Project: "Last RX-7" by Herblenny

[Herblenny]

January 10th, 2012 - Well, I would of made an earlier update but I had to put 14 hour day at work yesterday and didn't have much time to tell you all what happened to my trip.

Well, last week I was running around town trying to get my shell ready for a swap with an R1 shell (without sunroof) that a friend of mine had in GA. So, I had to pull the 20B out, get the hatch from my friend's shop (which I was going to paint it and put on my MB FD), find a trailer, and a friend to help me tow it. Because my fabricator does not come in on saturday, I also had to go there day early to pull the car out so I can load it day after.

Saturday morning (Jan. 7th) - We loaded up the car and got to my friend's place in GA. We started taking stuff off of his car and started to transfer to my shell.



During this process, the car smelled really bad and we found some crazy stuff. Like dead mouse





I guess the car was sitting outside for awhile and a mouse made a nice home out of this RX-7.

Since I was going to strip this car to bare metal, I didn't really care about the smell or the dead mouse.... but I did care about what I found next, a bent frame that lead to bent head light assembly mounting points. This is a bad sign as when headlights are mounted and pop ups go up and down, the geometry is messed up so the lights might not line up. At this point, I was quite upset.. Just because I asked my friend to check the car as he knew the car was in an accident before. Also because my car was on hold for 2-3 weeks as my fabricator couldn't cut anything on the shell because of this swap. And I wasted my weekend, other people's time, etc just because my friend didn't take 10 mins to check over the car carefully and to see where the accident was. But he's a friend and he feels bad and going to help me out later so I cant be mad at him.

Anyhow, we loaded the car back up and drove it back to my fabricator.



Hopefully, I'll have more fabrication updates later this week!

[Herblenny]

January 12, 2012 - Last night, I went over to www.MPFab.com to install the 20B back in to the car and get the car ready so that owner of MPfab.com can start building the exhaust system and the V-mount.

Since its important that everything needs to sit the way it is, we needed to install the tranny, ppf, catback, MP, etc... but like always, we ran into other issues..

Issue #1 - Defined Auto kit did not level the engine.



This might be because I had issue lining up one of their motor mount bracket and I had to enlarge the hole in order to get the brackets to slid into the motor. But, that's not it as one of the top hole should of kept the height in order..

Issue #2 - Correcting leveling issue.

We measured everything to make sure if it was the mount or if it was the car. After measuring the chassis, subframe, core support, etc, we came to the conclusion it was the mount. So, we added couple of spacers to see how much it was off..



After adding the spacers (3/8 inch), we had other issues.. which is now the engine was sitting bit to high and PPF was hitting the tranny tunnel. So, we lifted the engine, pull the passenger side mount and cut 3/8 to level it back out. After that, we wanted to make sure if everything else was going to fit so, we dropped the sub frame and bolted the oil pan on to double check everything...



At this point, everything seems ok after cutting but the PPF still seems bit close to the top of the tranny tunnel.

Next, I'm going to bring my AutoEXE braces so Walker from MPFab.com could build the exhaust that will clear all the bracing.

[RX SE7EN]

Are you sure the car itself was level when you checked the engine? It's pretty difficult to tell if the car is exactly level when it's on a lift.

Originally Posted by Herblenny

Issue #1 - Defined Auto kit did not level the engine.

[WE3RX7]

Thats a valid point... The racks are usually not perfectly level, etc...

[Herblenny]

Yep, we checked the car's chassis, lower the car to the ground, checked multiple different part of the car, etc..

[Herblenny]

January 15th, 2012 - Not much update over the weekend so here is a random pic of my MB FD

[Herblenny]

January 18th, 2012 - Got my wheels in from WORK Wheels (http://www.workwheelsusa.com/).





WORK CR Ultimate aka Kiwami.

Spec: 18x9.5 +30 and 18x10.5 +23

[Herblenny]

January 19th, 2012 - Few pics of the update...

Interior.. took the dash out and put just the rebar to hold the steering column in place..



Also installed my Ti Catback



And my MB FD was featured in S3 Mag and they are using one of the photo of my car on their website..


www.s3mag.com

I have a ton of photos of the new set up tomorrow...

[DriFD3S]

Looks like you are doing a great job sir,
Keep up the mind blowing work!

[Herblenny]

January 20th, 2012 - Update from my fabricator's work. Walker Morgan from www.MPFab.com did an awesome job on these parts.









Downpipe









Inside the DP.. you could almost see through..

[Prodigy]

Looks fantastic... When seeing those welds my hand might have started to move towards my pants... I may have had to stop it ...


I tink the down pipe on your car should be renamed the 'jog-pipe' or something...

I mean since really... It's not really down as it is straight back....
Lol


Looks great.... It will almost be a shame that it will be driven... :P



J.

[speedjunkie]

Man that fab work is beautiful.

[Rx7Spaz]

Watching this precision build makes me want do something with my fd I can't wait to see this in action! It's going to sound beastly, makes me quiver with anticipation!

[RCCAZ 1]

Not quite quivering , but damned impressive! Curious to see your lube solution for the turbo, but I'm sure you guys have a viable plan. Can't wait to see more. Have you picked a color for the car yet?? Get moving... SEMA is only 10 months off!!! Hope to see it there in person!! If Seventock ends up being a week or two either side of SEMA would be great to see it there as well!

[Herblenny]

I'll be using one of these for the turbo... should work but real world testing is required.



http://turbowerx.com/Scavenge_Pumps/.../Exa-Pump.html

I haven't picked the color but will be doing it within a month... as the shell will goto the body shop in mid Feb.