My '88 TII build/resto
 

Well just this weekend I picked up my very first turbocharged rotary. I got extremely lucky and snagged this 1988 Turbo II for a pretty good deal. It's all original, completely stock with 55,000 original kilometers. (yes it's a true Canadian car.) My plans for it will basically consist of fixing a few little odds and ends on the car, and then do simple mods to improve handling, braking, and get a bit more power. I'm shooting for around 250rwhp. I'll be running a rtek 2.1 ecu, S5 turbo with ported wastegate, exhaust (probably the Racing Beat RevTII system), home made intake, GSL-SE injectors in the secondaries, walbro pump, and a few other odds and ends. Anyway time for some pictures. These were taken the day after I brought it home.

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One more...

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Cut the flange off the down pipe, and bring over the 3" RB one and I'll tig it up for ya

Very nice! :icon_tup:

I'm thinking about it. Nice dirty 3" single setup would rock it nice for a while untill I can find/afford the racing beat system. I should get you to tig a nice trumpet on the outlet of my BOV as well.

Thanks. I'm hoping to have this car on the road next weekend. I have to put some new brakes on it and figure out what I'm going to do for tires. Apparently my 17" Sumitomos that I ordered to fit my Fast FC01 rims won't be in for another month or better.:( Might have to take the old ARE's off of my other FC and rock them for a while.

Little update: Put the new brakes on last night. I don't think the brakes have ever been touched on this car. The white paint marks were still on the rotors and the phillips screws that hold the rotors to the hubs. The rotors also came off of the front hubs with just a few taps of a dead blow. (May not seem like a big deal but here in Canada those alluminum hubs are notorious for being a royal bastard to get the steel rotors off of.) I also found a set of 215/50R17 Bridgestone Potenza take offs here at work so I threw them on my Fast wheels and mounted them up. Those tires will do temporarilly untill my other ones arrive.

Get us some pics with the new wheels!

This is one clean car man.

Hopefully I'll get a chance to detail the car up tomorrow before the guy comes to appraise it. I'll be sure to snap some pics then.

Man, even the zinc coating on the underhood parts is mostly intact.

Oh ya, the car is crazy clean. I don't know what they did to preserve this car the way it is, but I'm glad they did it. The car is spotless underneath. It still has all the factory paint marks everywhere from the assembly line and it even has the little tag on the diff plug saying it requires special LSD fluid!

Holy crap that's clean!!! I can't get over the interior! WOW!!! Good find!

Here's some more pictures as requested. This is with the new wheels and a wash/wax. Cleaned up pretty nice! There's also a group photo of all of my rotaries lined up on the front yard. Rx-4, GXL, and the TII.

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Not much to update on this as of right now. I've been driving the car for over a month and have put on about 2000kms. The car has been running flawless other than a bit of tire rubbing on the front fenders. Rolling the front fenders is on the list of things to do in the spring. I plan on driving it for another week or two and then it will get put away for the winter. Stay tuned in the spring for some real modification though......

Well as always plans have changed a bit. A nice hybrid turbo came up for sale at a good deal so I snagged it up. It's a stock S5 hotside with a Garret 60a/r cold side. Haven't really had a chance to measure the compressor wheel size yet, but I should be looking at hitting around 300whp now! Can't wait for spring...

congrats on finding such a clean car. i can't wait to see how it turns out.

Update time on this beast too. I recently left the car with Joe (classicauto) so he could work his magic on it and give it a face lift. He's giving it a good going over ,buff, polish, touch ups, and repairs where required. New window and rear hatch glass trim, along with installing a spoiler, rolling the fenders, and replacing all the body decals. The car should look like it just rolled off the showroom floor! I'm told I'll have it back next weekend. Also on another note, I've bought some other goodies for it again. Pics to follow. :)

subscribed,,,, :)

Can't wait to see it! :biggthumpup:

I got the car back this past Sunday and finally got a chance to clean it today. I'd like to thank Joe for the fantastic job he did on the car. Enjoy the pics. :) Oh and there's some pics of the goodies to go on it too.

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Dam that is one clean turbo? A ton more shiny that last I saw it..

Oh yes, it is quite shiny now! I've had people already ask if it was repainted.

Pics look good Bryon, glad you're enjoying her :)

^ The only thing I'm not enjoying are birds targeting my hood with their $*#!bombs and being paranoid about damaging the car in any way. It's hard work owning a nice car....

I think this car could use a nice set of TII sawblades.

^ Got em! Look at the first pics of the car before I put the Fast wheels on it. :)

Update time. After driving the car all summer it started to develop some issues. First issue was a noise when downshifting and when you had the clutch depressed. Second was that the shifter started to feel really sloppy and sometimes wouldn't shift at all. I decided it was time to remove the transmission and install my ACT streetlite flywheel, ACT 6 puck clutch with HD pressure plate, and new release and pilot bearings. When I removed the shifter I found NO shifter bushings! They had been mashed into a million pieces and where just mush basically. The release bearing was making noise, and the pilot bearing fell apart once the transmission was removed. The car now works much better, but I think the clutch master cylinder is also failing. I'll replace it and the slave cylinder in the spring. For now, it's tucked away for the winter.

I picked up more goodies for this car. Got a set of KYB AGX shocks with Eibach springs and RB lowering mounts. They should help the stance and handling!

Does the car has Single stage paint?

^I'm not sure. Whatever the factory paint process was that's what it is. The car still has all of it's original paint.

I was told you could buff single stage paint to make it look brand new. It has no clear coat.

Ya I could see that working as long as you use a fine compound and are careful not to go right through the paint. Just be careful around edges and body lines where the paint is the thinnest.

True, but you can also buff a clear coat (two stage finish - base color + clear) to make it look brand new IF the clear coat is still intact. In other words, if the clear coat is so badly worn down that it has delaminated off of the base coat, game over - no amount of buffing will help.

Car looks absolutely fantastic. Super clean FCs are harder and harder to find.

More parts will be arriving soon for this beast. I was able to get a pretty good deal on a Racing Beat RevTII exhaust so it's on the way! That's the last majorly expensive component to this build. Everything else from here on in will be relatively cheap. Should be able to start building this over the summer and try and have it tuned by fall before it goes away.

I got this car out of storage about a week ago now. The weather has been beautiful for mid March. I've had a few issues with the car that I'm trying to fix. First thing I did was replace the clutch master cylinder and slave cylinder. Clutch works great now. Also, since last fall I've had some issues with the idle. On fast idle the car will start to surge at 1500 rpm and after a good hard pull when the car is hot it idles low, rough, and will stall sometimes. I replaced the coolant temp sensor thinking that was the problem. Didn't fix it, but I did find out that somewhere along the way my radiator caps got switched around. The pressure cap was on the thermostat housing instead of the radiator. Did a compression test just to calm my nerves. Nice even pulses on each rotor face of 75PSI! :) I checked the TPS adjustment and found it was out. Tried to adjust it, but couldn't get it to adjust right. I then grabbed a spare TPS I had and put it on. Got it to adjust right (just barely though. It would switch in and out of ajustment) and took the car for a drive. Seemed to work great! Got back to the driveway and the car started running stupid again. Checked the TPS and it was out of adjustment again! I'm going to order a brand new TPS and see if that helps. If not, I'm going to tear the whole top end of the engine apart, replace all gaskets, vacuum lines, and overhaul the throttle body. Also going to do emissions delete while I'm at it.

Looks like I'm bringing this car to DGRR this year! My idle gremlins seem to have worked themselves out. I think it was an issue with the thermal wax and the fact that with my rad caps switched around it wasn't getting a proper coolant temp reading. Now I have a few other issues. The car mysteriously lost all battery power on Sunday and wouldn't start. Then it just started working fine again... I'm going to check all wiring connections and possibly replace the crappy Canadian Tire Motomaster battery. The other issue is that my clutch makes a slight squeal when you slip it taking off in 1st gear. I did some reading online and it seems the 6 puck performance clutches are notorious for that. Anyone else ever hear of or had this same issue?

Wow I haven't updated this in a while! I took this car to DGRR 2012 and it won 3rd place for best FC. I also found I had a bit of a corrosion issue at my TPS harness connector which was causing a lot of my idle issues and things. The car worked great all last summer and I put lots of miles on it. The time has come though. I'm going to start the major build up in the next few weeks. I already got my KYB/Eibach setup painted and ready to go in and I cleaned and polished my RB RevTII exhaust system. Here's a rough list of mods that will be taking place:
Rtek 2.1 ECU
GSL-SE secondary injectors
Hybrid Turbo
Walbro 255 fuel pump
Custom aluminum intake
HKS SSQV BOV
Emissions Delete
Racing Beat exhaust
Koyo rad and electric fan setup
Braided stainless oil cooler lines
Apexi AVCR boost controller
KYB AGX struts with Eibach springs and RB mounts
Prothane polyurethane bushings
Gauges (haven't decided yet what I want)

That should keep me busy for a while.... Look out for pics of the progress. I'll try and document it as best as I can.