Build thread

[speedjunkie]

I called it! What's my prize

Oh come on, does it count if you made four predictions? Lol jk

I dislike you for making me aware of the page.

All of the cars look to be in very good condition. I'm drawn to the Supra myself.

I know, they have such nice cars on there. You're talking about the black Mk3 Supra? I like that one too.

[speedjunkie]

Zico and I went with our friend Sean for a photo shoot this morning. Courtney Davis got some rolling shots of us and took some other pics. Here's a teaser, with hopefully more to come. She does a great job!

[chickenwafer]

So is this car working right yet? Lol

[speedjunkie]

Well it drives lol. The oil seals in the turbo are bad I believe because I have oil in the intake pipe, so I have an EFR 8374 internal wastegate version that I'll be putting on along with the cast manifold from Turblown. The tune currently has a lean spot at half throttle but since I'm swapping turbos I'm just going to fly Chris out next Spring so he can tune it here on the new setup. I'm also swapping the exhaust for a RB dual tip, changing to softer Swift springs on the Ohins, lubing my suspension bushings, sandblasting and clear coating the suspension arms, recoating the wheel wells, finishing the AC system hopefully, doing a new 2-cycle tank (still trying to figure out how to best do that), probably doing a new water injection tank in place of the ABS module (or maybe just use the water meth mix for windshield washer fluid too), doing the new 3pc wheels 12" all around, the larger Spirit R/RZ brakes with APP 2pc rotors, installing a roll bar and bucket seats...actually there is too much to keep going lol. A lot more things I'm planning too, but yes, it's currently running and even with the lean spot it drives pretty well. As soon as spring rolls around I'll start using E85 I believe, and then crank the boost back up to 24psi lol.

What are you up to these days? What brings you to the forums, looking for another FD? lol

[FDEEZ]

That is quite the laundry list! You should be able to get it all done in an afternoon, lol!

Hopefully you'll retain power steering to move those front 12" wheels around :-)

[speedjunkie]

That is quite the laundry list! You should be able to get it all done in an afternoon, lol!

Hopefully you'll retain power steering to move those front 12" wheels around :-)

That would be spectacular, but like most of the time, it'll probably take me all summer lol.

Oh yeah, there's no way I'm deleting power steering. With the 285/35s up front I noticed it was tougher to steer even with power steering, and I'll be using 295/30s this time.

[speedjunkie]

Alright, it's driving me crazy not working on the car and it's all I can think about when I'm taking the damn course for work, so I'm almost 100% on giving up on the course and retiring in August. Well, I'll probably still wing it on the test and see what happens, but there is a 65% fail rate on the first try and I'm still not finished with the online studying portion and I have to complete it with a pass on the test by 28 Jan, so I really don't think that's gonna happen. So I've decided to start working on the car so I can hopefully have everything finished by Spring.

Also, I feel like I'm going round and round on the wheel design with Alvin, it's close sometimes and then he'll tweak some things and then the things that were close aren't anymore. So I'm thinking about getting one of the designs from him and trying to mess with it or see if someone local can make the adjustments. And Al mentioned that Chris is really good with CAD, so....Chris, pwetty pwease can you help? lol

Some of these he sent a month or two ago and they're REALLY close. I did a pencil etching of the side of the spoke and scanned it and emailed it to him and he somehow put it into the program to use to make it exact. I also used a wire hanger and bent it to get the angles where it drops into the center of the wheel where I couldn't get the sketch. Here he added the sketch I sent him into the rendering he sent back to me.


My only issue with this one is it's not concave at all. Other than that it's practically spot on.




This one I think is really close to the previous one but he hadn't cut the scallops in the sides of the spokes yet. This one might be a tad concave but I can't tell for sure.



And this one is concave but this is where he started wandering from the design again. It's still not bad though.

[RX-7 Chris]

I could try and help you with the CAD. It's been years since I've done mechanical drafting of parts in 3D. I usually just draw buildings and houses. I could give it a go if you want.

[speedjunkie]

I could try and help you with the CAD. It's been years since I've done mechanical drafting of parts in 3D. I usually just draw buildings and houses. I could give it a go if you want.

That would be great, thanks! I'm trying to get him to send me the file for the closest one. Jason said he could help too. Thanks, Chris!

[FDEEZ]

Sorry about your struggle with the test. If you're talking about course 14, then I hear the new version is a royal pita to pass. Miracles do happen though....so I hope you pass.

Nice conceptual design with the wheel. It'll be interesting to know how much the CNC costs will be with all those details.

[speedjunkie]

Eh, it's cool. Yeah it's Course 14, but at this point I doubt I'll even be taking the test. Supposedly the test has a 65% fail rate for the first time taking it lol. I still haven't ordered the test and I have to be finished by the 28th. We had some bad stuff go down at work so we're standing down for who knows how long and we're working like crazy trying to get things right, might have to work this weekend again and next week will probably be 12s. I'm super busy every day at work and can't even find time to order the test, schedule myself for TAP, get a doctor's appt to get all my medical stuff in line, and who knows how many other things. My ETS is August 10th and terminal leave should start in May, so I can potentially have most of the summer off but that gives me very little time to take care of everything. And in order to do that I want to have a job lined up first. I'm excited and also sad at the thought of retiring. This is all I've known the past 20 years. It'll be so weird not putting the uniform on every day, knowing that I'll never go to the desert again (although taking a contracting job over there for a few years is kinda on my mind), not moving every few years (I've actually grown fond of the occasional new start), and I just REALLY hope I can find the camaraderie that I've known for two decades, but I fear I won't. I feel like I'm being put out to pasture lol. However, I'm so sick of the direction the AF is going and I can't play along anymore. I definitely won't miss forced PT, Wing Warfit, urinalysis, and so many other things. I talked to my recruiter for a little bit tonight. He retired in 99 and he said he's had way more fun since retiring than he ever did in the AF lol. But it sounds like he's going to recruit me into civilian life too haha. I do get excited at times thinking of the freedom I can finally have haha. But I also feel like I'll be missing out on a lot of big things. I think much of my problem is I forgot what life in the real AF was like and I got stagnant and disgruntled. I should have gone back to my career field years ago but I love it here.

Yeah he did a really good job. And aside from not being concave I think it's just about spot on. I'm talking to him now and he's going to email me the files tomorrow. He tried to tonight but it's a newer program he doesn't have installed on his computer. I'm very eager to see what the actual material and cutting is going to cost though. If it's not too bad maybe I'll have a couple sets made over time lol.

[speedjunkie]

I started tearing the car apart Friday night. I got the entire suspension out on the front, including control arms. The rears are being a real PITA though. I can get all the suspension arms and coilovers and everything out, but I can't get the damn hub off the axle. I've done some damage to the end of one of the axles trying to get it apart, but I don't think it's unusable. If I have to remove the axles from the diff and take them to a shop to separate them, I might just upgrade the axles while I'm at it. I've never had any issues with the stock axles, I'm guessing because I don't drag race lol, but if they're not too expensive, why not? But if I do the axles I might want to do the diff as well lol.

After I had my fill of curse words and a good break after, I started tearing apart the engine bay. There was a good bit of oil in the intake pipe and several other places in the engine bay. I'm still leaning towards it being the turbo oil seals, but I honestly don't know for sure.

I think I'll work on the interior today. Take out the seats and test fit one of the buckets in the driver's side to see if I want to switch to Imolas on both sides or just one. Wine Country said they'd do a 1 for 1 swap for me for Imolas if I want.

[speedjunkie]

I test fit the seat in the driver's side yesterday. No go. It hits the tranny tunnel and the door panel, and I also sit higher than in a stock seat...my head pretty much touches the roof lol. I might have to get different rails, because these seats fit for other guys. On the driver's side at least.



We also discovered a little problem with the intercooler. This explains why, other than the lower boost setting, why the car feels sluggish. And it also explains the oil mess all over different things nearby in the engine bay. So I'm super happy I found this haha. We sprayed brake cleaner in there and it came out right away. Mitch said he's gonna fix it for free. Also, I'm going to have him put a 2.5" inlet on the IC for the new turbo, and we'll have to make a new pipe from the turbo to IC. He's also going to weld the water injection bung into the IC piping for me.


I got a new washer fluid tank from Ray Crowe for $65 shipped, the last one he had left. And another guy was selling a good used one for $75 shipped. Uh, no. LOL I messed up the tie rod ends Friday night so I ordered some replacements from Rock Auto, hopefully they're good quality. They're made by MOOG, which supposedly are really good, but someone on the forums ordered a tie rod from Rock Auto made by MOOG and it was an OEM piece in the Mazda bag and everything haha. Hopefully that happens here too, but I'm not counting on it lol. New OEM replacements were $75 each, I got these for around $50 for both.
http://www.rockauto.com/catalog/moreinf ... 21&jpid=17

http://www.rx7club.com/3rd-generation-s ... st11229616

[Saul_Good]

You need these. They allow the seat to sit the lowest.
http://garagestar.com/blog/?product=gar ... seat-rails

[RX-7 Chris]

I'm running MOOG steering parts all the way around. They are great quality. They are actually higher quality than the OEM FB parts.