My '76 Rx-4 hardtop build.
 

Now that I have access to good internet and I have the time I thought I'd make a build thread about my Rx-4. I purchased the car I believe sometime in May or June of 2009. The previous owners imported the car to Canada from Ohio about a year before that. They had plans to build the car up with a 20B engine and lots of other mods. After starting the project, it got put on the back burner, ice fell on it caving in the drivers rear quarter, and then it was sold to me. As you can see from the photos it was a bit of a piece of work.

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Luckily the car was a fairly clean original car to start with. Very little rust, the interior was in great shape for its age, and basically all of the trim and glass was there. The original 13B was long gone, but the 4 speed and rest of the drivetrain was still there. I began the project by taking stock of what I had and formulating a plan. I started by wanting to just get it on the road as quickly as possible by dropping in a S4 13B engine with a megasquirt to run it. As I got deeper and deeper into rust repair though I decided to strip the car and have the whole thing painted. At the same time I lucked out and got a hold of an original 3B 13B 4 port engine from an early Rx-4 wagon. The engine was in amazing shape and it was a no brainer for me. Build up a stout, ported NA engine. After the sheet metal repair was finished on the car I began building a front bumper for the car. I didn't have a front bumper and I couldn't find one close by for a reasonable price. I decided I could build a better bumper myself for less money. I started with a 1993 Chevy full size truck front bumper. After much cutting, measuring, welding, more cutting, more welding, and more measuring I had the bumper fitted nicely to the car. I then molded in front turn signals from a late 80's Nissan Pathfinder and cut in the notch for my oil cooler. Pictures to come later of these parts.

At this point the car was off to the body shop for paint and I turned my focus toward the engine. I decided to go with a full on frankenrotor creation consisting of a half brigeport, S5 NA high comp rotors, 1 piece carbon apex seals, Rx-8 e-shaft, stat gears, and bearings, FD oil pressure regulator, Racing Beat road race header, and a Weber 48IDF carburetor and intake manifold. Here are some pics of the cleaning, porting, and painting of the engine.

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More porting and engine pics....

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Right around this time it was the beginning of February 2010 and the car came out of the body shop. Time for some final assembly to begin!

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I can pretty much let the pictures tell the tale here. This was a crazy time of building because I was pushing to have the car ready for DGRRX. There was alot of assembly going on.

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Here are the last of the assembly pics that I have. Nismo has a bunch more that I hope he will post on here. He helped me alot through the build of this car. Still owe him big time!
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At this point I was stuck waiting on some key parts and the car didn't make it to DGRRX. I was forced to take my trusty GXL, but once I got back the build continued. I'll continue on from this point after I gather together more photos and stuff.

Now we are at the real exciting part of the build, getting the beast to run. Nismo and I built the engine together and along with another friend of ours we installed the engine. We ended up having some clearance issues with the clutch and the bell housing of the transmission. I had to slightly clearance the bell housing and the clutch pressure plate to get the clutch to clear the bell housing. After that issue though the engine install went very smooth considering we were at it until around midnight. It fired up on the very first try! Here are pics of the engine install and first firing.

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These pictures were taken as we were getting oil pressure built up and then when the engine finally fired up.

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Once we had it running, it was time to finish some of the loose ends up. The car still needed the front sheet metal to be assembled, it needed an exhaust system, and the carburetor needed tuning. I took the car to a friends shop where we made a custom exhaust system from the header back. It was dual 2 1/2" pipe with 2 moroso spiral flow mufflers. We kept it dual all the way back over the axle and then merged it to a single 3" with the big magnaflow muffler in the previous pictures. Once all of that was completed the car hit the road. These next pictures are from that very first day I drove it.

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Some videos from that day as well.
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That just left a few other small loose ends to take care of like mounting my gauges, trim, etc. For gauges I decided to go with the external look and ordered Autometer pro comp marine gauges. Over the course of this summer I got most of the things done on the car that I wanted. I changed the exhaust to make it a little more tolerable by swapping out the existing mufflers for a Racing Beat road race presilencer and one of their 3" universal mufflers. I also changed a few different things with the carburetor and got it running much better. Some pictures from this past summer.

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Here is a text version of the results from the dyno day we had. Not too shabby, but hopefully with a few modifications I can pull some more power from this engine. It should be able to see 200whp without a problem.

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That pretty much brings us to present day. The car is now in storage for winter, but with any luck I'll be wrenching away on it this winter at some point. I have a GSL-SE front suspension and brake swap planned as well as a GSL-SE rear axle and brake swap. I want to send the stock rear leaf springs out and have them re arched and add a leaf as well to stiffen them up. All of this should lower the car very nicely and I'll be getting a set of 15" rims to go along with all of that. I also want to change my ignition setup from DILDFIS to an electronic setup using 4 individual coils. Keep watching this thread for updates, this car is not even close to being complete yet.:D

cool build

agreed.... this is a sweet build... Love the color..


J.

Thanks for the comments guys. I liked the colour as well, that's why I kept it that way. The car was originally red, but it was painted that colour sometime before I bought it. It is a later Mazda colour. I'll have to get the paint code from my body man.

here is my website:

www.kagoshimaenglish.com/rx4.htm

and youtube videos:

http://www.youtube.com/user/1973mazdarx4coupe

updated just now

thankyou!

david

Nice! Came out pretty clean. I've never seen a big tach on the outside like that haha.

Ya that tach is a little excessive, but it was the smallest I could get in the autometer marine series that went to 10k. It's only 5" I think....

Pulling this one out of the depths. I've decided to attend DGRR 2011 and this is my car of choice. Time to get cracking on some work before the 3000km round trip. On this list will be:
-5 speed SA transmission swap
-some sort of lightweight flywheel
-repair my ignition issues
-rebuild the weber to fix some fuel leaks and new taller velocity stacks with mesh air cleaners
-suspension and brake swap if I can find rims
-some other odds and ends that I've neglected to take care of.

That should keep me out of trouble for a while.....

beautiful ! my build is slow and painful

www.kagoshimaenglish.com/rx4.htm

I need me some sort of old school rotary and this thing is an inspiration for sure. Can't wait to see it at DGRR. Remember to bring a ton of carb jets on that trip.

I have spare jets and a full set of numbered drill bits. I'm prepared for any situation.;) Thanks for the compliments TTT. Means a lot coming from someone like yourself that has built a killer car of their own and knows the work that goes into it. I'm looking forward to the trip to DGRR with this beast, and I hope to see you there.

Seeing as how it warmed up to above 0 degrees I fired the old girl up last night. Now I have a coolant leak to fix as well apparently at the thermostat housing.....:(

Sorry to hear of your troubles. I hope to see you at DGRR though, if we can make it haha.

Sorry to hear about your recent troubles. on a positive note, the bumper you made for the fron is great, it really transforms the look of the car compared to the original big bumpers.

Thanks, I was fairly impressed with the bumper as well. Considering that was my first real custom metal work project I've ever done, I think it turned out pretty good. The coolant leak really isn't an issue. I think the upper rad hose clamp may be loose from sitting in the cold weather. I'll make sure the Rx-4 makes it to DGRR this year. Can't keep a true rotorhead down!

this is a pretty sweet project you've got. with any luck, i'll see it in person at Deal's Gap this year as i hope to attend as well.

Well I pulled the weber off of the beast tonight. Going to be taking it to a local weber guru to have it completely overhauled. Hopefully that will solve my fuel leaks from the throttle shaft and so on. Also got a line on a set of 15" Riken mesh wheels in 4x114.3 bolt pattern that I'm going to pick up on the weekend. Let the GSL-SE parts swap begin!

Time for a LONG overdue update. I've been slowly picking away at this project getting it ready for deals gap. I bought an aluminum flywheel and I also got a hold of that set of Riken mesh wheels. The wheels were not in the greatest shape and had gold centers, but the price was right. I've been busy sandblasting, sanding, and polishing the rims. Here's a pic of one of the better rims before...
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After sanding, then wet sanding with 400, 800, and 1000 grit, and then polishing this is what the lips look like.....
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I've got 3 out of the 4 rims polished and 1 rims is completely done all but for laying down a few coats of clear. More pics to come....

Here's the first rim all done.
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The weather has finally warmed up here and I've started to work on the old girl again. Last night I worked under the hood and got the engine ready to come back out. After a season of driving I'm not real impressed how the engine looks so I'm going to freshen the paint up a bit. After today hopefully the whole drive train will be out of the car along with the front suspension.

Well the weather has been terrible here and it really cut into my free time to work on the car. I didn't get the suspension swap done and my transmission swap went south fast. After having the engine running for about 10 minutes the clutch release bearing seized solid. There was an issue with the length of the push rod needed for the slave cylinder between the stock 4 speed and the SA 5 speed. Also, when I drained the fluid from the 5 speed to remove it a big chunk of metal was stuck to the magnet. I believe it's a piece of a synchro. So as of now the car is sitting with no transmission in it. I may end up swapping the 4 speed back in and I'll suffer on the drive to DGRR..... :uhh:

Time for an update me thinks..... Those of you that attended DGRR know that the car did make the trip and in fact made the trip quite well! No problems of any kind at all other than a thirsty appetite and possible permanent damage to my hearing.:lol: I was actually surprised at how well the car handled on the dragon. Can't wait until I get the suspension, wheels, and brakes swapped. All the parts are waiting, just have to find the time to do it. I did however find some time the other day to swap my 5 inch velocity stacks and larger fuel jets on my weber. WOW did that make a difference! Traction is now a definite issue in first and second gear. MUST SWAP LSD REAR AXLE! There will be more pics and progress of this car hopefully soon. I want to get a lot done on the car yet this summer. Here are some pics from the DGRR trip.
Also forgot, I'm planning on taking this car back to the dyno within the next few weeks to see what kind of numbers it's putting down now. Should be interesting....
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Subscribed! YA I was surprised how well it handled when we went down the the DGRR and thanks for letting me drive it! You would think I was a kid in the candy store with the grin I had the entire time I was driving...