Daily Drifter/Fun/Track WIP - RX7 FC.

[JONOD]

Love this thing!

[top-cat]

Subbed! Glad to see another FC running miata headlights

[Adamowsky]

Q U I C K U P D A T E
0 7 / 0 7 / 2 0 1 6

Continuing on from the last update, here's some stuff I'v been up to! Let's start off with my mates NA which I did some welding on, followed by respraying the whole quarter panel. Turned out well!



Next on, I swapped cars with my sisters for like 3 weeks! And it just turned out that in that time there was a buxton occuring :nod: Would be a shame not to! haha





The car felt really good comparing to my FC ! Power steering and all, it probably has more torque as well ! lmao. Was also cool to drift the weekend and not have to fill up the tank till a few days later after the event! :



Sometime later, pulled the engine out the FC! Everything's mocked up now and I can refresh the engine a little bit, as well as re do the tubs (bigger) and spray up the bay properly!



Cutting my old tubs out seems a nightmare!



Fast forward a bit more, we had some mad flooding over here where I live! All this water in a matter of like 10 minutes. Happened twice in a matter of a few days... :no:







Next up, I went to pick up my mates new wheels! Work Rezax 1's :thumbs: Their going on that 14a above that you see swimming! Couldnt resist a test fit, even though the car is raised 80mm all round atm it looks evil!



Started a new shopping list too!



Also after fucking up badly on the log manifold, heres a new ting. Mocking up my tubular manifold, wont be equal length. I dont know what Im doing, but it should work!



Just recently, Chris visited manz over the weekend ! Did some tuning to his headlights, turned out rad !



Annnnnnnnnnd just today I collected some of my FC parts my mate Josh collected for me from awesomeboss ! Thx faaaam :smokin: Also big up man like Rob for giving me these wings for free! Highly appreciated.



Also buzzing on full headlights units again! Gonna make these go up and down and all, and then back up. And down. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAND BACK UP :wack:




That's it for now! Till next time, not much is happening atm though as I just started a new full time job and I also need to finish my friends S14! Although once thats out the way I will be on the FC full time till midnight again till its done, just like the time before anglesey matsuri last year. :smokin::thumbs:

[Adamowsky]

So a lot has happened during the past 2 or 3 months, hence why this thread was left and forgotten without an update. But now we can say that the engine swap is "finished", I can chill out for minute & catch up with this little internet diary! haha

So first of all what I'v tried doing is, scrolling back through my phone to the last photo that I posted on here, and seeing what I have done since! Few minutes later I had just over 20 photos gathered together that would show the main progress of what has happened since! So here we go, lets start with some of the engine bay work I have done before the engine went back in.

New tubs have been made, the initial ones were a bad design now that I think about it and to maximise the clearance when going low I literally made the new tubs as high and wide as possible.




Here they are, primered and some what matching tubs haha. At this point the engine bay was ready for a touch of body filler, some carefull sanding and a blast with some paint! This time the choice of paint was candy brown. Didn't want the engine bay to look too shouty! Rather subtle and clean. So here's the out come.



Subframe and such got a bit of a refresh too! It was all making the rest of the engine bay look tatty !



After that, the car went away to Sam at the Charge Garage to get a full custom roll cage fabricated from start to finish. Double door bars, X brace, harness bar, and such!



Just shy of two weeks later the car came back! Couldn't be happier with the cage, just how I wanted it! Tight fitment to the chassis allowing me good headroom! Door bars which allow me to hop in and out the car with ease. So while the whole interior was out, and the windscreen wasn't there.... Did I mention me & dad cracked the windscreen while trying to carefully remove it? haha, was pretty gutted. But somehow managed to source a new one, apparently their really hard to get and this one was the last in the country. So did the man from national windscreens said, nevertheless couldn't be happier to get a new one!





Big thing for me as well was the possibility of fitting most of the standard interior back in with the cage! Sam took that into account and has gave me the tiniest bit of room to squezzeeeee a bit of trim in! Forgot to mention I also have sprayed the full cage hammerite gold ! As what other color goes well against the red? I think its a perfect combination.



Next up, some fab work. Can't remember if I ever mentioned I got a TIG welder on here, but I made a log manifold before and I wasn't really happy with it. Scrapped that and made a new tubular one, here is the final result. Welds are no where near the best! But it works, and that's all I care about for now.





Next up was the downpipe and full exhaust, originally I wanted to make a dual exit exhaust just like I had on the rotary ! But the timescale didn't allow me to play around and making a single exit was just that tiny bit faster!



Note the downpipe was fully tig'd whilst the rest of the system was mig'd. Simply due to the fact that the exhaust system will end up getting rubbed through anyway!



Ebay 255 delivers plenty of juice to my little 1.6 :smokin:



Modified thermostat housing off the MX5 engine, because of the V mount radiator the filler neck on the rad was no longer the highest point of the coolant system. Fabricating this cap onto the thermostat housing allows the bleeding of the system to be nice and easy ! Without air locks could have been a problem. :smash:



Fitment is key



On monday the 26th the car went for mapping! Just two days before heading off to Scotland for STL, was quite nervous, wasn't sure if it'll even work, was doubting my wiring skills more than anything else! After all, it all went smoothly. With the only thing I forgot to do was calibrating the wideband and after once that was done the guys at Blink Motorsport cracked on and mapped the car! We ended up just keeping it at 10psi for now, delivering a nice 266hp at the flywheel.



First outing after mapping, feels so good to drive it again after around 6 months of building! Ride height is disgusting atm, but this is due to the v mount radiator not really being finished yet. Need to modify the rad outlets and possibly move it a bit higher if possible!



Anyway, after getting the car mapped. I had just one day to finish the car and get it ready for the big drive to Driftland on weds evening. Slapped all the panels back on the car, put the interior vaguely back together and tried my best to get the headlights working. For some stupid reason they stopped working during the engine swap... Nevermind, lets fast forward to Driftland. Car felt great! With the only thing that happened was my throttle cable snapping right on the first lap, fixed it back up with more washers and nuts and it was fine for the rest of the day! I'll let pictures do the talking now as I'm getting quite bored of writing this! haha













Sadly though, due to the engine having some sort of breathing issues and such it burnt oil really quickly. And with me being too excited having the whole track to myself on the thursday afternoon I basically was driving non stop for about 25 minutes and on the last lap or so I think I may have possibly starved the engine of oil. Partly my fault... but then again the engine was tired to begin with and if it wasn't it wouldnt burn oil like that. So after all the event was a success and the only loss being the bottom end I can't say I'm even mad! I'm happy that everything else is working on the car and as for the engine, I will strip mine and see if its worth rebuilding or I might just pick up another £150 replacement and throw it in over the weekend! Next up on the cards is some suspension work and paint, ready for Matsuri at Anglesey in just 27 days :













Thanks a lot for reading all this if you have made it this far ! And I shall have more updates soon

[DukeNukeEm']

This thing has really come a long way.. Keep it up man i'm excited to see whats next!

[I_Haz.:R32]

First things first, I gotta say I love this build! Now I have some questions, as I've recently acquired a tired FC for 800 dollars... What size are those Super Advans? 17's or 18's? And roughly what is your effective offset w/ spacers? Second question is, would you be willing to post me one of your StyleCase stickers??

Cheers man! Looking forward to seeing more of your work.

[Randomofodication]

Fack this is cool! Steering wheel and shifter came out great with that stain. In for more!

[leaferiksin]

This thing is sweet, its really making me want an rx7... bad...

[Mystic]

Why am i not subscribed to this thread? Looks like an awesome little toy