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Now I just need to get insurance, title and registration.

Just found a good right hand tail light lens at mooneyes japan, so I bought it and I'll be bringing it home with me.

Wheels have been making progress, painters has sorted the centers in a custom mix gunmetal with silver on the inner barrels, & RKM sorted polishing the outer lips looking sharp now, just gotta finish polishing bolts to assemble them

I blew all my fancy ECU money on mags and shiny intakes because I'm sixteen

With all of that securely welded in place, the rear chassis members could be removed, making space for the rear wheels and tyres: Which will, IMHO, look the nuts! The original arch lips had been cut out by a previous owner, so those nice, stretched wheelarch panels are actually front fenders fron an AU Falcon!

Then with holes cut in the correct places (some of them anyway!) the new chassis was welded to the rear panel, the end of the front chassis, and the seat crossmembers: and, of course, the rollcage which meets the chassis where the rear shock absorber crossmember will be:

The Virm has actually been updated recently and made it illegal for Yellow Rx7s to have oem turbos. So only way you will get a wof is if you fit a single BorgWarner 300sxe.

With most of the chassis work in and welded, I called on LightWork to remove the rust from the rear end with their trusty laser device. Great job, with only minimal mess. Far quicker and less-messy than having it blasted, and certainly no more expensive. Although you can't really see it in any of the pictures, this is the crossmember that mounts the top suspension link. It's mounted to the front of the chassis, and the two holes in it bolt up to the original fuel tank front mounts. The aluminium bosses were holding the mount brackets straight whilst it was welded.

Excellent, that was pretty quick shipping. Hopefully the legal side is easy - in my experience 20+ years ago it was a piece of piss. Also

I started playing with the lightning spaghetti, I hate it. I despise electrical work. so I gave up for now. but today I had some alloy sheet laying round so decided to make a rear cab panel so that it’s flat and can be easily upholstered. I will also mount the fuse panel and other electrical bs on this behind the passengers seat. then I made a face plate for the dash cluster to bond to the original. This will allow for the triple 2” gauges to fit better than hot glue and mangled plastic. this will only be a temporary solution as I’ll probably change the dash set up later on once it’s in the road. now I’ve been having all the drama trying to find someone to paint it and some minor finishing (one body line needs a bit of fine tuning and a couple of gaps sorted.).

Fiat chat needs @azzurro he is god

Guide coat primer like the rotary gods always intended

5 LITER VEE EIGHT, THATS A GODDAMM THREE OH FIVE CHEVY ENGINE, THE ENGLISH COPIED IT FROM CHEVY AND MADE ONE THEMSELVES

Can confirm Link and big single turbo are an excellent choice, do try it.

Wow JDM RHD!

I can go one better and get a full 3D scan of the ports (we're scanning it soon to play with inlet manifold designs). We'll see how deep the Peel can scan....

At next car show, in thick southern accent.. "awwwwww, that's sooo cute. It's a baby wagon. Wadda think it is Merv?" "I think it's a Chevette. Now look.. There's a sticker saying OSNZ. Hmmmm? New Zealand maybe? That's part of England right? Up near France"

Have tuned a couple of fd's with power fc, both had single turbo swaps. one had a stock engine with a pulsar 6262 (g35) the other one had an older gt series of similar size with with a rebuilt engine with some mild porting. both made low to mid 200kw at wheels on low boost. the one with the pulsar turbo was more responsive and came on bit sooner. but both had a stack of midrange and good off the bottom, nice to drive for street cars Anyway, power fc is getting pretty old tech now and fairly basic. but for something like above they are fine. anymore power i would look at something newer like a link. as they arent amazing with bigger injectors, have to fudge the deadtimes and stuff to tune the low load and idle stuff and you are putting your trust in some old electronics, The idle control has a mind of its own also. Need a datalog it or similar to tune them properly, hand controller is just for small adjustments and a pitta to tune with. I would avoid a microtech also, cant say ive tuned one myself but have heard stories from other tuners and are old tech now also I dont think the air pump would effect anything tune wise Edit; Also if you wanted me to tune it. you'd have to deal with me moaning about the power fc and to buy a link

If you are going to keep the car for any period of time, ditch the apexi. they are at best just a piggyback and as KPR said, you have to know what you are doing with them otherwise you're gunna have a bad time and generally not a cheap one grab a plug n play link, ( if you go this route, ensure you rewire the fuel pump wiring from factory as this is a known issue - actually just put it on your list to do for decent insurance anyway ). or a microtech and do the job properly.

Successfully failed WOF because i had a fricken Turbo still fitted..... long story short aliexpress VBands were random diameter so didn't fit manifold or turbo so that sucks. Wof guy happy to see as is no issues with my work just wants some extra heat wrap on crossover pipe and obviously turbo and intercooler absent from engine bay for recheck. Might go buy some Moreys to help nurse through to drag day.

It did get here pretty quick but it was a LOT of fucking around and even more $$$$ Fingers crossed the legal side is easier. Will worry about that in a week or two once I have some more shit sorted.

be careful if has a power fc ecu. (every 2nd fd seems to have one) most of them seem to be running around on the base map which runs them ok. but said base map has super aggressive ignition map that is a bad day on our crappy pump gas.

From my experience with rear over fenders if it looks good leave it alone. The shitty jobs I’ve seen here and from Japan are shocking and If it’s really wide it will need new inner and outer guards. I imported a ex show car from a big rx7 company and the rear guards had been cut every 3 cm around the wheel opening and folded up and rivited to the gaurd. Then had fiberglass poured in to fill holes

The Berlinas weren't transaxle. You can definitely marry them up to a Lada Niva box too

How can a man own the most cherished sports car, without first owning the least cherished sports car? Be the Alpha and the Omega, tomble-san [TAOIST NOISES INTENSIFY]

Right, made a start on the resurrection of this crustacean. Moved lots of shit so I could get it out of the shed. Shes a bit dusty/*BARN FIND JOKE* It still thinks it was made in England unfortunately. I decided to remove the race harness as I doubt I'll use it anytime soon, and some inspectors don't like it in there at WOF time, and this is when I discovered another weeee job that needs doing. The right rear seat mount (on the drivers seat) is not happy, and the seat rail is also not impressed. This was starting to happen 11 years ago when I was putting the car back together, so welded up the cracks and added a big washer to disperse the load. After pulling the seat out, I now know its much worse than before. Now before you point fingers and exclaim "what a fat cunt" i'd just like to point out that I'm not just a fat cunt, but also a 6'4" tall fat cunt, so I have to have the seat full back, and when its full back, the rear mounts are near on half way along the seat. So the majority of my fat cuntness is right on top of or behind the mount, less than ideal. Finger indicating location of rear mount. Not much I can do about this, other than make a beefy replacement mount, and reinforce the rail I guess. The other mounts are all fine. Anyways, got the old girl going (started perfectly) but the gas is very off, so will drain that and replenish. Gave it a good wash, which reminded me of all its other haggardness, but meh, just needs a WOF, not trying to win no sho'n'shine. Removed everything needed to start cutting the windscreen out, most of it came out OK, but the top window trim was a COMPLETE BASTARD to get off, due to me gluing it on with a litre of window sealant years ago after it blew off. Got my first peeks at the rust. Started on the cut out procedure, haven't cut a screen out for like 20+ years, but I managed to do it myself without rooting anything. Don't ask where the cutting wire came from. Check out my pro cutting handles though. Screen gone-burgers. Little rusty bitches. Two main spots, and lots of little bits around the place, next I'll get the buff cup out and go to town, trying not to destroy any interior. Regards, V "I regret not selling this at the hight of retarded covid pricing" G.

I can't quite remember the exact moment that I suddenly became aware that I needed an FD RX7, but it became a full blown itch over the next few weeks, checking trademe and FB marketplace pretty much daily - but also noting that the price of these cars was starting to tick down, and a lot of stuff wasn't selling. So the third time the price dropped on this one particular machine that was already in the cheaper category happened to coincide with half a dozen beers in my gut and before I knew it, I was the proud owner of a 1997 FD3S so it arrived on the back of a truck, which I am told is how these vehicles generally prefer to travel from A to B It was a quiet day so I anticipated this wonderful opportunity to dig around the thing and see where and how I'd been hoodwinked, but instead the towie turned up at exactly closing time so all I could do was roll it into the shop and bugger off for the weekend.

Hopefully rockauto stocks up on fuel flaps

I am swayed more to the chocolate brown.

On my second post I mentioned that the car had been 'back-halved'. Here is the full process: I bought the back half chassis second-hand (I don't know what it was in originally), separated the side members from the crossmembers and re-welded it the correct width to coincide with the front 'chassis' of the TR7. Then cut out all of the rear boot floor, but leaving the original chassis to hold everything square:

I say go link. And a massive single turbo. No regrets.

I've considered buying some new aftermarket axles which are stated to be chromoly. For some reason, Howat was hesitant that they actually would be and reckoned it wasn't worth spending $400 each on them when you could get OEM 2nd hand for like $150.

Not completely set on them. I wanted to get it set for 19s so I have that option. would need to find a perfect 15 now that it’s all 5 stud. I do like that the 15s drops its nuts into the weeds

I got a message from the guy I co-drive for, I’m gonna drop it off to him in ngatea. completely forgot he has a panel shop. better done by someone you know

huh, somehow I completely missed that Zac had an FD... I thought he had an FC at one stage? Geez even tomble mentioned it a few posts back, whoops anyway looks like he's done all the hard work for me. going to have a read now. Zac and I are starion folk rather than regular folk, so it stands to reason that we both want to keep the twin turbos for the sake of absurdity. my ambitions are somewhat more humble however due to ability/tooling/sobriety shortcomings as for the rat's nest, the hoses have been replaced somewhat recently by the looks of it so someone's already done the hard work

Lol I assume you have looked through @ProZac's thread.

The kit is sweet dude I mean I'm big on bringing back 2000s sex spec auto salon, so that might not appeal to the average guy on the street, but they are idiots

Right, double-checked all the data for accuracy, plus added in as many more as I can be bothered with on the FIA site. Up to 116 multivalve engines which is a respectable(ish) number. Only done the valve size chart so far, because if you want to know what true MS Excel pain feels like you're free to try getting all the data labels legible on a graph like this: Some interesting things that struck me, mainly at the lower end of the chart. I know Saab B204s are capable of well over 200hp/l without changing the valves (1hp/cc!), despite the fact that they look woefully undersized (especially on the 2.3l). Maserati valves do look very small like we expected, but maybe that's not so much of an impediment if you can just ram boost into them. Also, TU5J4s are also capable of well over 100hp/l (as is the FJ24 240RS), again despite what look like relatively small valves. I suppose we could conclude that anything that's not at the complete extremes should work well enough, and even extremely small valves are secondary to other concerns in boosted engines (possibly provided the heads flow well despite the valves). Very few, if any, of these engines are 'poor performing'. I haven't done a 2v chart yet, so it could well be that '99% of multivalve engines have enough valve area to make power' might be a better conclusion (though the Maseratis and Saabs are getting there at bigger displacements). Oh, and to keep this on topic for a 4GR. Still looks like you won't be wanting for valve area for revs. Ports next. Wish me luck...

That family of twin cams have been used with conventional clutch and boxes. Google is your friend. Alfetta is the only transaxle application afaik.

Bigport 4age is kinda fake news like romans 3s example. The port entry is bigger, but goes down to a smaller size at the port divider than smallport 4age. So really the smallport is the bigport head, Smallport (the real bigport) head makes more top end than a bigport and less off the bottom. but a lot of it is is also in the inlet manifold. My turd engine was bigport vvti and made more midrange than any other na 4age ive seen making the same peak numbers, but invalid because above. If it were a smallport head it would do the same because vvti is the cheat code. but still doesn't cover up all the sins of a bad setup. if you were to add lift (2zz / k2*) along with that vvti you cover up more sins again. From my testing the port entry is kinda blah, doesn't matter long as its not too small. But if its way oversized like one of the tvis engines. making a manifold that suits the entry size is also not the move, especially if you are going to end up with a reverse taper. further down the port towards the valves is where its important

Last day TOMORROW to order personalised plates in black with silver. police and traffic cameras find it hard to detect the details on occasions therefore they care stopping orders as of tomorrow. SOLD. $649 for 3 number 3 letter combination…. I can’t believe it was available 351C XY Fill ya boots - $199 to remake any personalised plate to black silver if some before 31/11/24.

new mods get checked to the rules of now old mods get a quick check to make sure they are safe and were done correctly the first time

Just for reference, so you can see how much cabin space the motor took up facing the correct way. The seat needs to cover the motor, and it just wouldn't work. Plus exhaust etc etc... So definitely going to run things backwards to solve these issues.

that didn't take long. its been a minute since i done an update, so lets unload whats been going on in classic motorcycle world. got a family photo like my dad did years ago. went for a few rides between and then it was time to do cold kiwi. all packed up headed down with @flyingbrick @MostlySuzukis and a mate called pete. myself and marnix cheated a bit and had our gear and tent taken down to ohakuni the week before hand, but set up camp went for a ride around the local region went up the mountain with a couple of the guys we were camping with had word there was a storm coming with some crazy high winds so we tied the tent to the bikes. probably should have tied my bike to the other side as i woke up to the tent inside out and on me at 230am and woke marnix who was on the other side of the tent. the got winds of 100kph and other bikes fell over during the night. cc in @flyingbrick we packed up and headed home after the miserable night and stopped off on our way home at some spots and made it home to a happy daughter a good clean later spotless and lubed chain we are up and riding again. this time to the Hamilton motorcycle club night not long after that i decided id ride it to work, fouled a plug and got pissed off so changed out all four plugs. while doing that (during work hours) i left a lead off and thought the bike was completely fucked. i was pissed off to say the less during the time that i thought it was fucked. some more riding, this time to kawhia. another month passed now and club night was on again, quick ride out to raglan before hand during these last couple of rides the clutch was slipping at say 140kph and 160kph really bad. so i got some new clutches which i found locally and this was my next task. a few free minutes and a daughter wanting to work on grandad garys motorbike we were all go. oil all drained and wiggles magic wand to help i don't know what i'm doing at this stage, but i'm following my noes quick count up looks about right. clutches now soaking in new oil and time to put it all back together borrowed a torque wrench from a mate and made sure i didn't over torque these clutch bolts back together with a half fearing cause @flyingbrick is a sicko and really likes it like this quick ride to raglan to test the new clutches patted a random dog while i was pondering life but when i got home, i checked the oil and after a couple of rides this bike was still burning oil like no tomorrow. so time has come and the valve stem seals are now to be done on the trailer and off to dads best friends house who has kindly offered to help out and has some really good knowledge of motors and engineering we got into it and stripped the rest down till we came across needing a few different modifed tools. so we stopped, malcolm modified some tools and we caught up today to carry on. but during that time i put on my big boy pants and sat my full license for my motorcycle. took my small honda monkey over to Revs motorcycle center in paeroa went for a bit of a hoon while i was over there and yes i passed my full license but back to today. Malcolm made this handy air compression thing to full the combustion chamber up with air and hold the valves up while we took the springs off to reach the valve stem seals it was originally a spark plug of mine. he also had to modify his tool to press down the springs cams off and into it (well went over timing and a few other things) here we can see his tool that has been modified over the years watch the next video with volume off or down, the air compressor was still getting up to psi. and check out how toast this were. we were on a roll! had a good rhythm going and got them all done. cams back into place and started to put all the bolts back in that held the cam in place. when out of nowhere, one decided to snap under no tension at all. putting a end to the day pretty fast! i can get new bolts which is alright. ill try locally and see if i can get them fast. but for some weird reason we were missing a couple of dowels too. so ill get a couple of them and we should be good to go again. been that dad modified this bike and mucked around with it heaps back in the day, these bolts are a bit rough and i can understand them been fatigued just look at the top of the bolt. anyway, that's us up to date now here is a photo of when malcolms 38 ford was in nz hot rod magazine back in may 1992 with his supercharged 327 small block chev bored to a 331 in it. and a small glimpse into his shed for max barrie points

Yes, but the CCM says that Rotarys are only allowed to use missile switches for everything and the switch panel has to be covered in camo material.

now the bodykit, I can kinda live without. Initially I went looking for a very stock machine but fate would have it (and not for the first time) I ended up with something very much the opposite. It does look like it'll unpick easily enough if the day comes, although that would mean buying stock guards and a stock bumper and most parts aren't cheap. So I'll stick with the kit for now, the downside of this is that I'm limited to exactly bugger all wheels that will fit. As mentioned it came on Enkei 3 piece wheels which sounds nice, but they don't fill the guards, and sit way too far in (even with the 20mm spacers there's extreme wheel rub if you even think about steering. I thought about changing the lips, I thought about changing the barrels, I thought about how that would mean spending 5k just to end up with some beaten to shit centres just to keep the wheel snobs happy. So I cheaped out and got some 9" -20 Rota RKR's because they're pretty much the only thing that would actually fit, straight off the shelf. Realized what I needed on Friday, found some for sale on Saturday in Cambridge, @RXFORD was coming through on Sunday, they were in Auckland Sunday night, and one of my customers was driving a truck straight past on the way to Whangarei the next day, the system works! (compared to the time I tried to bring a starion engine up from CHCH, which wore out it's welcome with about three different OS members, and THREE YEARS LATER, having never actually arrived here, was sold sight unseen) Despite being only an inch smaller they seem absolutely tiny, it's taken some getting used to. But I can turn corners now. Oh but the previous owner had wandered off with the lock nut key. He sent it up to me but it was too late, I'd already created this piece of art what is it? it's a small piece of pipe with five castellations cut into it, hammered into a slightly larger piece of pipe, and welded up with great enthusiasm and little ability. but it did the job! oh and with a socket welded crookedly on the end because I still had half a rod left and by god I was going to use it

Then I hit the first major red flag - I'd been expecting an "ohh, THAT'S why it was cheap!" moment, and perhaps here it was: Excuse me what the fuck is going on down here? I do not appreciate busted wires and shit. At first I thought a rat might've gotten into the engine bay and chewed through the loom, but I found the rest of the wiring wrapped around the crank pulley shit, I hope it isn't anything importa-aaaand it's the oil metering pump so just to tell you guys how to suck eggs, that's the pump that feeds a wee bit of oil into the chambers to lubricate the seals. Now I did a bit of reading and discovered that the pump on the FD is a stepper motor controlled one, so presumably that means when the wiring got torn out of it, it just failed at whatever flow rate it was allowing at the time, as opposed to stopping working altogether. Hopefully that position was full tit max flow. SO, how long had the pump been fucked? Normally this would throw a fault code, but this thing has an aftermarket ECU so no dice I very politely contacted the previous owner and he said that he'd never seen the busted wires, and frankly knew nothing about it. One interesting tidbit was that he said he had had some boosting problems with the (notoriously finicky) sequential controls on the turbo, had replaced a solenoid, but the problem had come back shortly afterwards, and that that was when he decided to sell the car. Why is this topical? Because when the metering pump loom was torn to bits, it pulled a hose off the vacuum chamber for one of the solenoids! So there's every chance that this occurred pretty much the last time this car was driven. Needless to say it's on premix now.

So the car is from the other end of the country, I did zero due diligence other than a quick carjam to make sure it actually existed, asked a few questions, got a few replies, pulled the trigger so first impressions; the exterior has definitely seen better days, the kit is cracked in multiple places, the paint is faded / blistered especially around the engine bay, the spoiler is gone (by request of the previous owner who wanted to keep it, no argument from me) leaving mount stubs all over the boot, the wheels are just there to get it rolling, the offset is totally wrong, they rub everywhere and have been kerbed with incredible thoroughness Comparatively, the interior (which wasn't mentioned at all in the ad and I only got a few grainy photos of) is much nicer than I expected. It has a half cage which I originally planned to ditch on day one but honestly the back seats are completely worthless. The seats are factory, it's got a few extra bits and pieces inside and some carpet missing which I'll hunt around the internet for The engine bay is a bit sad. First up: wedding night surprise, she's not a natural yellow. bit of a bummer but oh well. Still on the factory turbos which is a nice indicator that perhaps it hasn't had too much of an ass-kicking in it's life. Rusty water everywhere which set a few alarm bells ringing. airbox is gone and all that's left is ugly stock induction pipes flapping in the breeze and some chafed through pod filters So I cleaned everything off and spent a few dollars on things shiny and frivolous The stock air pump was sitting there but was unplugged, not sure if the ECU had been tuned for it or not, the previous owner had done some work recently (more on that in a minute), maybe he had left it unplugged by mistake? I got rid of it anyway as I really just wanted to get in and tidy everything up. Pic 75% complete as I had to block up the air pump inlets on the induction and fit a new alternator/water pump pulley and belt with the air pump gone. Tightest alternator pulley nut ever, holy shit

My grandads wheelbarrow. Was a man that did everything by hand on a hilly property with the wheelbarrow. Had mixed up many cubes of concrete until he got too soft at 87 then he brought a concrete mixer. Was a little worse for wear and tyre was toast so disassembled for a blast and paint down the line, factory colour tub and frame in chassis black. Spent $10 more then a garbage tyre from M10 on a 3.00x8 Shinko scooter tyre, was a bitch to get on but now have a tyre even when flat that has a stiff enough carcass to be pushed around. Good for 100kg at over 80kph so good enough for home. Button head stainless cap screws because im shallow and like stuff like that Is going down to my sister in Gisborne so good to see it get another life.

definitely nailed the Jun bonnet, still can't find a Mazdaspeed kit that looks like it. there's a "15 year anniversary kit" that has some design similarities like a cutout around the fuel filler, like it might have been done by the same guys? Not ruling out it's a mishmash of different kits, but I still haven't seen that exact filler cutout or that exact "stepside" front fender on any of the gazillion bodykitted rx7s google could muster up gawd there's a lot of absolutely horrid kits for these cars out there. judge mine how you will, I'd say I got off lightly