Zac's rotary redux project, because he has too much spare time.

[ProZac]

Oooooof, very cool. Looks like a bit too big of a diameter on the shaft though (lol), really stressing that plastic?

[Dell'orto]

The torch section is a bunch bigger than the factory flare, so I think it's pushing it outward a bit? I did move it for the pic though so could just be that. 

I do have an OE flare if you're feeling brave! 

[ProZac]

Hah, haaaard pass on an old actual flare, can see a smoky ending there! But, a USB re-chargable torch that doubled as a powerbank, in flare formfactor.... that would be the tits.

[ProZac]

Months go past, and alas little work done on this thing... Lots of family visiting, really busy with work, usual life stuff, you know the drill I'm sure. I have been tinkering away a little though.

I've built the starting and charging harness, the two times I've ordered the correct pins for larger contacts in the two grey connectors by the strut tower they haven't shown up, so I gave up and have swapped them to a DTM12 and DTP4. I moved some stuff around a bit so the connectors for the aircon clutch, power steering pressure sensor and oil level switch are now in the main engine harness, so the starting and charging harness interfaces with this by a single DTM6, keeps things a bit cleaner. Now, the main engine harness... I've done a heap of work on this, but there is still a bit to go. It's designed to work with a factory ECU, a power FC, or the link fury I have. Its future proofed for modifications like another turbo control system and e-throttle. Its made out of the good stuff, M22759/32 wire, twisted, DR25 sheathed, etc. I don't want to have to build another one!

After some basic measuring and figuring of branch point locations, I put the core together, this is the shielded wiring for the engine position sensors, knock sensor, gearbox output speed sensor and O2 sensor, aswell as a couple of unshielded twisted pair runs for CAN.

Many hours of work later, and another three layers of 22AWG:

This is the run from the interior breakout by the ECU, through the firewall, to a branch just by the oil filter pedestal, where the UIM interface connector will be, the gearbox wiring, oil pressure and water temp gauge wiring, as well as an aftermarket combined oil pressure and temp sensor.

After sheathing this section in DR25, I fabric tap wrapped the breakouts at the ECU end. Fabric tape is awesome in interior sections, as it stops rattles :-). I printed a mid-shell to house the splices and wire turn-arounds, keeping them protected, and making the transition between the DR25 and the fabric wrapped breakouts nice and tidy. No need to boot and pot this interior stuff.

Can see the Link ECU mount all finished and wired up there too. There was a bit of test fitting along the way, but got it fully plugged in with the OEM trim and cable protector this morning for the first time.

Hmmm, satisfying.

And then hide it all away!

I still have all the engine bay side to do, organising the other three branch points, sheathing the main runs, putting the boots in place, sheathing the branches terming and then potting it all up... You know, not much work at all! Total overkill for a mildly modified street car, but its work I'm familiar with and enjoy, and I've never actually built a ham-spec harness for one of my own projects before, so it'll be nice to have one. Most of the materials are left-over from projects over the last few years, so its not been a massive financial burden... time wise though? yikes.

For the aftermarket oil pressure and temp sensor, I drilled and tapped the banjo bolt that connects the oil coolers to the filter pedestal. This should work well, and means I don't need to buy an aftermarket pedestal or anything, but it does put the connector for the sensor annoyingly close to the heater pip in that area. Clears, but not by as much as I'd like.

Tapped it to 1/8NPT, and used a M10x1 adaptor with the correct seat for the sensor. About as compact as I could get it. Even did it on a lathe so its nice and straight :-).

When building the starting and charging harness I made up some ignition leads as well

They're tight to the oil filler neck, but everything clears and they're a bit tidier than then OEM ones. Separators are printed in PETG, will see how they hold up.

Might have it running by Christmas? Yeah, nah, probably not, but no rush eh? :-).

[yoeddynz]

Cough cough @ProZac don't be shy 

[tomble]

Maybe he meant this christmas?

[ProZac]

Its been a... year. And I mean that it is both surprising that a whole year has passed, but also not, because it passed in the blink of an eye, because it was a _year_. Lots of things non car-related happened, less things car related happened. I still tinkered in the garage though, as it was excellent therapy time :-). No, it still doesn't run. No its not any closer. Yes, I worked on things that get it no closer to running and driving. Yes, I enjoyed it. No, I don't have a timeframe, not what its about :-).

 

Some highlights:

I took the boot lid off because I couldn't get up in there to clean with it on. Overspray all over the wiring boots, grimy, all caked up with the clearcoat, some surface rust here and there, nothing that some scotchbright and etch primer wouldn't fix.

Back to back I think the contrast is quite satisfying... Yes, I painted the jam. Removed the rubber boots / washer hose and vaporblasted all the overspray off them, they look brand new now :-). Have cut some rubber gaskets to go around the hatch hinge studs to do the job of the seam sealer that was used from factory. It's not like I'll be driving the thing in the rain much.

Process photos:

Cleaned the jam thoroughly, then roughed up with grey scotchbright. Sprayed etch primer on the parts that were missing paint up under the top of the hatch.

Ordered some 2k paint from a place in NZ. They pre-mix a slow hardener in, put it in a spray can and courier it. Has about a week of pot-life apparently. Worked excellently, no reactions, good coverage.

Did 3 coats, then sprayed some into the lid to go around and do touch-ups on various chips and stuff. I'll end up doing all the jams, and probably the bay like this myself, then one day It'll get a door shut respray by someone a little more into body work than I. Made it look a heap tidier in the mean time.

Back into the interior, the rear-view mirror was all delaminating / corroding around the edge like they do. As this is a super early car it has the early style mirror... I didn't realise there were different types when I bought a new replacement mirror from Mazda.... Well... I figured I should swap to the newer style, as if I ever need a replacement windscreen they are way, way more common. This meant I had to remove the mirror mount that was glued to the screen... This puppy:

I popped a couple of screws in there to give me something to grab, but it was on there solid (which is a good thing). I read about removing them, and it seems that heat is the key. I went gently gently with the heatgun... heating from the outside.... This was wrong and got me nowhere. After turning my heatgun from 'kitten breath' to 'dragon flame' (the only two settings is has), I heated the ever loving crap out of it from the inside... I mean got it properly hot... I gave it a tweak with the pliers and it fell right off, into the wet rag I had right below it... where it sizzled and steamed. I read horror stories of people dropping them, where they then melted the dash and carpet.... No thanks.

I got most of the residue glue off with solvents and careful scraping. Its some sort of bonded on ceramic pad on the windscreen I'm pretty sure, I was scared I'd scratch it and you'd be able to see the scratch from the outside. No chance of that, the black portion is very, very hard.

Have got the later style button and the correct Loctite adhesive to bond it on, but haven't done it yet as I need to come up with a plan to get it perfectly in the right place, or it'll drive me nuts every time I look at it.

During my experiments with powering up the electronics in the car, I played with the HVAC system a bit. It all seemed to work as it should, but it was kind of noisy, and the blower motor sounded terrible.. I'm sure you can see where this is going.. Rejuvenation time!

Turns out you can remove the A/C evaporator and blower motor without pulling the dash, its not even that hard... but the distribution / mixer / heatercore box is right in the middle... So I pulled the dash. I was expecting a headache, but genuinely the easiest dash I've pulled out of any car, was pleasantly surprised! I'm super lucky that the dash in this car is in very good condition (see the original interior photo, its the only part that IS), so its stored safely inside on the spare bed :-). Will need one repair to a plastic mount where the glovebox screws in, but basically all FD dashes are broken there. Will glue the cracked bit up, and come up with some sort of 3d-printed reinforcement I reckon, to stop it happening again.

Pulled this completely apart.. The DC motors that drive the blowers are pretty grunty.. The original one from the car was particularly nasty too. Brushes still looked okay, but the casing was a bit corroded, and it was packed full of leaves, dust, feathers, grime, your mothers underwear, shells, nuts... everything. I had a spare blower motor, so yanked the motor from that as it was a much cleaner unit. Still pulled it apart, tickled up the commutator and brushes, re-lubed everything... the usual. The plastic impeller and casings all got a low pressure vaporblast to bring them back to new. Took the recirculation door actuator apart, cleaned tested and re-lubed as well, tested the relay... all the things. Should be good to go :-).

Gave the distribution box the same treatment. Although I cleaned this one in the sink, as the foam was actually still in really good condition so I didn't want to blast it off.

The heater core pipes were in a really sorry state though. So pitted. Removed all the corrosion, made sure they were still nice and strong, blasted and had them plated. Reinstalled with new o-rings. Hope like hell they don't leak at the interface to the core, as that's a dash-out job to fix, but I reckon they'll be alright :-).

Dummy fitted this with the pipes loose so I could adjust them to be right in the middle of the holes in the firewall, have new pass through grommets on the way from Amayama.

[ProZac]

I will absolutely have AC in this car. As its an early one, it was fitted with an R12 system. I luckily managed to get most of an R134a system out of a later car a couple of years back, so gave all that a thorough tickle up. Looks to me like the actual evaporator cores are the same, just the expansion valve and its temperature probe are different. This R134a system is a 'Denso' style one, and has the metric threads on the attachment ports. I did a heap of research when I was playing with it as I'll have to buy fitting and make lines... Most of which I've forgotten now, but I don't remember it being complicated, so I'm sure I'll be able to figure it out again ;-). Have the R134a  compressor too. Will roll and aftermarket condenser and dryer.

replaced the seals with some 12x9mm adhesive foam tape from para rubber, seems like it'll work well. I tried 12x6mm initially, but it wasn't thick enough. This compressed just a little as I tightened the unit down.

All back in place and looking nice and fresh. Smelling much better too :-).

Now for some truely barry-spec shit:

I'm not some kind of audiophile, but I did work at Repco for 10 years, so I'm good with cars, you know, doof doof?

Speakers. The factory ones were shagged, and as I want to get the doors back together SOMETIME they need to be replaced which they're apart. I figured some nice alpine components would be the go, because a: Alpine is an excellent brand, and b: They were on spesh. I figured the little triangle on the front doors at the base of the A-pillar would be a damn fine spot for the tweeters... so went full ham and overcomplicated things.

Took a quick and dirty 3d scan of one of the trims, used it as a guide to model the surface (its annoyingly compound in 2 directions). Then played around the in car and figured out how to angle the tweeter.. put it in the model where it needed to be, and generated a mount to keep it there. Used the modelled surface to trim the back side to its a good match, put in some fastening and retaining details, and 3d-printed. This was actually a ball ache, and there were a few iterations... But, this is the shit I love, so I had a good time doing it.

Once that was done I figured getting the 6.5" drivers into the stock speaker locations would be a piece of cake, as its a round speaker into a round hole, and there is always a couple of cm of clearance here and there to play with... Nope! I mean, it wasn't *that* bad, but there is less and a mm of clearance at the back to the glass when the window is down, and the grill in the front when the door car is in place.. so still a bit of a ballache. 3d printed some adaptors, the two major circles of which are NOT concentric, because of those clearance issues. This got them nicely in place. The crossover is mounted to the back of the original speaker housing, as well as a DTM 2-pin the tweeter plugs in through, so all the original wiring can be retained, don't need to run anything extra out to the doors.

Quite a bit of work for a stereo that will probably never get used for anything except phone calls.

And, final little useless detail that I snapped a photo of... I was missing the floor mat retainer, and I didn't really like the original design. So, sheet metal CAD, water jet some 1.5mm stainless, bend, vaporblast, and voila:

No, I don't want to cut the little flap of carpet off. Can't see it once the seat is in there :-).

Should really finish off that engine bay harness! Yeah. Nah, Maybe. Having fun though :-).

[yoeddynz]

So happy to see some updates with the as usual awesome zac levels of attention to detail.  I'm still insanely jealous of your fd - I'd happily have one just to look at and sit in even if I couldn't afford to run it. Hence I'd be going over board to make it nice too. 

[ProZac]

4 hours ago, yoeddynz said:

So happy to see some updates with the as usual awesome zac levels of attention to detail.  I'm still insanely jealous of your fd - I'd happily have one just to look at and sit in even if I couldn't afford to run it. Hence I'd be going over board to make it nice too. 

That is 100% what its for :-). Although, Lily has extracted promises of her driving it when she's old enough... So maybe I do have some sort of timelime... Still, that's at least 9 years away ;-). I'm insanely jealous of your workshop, it just looks like the most inviting place to tinker for hours on end. We're working on house renovation plans, and pasrt of them includes expansions to my workshop facilities. Nothing major, more a rearrangement, but I'm really really looking forward to turning it into a really nice space.

[yoeddynz]

Extend the living room and move the fd into there. It's clean enough and will create an interesting talking point.