Rise and Fall of a '93 CYM Base

[Mobius]

I wanted to be one of the cool kids, so I thought I'd make a build thread:

July 07: An FD was my affordable dream car, but I had never even seen one in person. That was until the owner of a beautiful Canadian CYM Base model showed up to one of our local meets and announced that he wanted to sell the car. Yay for me. It had less than 100 000km on the body, and about half of that on the motor. Suffice to say I picked it up, and that summer was a blast.





October 07: It was time to park the car for the winter. I was having a few problems with it, namely vac lines and an oil pan leak. Which turned into the engine being pulled from the car....... which turned into the 2 year debacle as will be detailed below.

Getting Started:





Teardown:












New clutch and a low mileage JDM Transmission with the shorter/tougher 5th gear (I hate the smell of gear oil with a passion):



I picked up a B&M short shifter (I'm still undecided on whether or not I like it), and a 1680CC secondary injector kit for the single that may one day be in the future:



I stuck some HID's in the fog lights to match the headlights (Yeh, I know I know. HID's in halogen housings. The headlights will be changed out for the SakeBomb Garage projector retrofits as soon as I get them.):



My interior was pretty sad, previous owner had covered the gauge cluster and console with suede....... which faded and peeled. Not to mention the glue that was used etched the plastic. I rattlecan refinished them for now, I'll get back to the interior one day:

[Mobius]

Gotham Racing 19 Row oil coolers:




New Shoes:




A little light porting, courtesy of Conroy Ganson @ 4kruzn Imports:



Reassembled the Engine:













Enlisting the help of the Edmonton Rx-7 Club:





Ready to start:



And since we're at it, may as well pull the motor out of Rahul's (roommate at the time) FC:

[Mobius]

Now, after everything was said and done, the car would not start. I had spark, I had fuel pressure, I had compression. I even tried to pull start it around the block a few times. Nothing. Upon further investigation I found that my primary injectors were stuck closed, by product of being a little old and sitting dry on the shelf for most of a year. Ok, so I send the injectors out to be cleaned and tested. Once everything was buttoned up again...... still nothing. So I start at the beginning: I have spark, I have fuel (pressure and flow), and I have....no.... I don't have compression on the front rotor. WTF?

Turns out I f*ucked up. Like really f*cked up. When I was scrubbing the gunk off of the outside of the irons/housings I had an idea. Why don't I silicon carbide bead blast the suckers, and while I'm at it I'll do the faces of the rotors too. Then, I'll clean out the nice, loose, residue and most of the work will be done. Infamous last words: It won't hurt anything.

If anyone reading this thinks this might be even a remotely good idea (which it isn't), stop thinking immediately. The fine carbon/silicone powder that you create does not come off. At all. I washed every part in a multitude of solutions. I pressure washed. I blasted with air. I took rags and towels and cotton swabs, I even did the ultra sonic thing. All of the parts appeared clean. I rubbed a white cotton swab through every oil passage and it came out as if it were brand new.

So when I was trying to pull start the car, the resulting oil pressure was enough to scour the seemingly clean surfaces and turn the oil into a super abrasive liquid. In a very, very short time I had done this:







I also destroyed my twins, my oil coolers and thermostat (which I'm still trying to salvage), $200 worth of braided oil lines (metering and cooler lines), metering pump, irons, rotors, housings, everything under the front cover...... anything that touched oil is basically junk.

I was confused. How could I have missed this much crap (you can see the stuff in the bottom of the oil pan). So I experimented with my front cover. I put it in a solution caustic enough to strip off powder coating in an hour like it was never there. The inside of the cover was a bright, even silver color. Until you let it sit in the solution for an hour, then you could 'smear' the silver coating. Yet I could not scrub all of it off. It was the same story with every other part. Dry, they seemed fine. After soaking in the solution you could tell every oiled surface was covered in it. Bah.

Anywho, Conroy Ganson came though (at this point I had 2 weeks to finish the car before I had to move) with a low mileage core from a crashed '95 FD. He rebuilt and street-ported it for me, since he's much faster and more skilled at such things than I am.

Here it is being tested with my home made compression tester, and slapped together in the engine bay:



One, single change to it though:







May 2009, the saga is finally over......... no, it's never over.









Stats:

Engine:

- Emissions removal | 2751 Engineering block-off plates
- Aluminum AST
- 3" Custom Downpipe | 3" SS Midpipe | HKS Super Dragger
- Peter Farrel Supercars SMIC
- Magnacor Wires
- Linear stock temperature gauge modification
- Apexi Power FC w/ Commander and Datalogit
- Greddy Turbo Timer
- Street Port
- RA 2mm Super Seals
- Atkins Solid Corner Seals
- Gotham Racing 19 Row Twin Oil Cooler Kit - Destroyed by sludge!
- Innovate LM-1 wideband
- Garfinkle Oil Pan Brace
- KG Parts secondary fuel rail & 1680CC injectors
- Aeromotive A-1000 rising rate FPR
- Greddy pulley kit
- Supra TT Denso fuel pump
- HKS Twinpower ignition amp
- Koyo Aluminum Radiator
- Rx-8 Rear Stationary Gear
- Garrett GT3076R
........... 57mm 0.60 A/R 56 trim coldside
........... 60mm 0.82 A/R 84 trim hotside
- Synapse Engineering 50mm Vband Wastegate
- Synapse Engineering Sequential BOV
- Super Now! Aluminum Motor Mounts

Drivetrain:

- Low mileage stock transmission
- B&M Short Shifter
- B&M shift knob
- BF Goodrich T/A KDW 2 tires:
........245/35/18 front
........285/30/18 rear
- Exedy Hyper Twin Plate Clutch w/ Standard Flywheel

Suspension:

- H&R Lowering Springs on OEM Struts
- OEM R1 Strut Bar

Brakes:

- Brembo Rotors
- Stainless braided lines
- DOT 5 competition brake fluid

Exterior:

- Factory color, Competition Yellow Mica.
- Knightsports side skirts and rear mouldings.
- '99 Spec Tail Lights
- Paint Detail using Zaino products
- Sakebomb Garage Bi-Xenon Retrofit Headlights
- 6000k HID's (foglights)
- Gram Lights 57Pro wheels
........18 x 9.0J +45 front
........18 x 10.0J +50 rear

Interior:

- Center Speaker Gauge Pod
- Prosport Boost Gauge
- Prosport Exh. Temp
- Alpine Deck
- JL Audio component speakers in front doors/pillars
- JL Audio 2-way speakers in rear Touring speaker locations
- Duplicolor Metalcast refinished interior bits
- Innovate X-16 wideband gauge

[BigIslandSevens]

Nice looking CYM. Did the canadian models come in CYM in more than just R1 package? Or is that a re-spray. Looks clean.

What are your plans for the engine?

i painted the wife's FC CYM and she has been pulled over 8 times since for no reason.. Good thing she is a lawyer!!

[Mobius]

Originally Posted by BigIslandSevens

Nice looking CYM. Did the canadian models come in CYM in more than just R1 package? Or is that a re-spray. Looks clean.

What are your plans for the engine?

i painted the wife's FC CYM and she has been pulled over 8 times since for no reason.. Good thing she is a lawyer!!

Canadian base models also had the option of being CYM, aside from the standard R1.

[Mobius]

Disaster! The SPEC clutch (I'd never recommend SPEC to anyone again) is slipping. It's fine for cruisin' to the A&W, but hard driving overheats it fairly quickly. Sad, since I'm putting out probably half the torque it's rated for.

And, to top it off, I had an incident with a reversing SUV.





It's in the body shop right now being revitalized, hopefully it will be ready for spring.

[need RX7]

^NNNNOOOOO!! .

Nice build though. CYM is such a great color.

[BigIslandSevens]

No fair putting all those engine shots in after I commented. makes me look like I didn't read the thread CYM should have been a option on all years here.

And what caused the oil damage. I see you say silicone blast. What do you mean by that? Bead blasting in a cabinet? Or spraying them with silicone spray? Confused.

[Mobius]

Originally Posted by BigIslandSevens

No fair putting all those engine shots in after I commented. makes me look like I didn't read the thread CYM should have been a option on all years here.

And what caused the oil damage. I see you say silicone blast. What do you mean by that? Bead blasting in a cabinet? Or spraying them with silicone spray? Confused.

Sorry, I don't even know why I typed silicone. I meant to say silicon carbide, and yes bead blasting in a cabinet. I'll change that, good catch .

[mazdadude7]

The dammage doesnt look bad so it shouldnt be long before you have it back and running again.

[Mobius]

The FedEx man dropped some things off for me today:

[ZGN]

nice, where did you get the lights from?

[Mobius]

I was in on the first Sakebomb Garage group buy. Not only is the quality of the retro phenomenal, they also happen to have my favorite bi-xenon projectors tucked inside of them, which made it that much better.

[proz07]

and awsome lights they are i cant wait to get mine installed. nice little setup too bad on the first motor lol thats an expensive mistake.

z

[Max777]

solid engine mounts? Crazy, man.... I thought that my Banzai Racing poly mounts wouldnt be "too bad" and I fucking hate them cause of the amount of vibration the car has now...

Seeing that you have stock shock absorbers and this is not a pure race car, why did you decide to buy those?