My Intro!

[Pele]

I've always been into cars. I knew how a piston engine worked since being in elementary school. I always hung around with my father when he'd work on his cars.

Later, I had heard of these strange Mazdas with no pistons or cylinders in the engine. I was always curious about how they worked or what model they were offered in. Nobody could tell me and everyone said that they were very rare.



At 18 (In 2000) just after getting my license, but before graduating High School, my mom had a surprise for me; A graduation present. I was handed a single key and was instantly excited. My first car! I didn't care what I'd get to drive, so long as it had an engine and four wheels...

And so I found outside, a Sunbeam Silver Metallic (K3) 1985 Mazda RX-7 GSL with sunroof.

Put the key in and turned it on... Pulled the choke, tapped the gas, and cranked it up. It had a high idle and a bit of a missfire occasionally. I'd take care of that.

I popped the hood.

What.
The.
Fuck.

No valve covers. Where the hell are the valves? And why is the exhaust manifold BELOW the crank pulley... That's not right at all.

This is one of those weird Mazdas that I'd heard about... Cool!

And, Hey! The intake and exhaust manifolds are RIGHT next to each other. It'll be easy to put a turbo on this car... (I didn't know what an intercooler was.)


First things first, I need to get the car fixed and running properly.

I hauled it into the Auto Tech shop at school and the instructor was an Ex Mazda mechanic. He had an old blown S4 13B up on a stand with the front cover removed for demonstrations purposes. Seeing it move got me hooked.

I needed to find out more.

At the time, I don't believe you could Google anything. Google hadn't formed into a verb yet and wasn't the shit that Yahoo and AltaVista were... So I Yahoo Searched and joined the RX-7 club.

After getting the carb rebuilt, blocking off the shutter valve, and a tune-up, the engine it ran great until I wrecked it a year later.

Still, I've never driven a car that I've had more fun in...


I still have my old FB kicking around, deciding on what to do with it.
I also bought another that I'm prepping for Spec-7 class road racing... If home projects and other assorted priorities don't get in the way...

I also own a 2nd gen that I picked up for $250 when I needed a good daily in a pinch... That'll be another post.