My '76 Rx-4 hardtop build.

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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.

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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.

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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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