Rexanne - Gold s2 restoration project

[Ian65]

Well Done Steve!

An absolute credit to your mastery of the black art of Resto

Not to mention the black art of rotary fuel consumption.... Something that Mazdas best engineers were unable to crack!

[spoddy]

wow steve lovely pics, she looks amazing!
i\'m really envious lol. thats great mileage you are getting, what ever improvements you have made have certainly helped. i blew my wheels up a few psi more on the mx3 and get about another 10 miles per fuel mark, which is 10 Litres. normally i get 120km per 10 Litres now i get 130-150 km depending on driving lol.

i also flushed the oil out and added this amtech oil additive into the new oil, which basically seals up markes/scratches inside the cylinder walls, making it like new again.
so compression is restored and you get back to nearly how the engine was to start off with and it does work.

they say its safe to add to a rotary engine, but i\'d only try it out on an fb not the rx8, if i got an fb which has a high mileage engine.

[Steve-A]

Not to mention the black art of rotary fuel consumption.... Something that Mazdas best engineers were unable to crack!

28mpg (imperial) again tonight! 285 miles down and it took 44.5 liters to brim it again.

I can think of a few things that might be helping my consumption out. I\'ve not been doing many short trips to the shops and back. Plenty of 50 mile round trips to pickup the girlfriend and 30-40 miles excursions into the B roads of herefordshire for fun.

Unless out for fun (see 30 miles excursions on herefordshire b roads!) then I\'ve generally stayed on primaries only, only using secondaries when accelerating to motorway speeds really. That said a good half of that 285 miles was spent just driving for fun with plenty of buzzer action with the secondaries wide open.

I did get inside the intake manifold and smooth out lots of lumps and bumps and port match it as best I could, including bringing the primaries out much closer to the size of the ports in the block, i wonder if this has had any influence.

Finally maybe just the general condition of the engine is helping. Nice fresh cooling system keeping things good and cold, no viscous fan to waste energy, pre-mixing means cleaner burn and less carbon build up.

Either way I quite like this 28mpg lark, I was quite prepared for 18. It makes me re-consider my ideas about porting, and think more that a turbo would let me keep that 28mpg for the daily driving aspect, whilst offering a decent power increase for larking about. Would also bring my exhaust volume down a little. Hmmmm!

[Ian65]

I can think of a few things that might be helping my consumption out. I\'ve not been doing many short trips to the shops and back. Plenty of 50 mile round trips to pickup the girlfriend and 30-40 miles excursions into the B roads of herefordshire for fun.

Unless out for fun (see 30 miles excursions on herefordshire b roads!) then I\'ve generally stayed on primaries only, only using secondaries when accelerating to motorway speeds really. That said a good half of that 285 miles was spent just driving for fun with plenty of buzzer action with the secondaries wide open.

I did get inside the intake manifold and smooth out lots of lumps and bumps and port match it as best I could, including bringing the primaries out much closer to the size of the ports in the block, i wonder if this has had any influence.

Finally maybe just the general condition of the engine is helping. Nice fresh cooling system keeping things good and cold, no viscous fan to waste energy, pre-mixing means cleaner burn and less carbon build up.

or perhaps your speedo needs recalibrating!!

[Steve-A]

GPS says its 7-9% over reading, so make that 28mpg into 25mpg?

Is there a simple way to re-calibrate the speedo? I might have the clocks out anyway for a bit soon to adjust when the buzzer comes on. It seems to be coming on the the tach is reading 6.5k for now, I kinda don\'t want it to sound till 7.2 or something.

[myatt1972]

14 to 18 mpg for me with mechanical secondaries.

[rossonza]

steve, you want it buzzing @ 12k

[CHC (RIP)]

Hi Steve - CONGRATULATIONS mate! :god

As if there was any doubt about the roadworthiness when Rexanne was finished.
You\'ve got an awesome looking motor there now (oh what a stunner) and the knowledge that everything is either refurbished, new or a very good original.
May you have many happy trouble free miles ahead of you.
Cliff
:Thumbs-up

[Will66]

Damn she\'s a sweet ride!  Glad you\'re having so much fun with her.  The RPM have got to get Kimi back on the road so we have some idea of what you\'re going through!

[Steve-A]

Cheers Cliff Nice to see you\'re back.

Will, you\'ll love it when you get her on the road. Its such a difference experience to a modern car, but it rather result in a lot of smiles!

[Steve-A]

So I\'ve been on the road a week now, and driving the rx7 is feeling a little more \'normal\'. That said the novelty hasn\'t really worn off yet.

I\'ve not had anything come loose or stop working yet and I\'ve done about 600 miles, so hopefully I\'m past the biggest chance of it falling to bits or blowing up! I\'ve checked the oil and water and stuff, and its not used any so thats good.

As I said a few days ago, I did have the back of the car to bits to sort the fuel sender.



Turns out the earch connection was broken within the sender itself. My fix involved earth the whole top of the sender, which in turn required insulating the screws so the didn\'t earth the whole tank and fuel. The end result is functional if not pretty.



And lo, there was fuel!



I also decided I\'d like to take a little boom off the exhaust, so cut the old boy racer chrome tip off.



And welded on a simple tip the same diameter as the main exhaust, just as a temporary measure to see if it worked.



It has taken some of the drone off at low revs and around town which is good. I\'ll have to re-do it in a more cosmetically pleasing way at some stage.

Whilst I was under the car I decided that I\'d look into winding the rear coilovers down 5-10mm, purely for cosmetics. When I did it didn\'t look much lower, so I measured it and it hadn\'t gone down :S So I jacked it back up and wound it down right to the bottom, another 10-15 mm. It still wasn\'t any lower, so I knew something was up.

After a bit of investigating I decided it was this watts link binding that\'s been pointed out as a flaw in the design many times. So I shortened my low radius arms about 8mm, till they felt under no tension when the suspension was at my ride height, and the car instantly sat lower. Whilst I was underneath I decided that lowering it even by that initial 10mm would compromise my suspension travel so I wound it back to where I started.

Out for a test drive the result is a much more compliant rear end, thats smoother over lumps and bumps, overall a success! I guess even a couple of mm difference in the lower arms makes quite a difference to that bind, so I\'ll have to keep experimenting with it.

I\'ve been temped a couple of times to start stripping the interior out and painting it, as I get a bit more ready for some speed, but I\'m being sensible and holding back. I\'ve no money for engine mods right now, or for bucket seats.

I dont imagine much will happen to Rexanne for a few months, just day to day maintenance.

In the mean time I can give some TLC to my Alfa and motorbike.

[CHC (RIP)]

You\'ve done a gr8 job on Rexanne mate and it does look really good :3gears-rh.
Okay so you want to remove the interior and paint - your choice but please don\'t paint it Kermit Green!  Anything but that!

How was the Watts Link affecting the ride height - can\'t get my head around that one but can understand if there was a difference with the lower radius arms.

By the way, just because you have nothing or little else to do on Rexanne don\'t justify stripping her down again at the weekends :Giggle you\'re supposed to keep her driving.
Any idea what your performance is like (mpg)?

[CHC (RIP)]

Oops almost forgot - if I\'ve missed the answer to the next question I\'ll apologise now, what did you do to the front windscreen pillars (re the rust issue)?

[Ricco_04]

Good work dude, the car looks mega

[spoddy]

fix up the rear paint work above the exhaust maybe, i see a rust patch?