspiration from your peers is all part of building a car, my car wouldn't be how it is without the people around me.

Now the cage came together in a whirlwind of just over 6 weeks of long days. Straight from work to the shop or garage and work till the absolute latest I could each night (while still being able to wake up for work the next day) to get it done. I'm glad its over but I did enjoy it and would do it again. It was busy but I was still able to have people come hang out and see progress as it happened. But as I type this right now I'm on a small break from working on it, just to recover my breath and make sure my lovely gf doesn't think I'm dead.

IMG_0655 by Tyson Floris, on Flickr

One last pic from FD this year. While I think it was the worst FD I've been to yet, I had the most fun at it of any FD event I've attended. Without getting too into it FD has made some organization changes that I disagree with, I wasn't paying close attention to the event at all but to the people I knew there. The people who I don't see very often but we all congregate to where there is some awesome tire shredding going down with cars we song see very often. Best time I had was spent walking around the pits with some buds ogling race cars. I also got to meet Aaron Parker, who's someone I look up to in the car world. I spent time this spring reading his 250+ page on RX7club and grew to really respect his work and him as a person. Had a good 20 min conversation before he had to get back to working for Mike Whidett. Finally had a chance to say high to Denofa, as he eludes me every year haha.

Next up on my to do list is some rust repair and making the tube front mounts for basically everything. Headlights, fenders, headlight motors, radiator, coolers. Decent amount of work I have ahead of me. The cage isn't 100% finished yet either,

IMG_0554 by Tyson Floris, on Flickr

didn't think I'd be done without some gussets did you?