1993 RX-7 R1 owner in Hawaii

[MrWendell]

Hi I'm Wendell. Joined in 2009 and....first post in 2015. Yeah, that's me. I'm also "HyperRex" on RX7club, though for some reason a large number of my posts there disappeared. I've owned my FD for over 10 years, but I've actually owned two others, and a 5 more turbo FC3S RX-7's going back 20 years.

I think I'm finally ready to dip my foot back into the pool. My (so far) completely stock black/black R1 needs some serious care, and I've finally accepted that I need to go single turbo/standalone yadda yadda, so I've decided to become active on forums again as I know a lot has changed since I was last buying car parts.

It's a bit scary how little choices there are for FD3S RX-7's now, although at the same time a lot of the parts that are still available look significantly better engineered.

[GySgtFrank]

Welcome, sort of back. You're not too far away from Ted. (RETed) He may have some stuff you'll need and for sure he'll give you straight advice.

[Fendamonky]

Hey Wendell, welcome (back) to RCC!! You've got a lot of VERY smart people on here who can help ya out :)

What has made you decide, finally, to go single and such?

[speedjunkie]

Welcome back! Don't just dip your foot, dive in head first lol.

[RETed]

Welcome, sort of back. You're not too far away from Ted. (RETed) He may have some stuff you'll need and for sure he'll give you straight advice.

No.

bBHhhhaahhahahaahahhahahha



-Ted

[MrWendell]

Ted: lol

Everyone: thanks! I tried as hard as I could to resist the urge to modify and kept my FD stock. There were a lot of factors, like having to raise a kid etc. Plus, I had worked for too many years at a local speed shop and was just really burnt out on cars. I figured a black/black, completely stock R1 would become increasingly rare as time went on, and I thought that was kind of cool so I stuck with that.

A few years ago, after daily driving the car for years, the rear turbo failed, and the oil rings in the rotors were starting to go as well. The car was pretty much undrivable, so I made an arrangement to trade my widebody R-Magic FC for a JDM engine swap in the FD to get the car running. Things didn't work out as owned. The person who was to do the swap (still my good friend) thought it would be better to rebuild the engine instead, and after disassembling it, wasn't able to finish the job. I'm not really mad about that; he had an amazing opportunity come his way and he had to leave right away. Still, having my engine handed back to me in crates and an Igloo cooler was pretty discouraging, and I was missing dozens of parts. I rebuilt the entire core myself, dropped it in the car then ended up putting the car on the backburner for awhile.

Thing is, I didn't give up. I realized that at some point, it's getting increasingly expensive to maintain the stock car. My wiring harness was just rubbish by this point, so I worked out that it would be better to go standalone and simplify the car. On an RX-7, that can be fairly expensive, and I've just learned through experience that it's foolish to buy parts for a project slowly if the car won't run. It's better to keep the money in the bank, and when you've got enough saved/sufficient time, to buy everything you need so you can turn the car around in a couple of weeks. That time for me is, thankfully, now. :)

So I'm basically in buyer mode right now. Pretty interested in the Adaptronic. I've previously owned three different Autronic units for my piston cars (sr20det, 2je-gte) but I really want to keep my OMP. Sorry kids, but I'm too lazy to premix my gas anymore haha