1983 RX-7 GSL "FB" gets it's new lease on life

[P71]

As almost all of you know I bought an 83 RX-7 GSL from the nephew of it's original owner back in February. It's a Sunrise Red Metallic FB with every option except leather. I have the metal and glass tops, and everything works including the rear wiper and A/C. It has 232K miles on the original engine and trans with NO rebuilds! It got hurt in a hit-and-run and now it needs a driver's door. So since I'll actually modify something beyond wheels/tires in 2009 I decided a build thread was in order.

Here's some pics of me and "Blinky" autocrossing last year where after some practice and a set of fresh Falken Azenis Rt-615's we started running with Porsche Boxter's!









Here's the only real mod to happen so far, a set of 14" LE Meshies that I restored over 2 days by hand sanding and hand polishing the lips and painting the centers bronze. I also added an NOS set of "+" center caps to replace the hideous meshie plastic ones and new Falken Azenis RT-615's in 195/60/14.



Here's the damage:



And here's the new door as I'm sanding:



Here's just how good this thing looked before the hit (this was taken after the hit, it's just the passenger side):



Blinky saw more then just a dozen autocrosses (93 runs!), it also hit the drag strip a few times and helped me secure my first Drag Racing Season Championship!



Overall it was a great year and I met a ton of cool people. Here's Blinks with Josh's killer LS1 FC and Adam's Track-Attack winning FD. We were all the scourge of the Porsche Club Autocrosses along with Jared's FD.




To go along with the wheels/tires I also had to do some other stuff last year. I replaced the ailing clutch with an SCCA stock-replacement legal Zoom MU-series clutch kit from Mazda. A massive driveline failure drag racing caused me to backdate to an SA driveshaft with new u-joints. The gear oil in the trans and rear end were both changed to Royal Purple. I restored the battery tray, installed a new battery, a new starter, and restored the radiator intakes. I changed the plugs with NGK's and upgraded the wires to Magnecor SV85 Competition ones. I also installed FC seats and new brake pads.

Right now the poor thing is buried in snow, but in the garage is a Racing Beat header, Magnaflow Resonator, and Summit fully-welded race muffler to go with a shiny new stainless dual-outlet tip. I will have it all custom installed by the same shop that did the exhaust on my P71 cop car. I also have a COMPLETE black interior to replace the faded maroon. I'm also slowly doing the bodywork in preparation of painting the car myself this spring. I hope to have everything done for the opening autocross in late March. It's a tall order as I also want to upgrade the suspension and cooling system during the downtime. I already have a new thermostat and electric fan.

Well, that's all for now. Any questions or comments would be appreciated and I will hopefully be updating this every few weeks.

[Fidelity101]

I love the riken meshies! I would have had a set for my FC but they are diff bolt pattern

[rotarygreg]

wow, very cool. inspirational. My father and i have an 84/85 gslse project thats been stalled for easily 5 years. This, among others, is just the fuel i need to get moving on it again. can just imagine, father and son rx's. me in my young rx8, him in the not so young rx7. haha. both velocity red. its gonna be cool. i really like bronze wheels on the red. looks very nice. i might try that with a couple different wheels i have for my GSLSE to see what goes well with it. if it just took some time and turned out that well, its worth a shot. thanks for the inspiration

Greg

[josh18_2k]

havnt been on here in forever..
i am also getting some work done!! the kinda work you cant see ;-)
cant wait to race with you this year!

[P71]

Fidelity,
They are the only good looking wheel for the 4x110 bolt pattern! They absolutely make the car.

rotarygreg,
Wow, that's really cool man. I'd love to see that in a show field, original 7 with a new 8 father/son tag team. My dad's first car was an R100 if that tells you anything! I'd love to see a build thread of it.

josh,
Welcome back man! I've seen your T56 ad so I know what you did there. I'm going to get to drag race it again right? Please?


Update for everybody:
Haven't done much the past 2 weeks as I started a new job and college started back up. Anyways, I have a giant pile of parts and I'm going to get moving on installing them. I did manage to clean the garage up really nice so I have room to work. It's sunny today and above 40* for the first time in like 2 months so I'm going to wash all of the dirt off of the car when I get home. If it stays sunny all weekend I plan on getting more bodywork done. I'll post pics if I accomplish anything!

[P71]

Got a TON of work done yesterday, pics and an updat coming later today

[P71]

Well I promised an update and it's a big one, so grab a beer and take a seat.

I bought the car in February of 08. The original owner had given it to her nephew to sell. He traded it to me for a running 87 5.0 EFI motor with AOD trans and wiring for his Falcon. The title was still in her name and it had a folder of service history in the glovebox with the original owners manual. Here's what it looked like after a quick detail:



It was straight, clean, and most importantly, rust free. It had never been in a major accident, but it did get backed into on the nose messing up some paint and the bumper cover. I got the metal and glass tops with it as well as the original leather carrying bag.



It's a 1983 GSL so it has the 4-wheel disc brakes, LSD rear, and the 4-spoke 13" alloy wheels. It's fairly well optioned with a rear wiper, power windows, power mirrors, cruise, A/C, power antenna, and a sweet 80's graphic equalizer. Everything worked!



The car was all-original, never rebuilt, and had 227K miles! The engine bay was so unmolested that all of the emissions were present and functioning! The nephew did disengage the flapper thing that deactivated a rotor and took off the heat riser tube to the air filter assembly. Here's some "before" photos:




A few hours of cleaning and some elbow grease later the engine bay was presentable. The radiator shrouding had some surface rust and scale so I cleaned all of it up, sanded it, primed it, and painted it. I also sealed all of the gaps and holes to better keep airflow going to the radiator. Afters:





I then dove into general maintenance. I changed the oil and filter, flushed the coolant, installed new pads and bled the brakes, new battery, new starter, new rotor and car, new NGK plugs, and even did the first upgrade of Magnecor Competition wires. Then I made the mistake of taking it drag racing twice. The first time everything went excellent. The second time the driveshaft failed...



I luckily found a S3 driveshaft at a local shop and had it rebuilt with new HD U-joints and rebalanced. That's when I figured out I needed an S4 rear flange for the diff. So I got one of those too and "Blinky" was back on the road.



The original seats didn't work out so hot on the autocross course so I swapped in a set of blue S4 GXL seats using a combo of FB and FC sliders (check the 1st Gen section for that thread). The red/maroon interior has held up surprisingly well, but I'm still swapping it our for the black interior I have in the garage.




I started autocrossing like crazy but I also drove the car on nice days. Then I started driving it whenever I felt like it. I just loved driving it! You can't say Rx-7's aren't useful though. We had to buy some 2x12's that were 10 feet long to build some flower boxes. Buy were the F350 guys at the Lowe's embarrassed!




That should pretty well catch us up to the original post about the racing. I competed in over a dozen autocrosses and made nearly 100 runs in my Rx-7, without a single failure! It's been a great car and never let me down. It has 233K miles on it now, and yes, I did drive it Saturday and Sunday.

[JoeNoble]

Originally Posted by P71

I started autocrossing like crazy but I also drove the car on nice days. Then I started driving it whenever I felt like it. I just loved driving it! You can't say Rx-7's aren't useful though. We had to buy some 2x12's that were 10 feet long to build some flower boxes. Buy were the F350 guys at the Lowe's embarrassed!

I fit a medium sized deep freeze in mine. It just barely fit even with 1/3 of it sticking out the hatch lol. wish i had snapped some pics.

[P71]

Well, onward to the mods. As previously mentioned I have installed a set of Magnecor Competition plug wires and a set of 14" LE "meshie" wheels with 195/60/14 Falken Azenis Rt615's (a 200 treadwear sticky autocross tire).

The next round is starting now. I have a Summit electric fan that will replace the clutch fan. I'm also swapping in a set of aftermarket gauges to monitor water temp, oil pressure, oil temperature, and amps accurately. The big deal is going to be the exhaust though! Currently it still has the original reactor/manifold, 2" piping, and can muffler (it hasn't had a cat since I got it, it was clogged and the car is emissions exempt).



Well that's not going to make any power and it's heavy and ugly. So I did a little shopping and came away with a used Racing Beat header from a IT race car. I then called up Summit and ordered a DEI header wrap kit, a 2.5" Dynomax UltraFlo welded bullet race muffler (which I'm using as a resonator), a 2.5" Summit fully-welded race muffler, and some exhaust paint.



I'm going to clean up the header and wrap it and my exhaust guy is going to cut off the previously messed with collector and make a new true 2.5" collector. He's also going to connect everything together with 2.5" mandrel-bent tubing and weld the whole thing front-to-back. This is the same guy that handbuilt my 1-piece 2.5" mandrel bent under-axle exhaust on the cop car.



As you can see I have a special plan for the finishing touch. A custom ordered Stainless Steel 2.5" dual tip.



I also ordered a new header gasket from Racing Beat and as soon as it gets here the whole system is going in. It should be loud.

[P71]

And lastly for today, the bodywork update. This is the stuff I've been working hardest on lately! Now when I got the 7 it was pretty straight and clean, but the original clear coat was peeling here and there and it had some damage on the nose. It wasn't great but shined up it was presentable and looked great on the track. Then some jerk truck driver decided to back into it!

Before:


After:


Notice that the skin is pinched up and over the a-pillar. I was furious! (Still am honestly). I found a door locally but it was the wrong color and has about 8 layers of paint on it. I pulled the trim and got to sanding. Luckily it's rust free though it does have some bondo or sandable primer in it.



I found a crack in the metal at the a-pillar joint which was not good! I decided that the door was nice enough to save so I had the crack welded up to bring some structural rigidity back in. I'll finish it off with a skim coat of Gold Bondo.





Finally after the welding, sanding, and priming:



I have enough primer to do the whole car, plus some Gold Bondo, sandpaper, etc. Basically I can finish all of the bodywork in the garage up until actually spraying the paint. I plan on primering the whole car after sanding off the defective and peeling clearcoat. I'm still up in the air on the final "look", but it will still be a form of Red Metallic. I kind of want to paint the roof black ala new ZR1 Vette, but I also kind of want to paint the whole thing red and do a white center strip ala Ferrari 360 Stradale or 430 Scuderia. All of the black bumper car trim is coming off. Also the #'s won't be permanent anymore, I ordered magnetic meatballs.

Here it is just a few days ago:



More coming later this week

[Eatmyclutch]

I see you got w00d there.

[ProjectD]

Nice work! Looks like a fun project.

[FCRotary]

Hey man, it's Aaron from the red robbins that one time, just joined this forum. Your cars lookin good, I'm looking at planning a meet here soon somewhere near me in WA if you're interested, I got a thread for it on rx7club in the NW section.

Good luck with the work.

[P71]

Hey Aaron, how have you been? A meet sounds cool. Don't forget to post about here as well.

I have another big update coming today. I did a LOT of work yesterday and the new exhaust goes on today. Hopefully it's not too loud :P

[FCRotary]

I've been pretty good, I'll let you know about it, I'm totally blanking on your name right now dude, remind me? haha - I'll shoot you a PM hopefully. I'm looking at mid-marchish for the time schedule.

Look forward to the update, keep up the work.