Ada7\'s T-Rex

[B.Martin]

The joys of freezing weather, I\'m sure everything will be fine mate but finger crossed anyway. Oh and send my regards to Nik!

[Ada7]

Couple of updates for those interested

Begining of March...

Finally got my Rexy fixed up today.
Had to cut up the standard matrix hoses a bit so they\'d loop up and bypass going into the bulkhead and just around the engine instead. Getting to the bottom hose on the block is a right PITA though. Just hope i\'ve got it on strong enough as doing it back up was a nightmare
No heating now but thats not really a major issue.
Just take it for a spin and it feels so good to drive again
Now i can get back to trying to find time to do a full service on it and other bits i\'ve got lined up too

Last week...

Little update. Nothing to do with the car as such but had to get one of these for on the strip...



Had to make it my own



As for the car, found out its got a crack in the manifold so deciding what to do there. Might get it welded up again for now and see what happens at a later date.

Yesterday...

Ka-pow!!



Cheers Rob for this :Thumbs-up

Have to say a big thanks to Andy (a.tapos) at AMT I went and saw him last week and he helped me out with some bits i\'ve been meaning to do to my car. Great guy and really helpful and saved me a lot of time and effort.

Adam

[Ada7]

Just a \'small\' update today.
Can you spot my new turbo here....



Adam

[Ada7]

Been a bit (very) slack in updating this... :o

So back in November, after finding out my engine had lost compression on the rear rotor, and moving house, it was time to get the block out....

Massive thanks to Andy (a.tapos) for today (November). With his help (to be fair he did almost all of it) we got the engine out of my car in no time at all. I\'ve heard of people saying they\'ve got engines out in a few hours and always taken it with a pinch of salt but after only about an hour and a half the engine was out and in the garage stripped down
It was over so quick i didn\'t even get chance to get any pictures... Nik where were you when i needed you :p
This is all i got...

This....


To this.... is no time at all


Lots to do and sort out now with the car as well as getting the engine over to Era to see whats happen and what i can do.
Again, big thanks Andy.

The engine was taken over to Era\'s not long after and over time I\'ve thought about the spec I wanted to go and saving up for the parts.
Decided to go half bridge with SCR seals all around and clearenced rotors. All parts for this have been bought and delivered so the engine will be all done sometime soon. Also in the mean time I\'ve been buying other parts to get some bits up to spec. Bought a hurst line lock from the states. Automotive FPR was next followed quickly by a 3 bar map senor. There will be water injection and maybe another major change for the interior. These are all to be sorted out over time. I\'m not going to rush though as I don\'t really see the car being out for the rest of the year now. I want to tidy up the engine bay as well so the ABS will be going to make space and i\'ll try and move some fuse boxes around too. To put it bluntly, there\'s a long list of stuff that needs doing :p

The next time the car saw daylight was the end of June this year :o ...

Well today I actually got the car out of the garage for the first time this year and with a lot of help from Nik I managed to get one thing crossed of my long list of stuff I want to do. A lot of sweat and some blood spilt but the results were worth it I think.
Que Nik\'s pictures ....

Well, Photobucket seems to be working, or as working as it gets nowadays, so here we are. Prepare to be disappointed, lol.

I was lured up to Ada\'s by the promise of bacon and hegg sarndwiches, which is pretty much all it takes. The downside was to earn them I had to help swap the carpet over in his car. Sounds easy when you say it quickly... Of course, to do this it requires pretty much taking every bit of interior out, a job made more annoying by the fact both of us are quite large objects, the FD is quite a small car and Adam\'s one has a cage as an extra hazard



Still, there\'s nothing hard about stripping the panelwork and seats, just time-consuming and there are a lot of fasteners to lose in the process. Here\'s a portrait of the artist deep in thought and hard at work, so much so he\'s not even in focus. It\'s arty, actually.



This is me, pretending to work. It\'s strange, cos I don\'t remember taking this one.



The main annoyance at this stage came from the fact a previous owner had replaced some of the seatbelt mounting points with eye-bolts, and since they\'d been in for several years they really didn\'t want to undo now. One side came out reasonably easy (my one, I might add :p) but the other just wasn\'t budging and since the only way of undoing them was to either put a prybar through the loop (which was difficult due to narrow access or use molegrips (which were bending quite alarmingly, the bolt was that tight) we had to get ingenious on it. Fortunately there were some workmen putting a new door in the house, so we blagged their wrecking bar off them and used that!



Looks like the zombie apocalypse started in the back of an FD! At least it got trapped in the cage, lol



*ahem* anyway, after ages of faffing about we ended up with this



a whole load of FD insides spread over a massive area... and this



A really ugly-looking empty interior almost bereft of carpet. Here we hit the second and most non-bodacious snag. For those who\'ve never had to take an FD carpet out (and I\'d advise you keep it that way if at all possible) you need to realise it goes all the way under the dash as far as the firewall, and it\'s all one piece, just holes cutout for the gearshifter aperture. So there\'s about a millimetre\'s clearance in places between the underside of all the :censored::censored::censored::censored: Mazda hid up under the dash and the carpet, and it\'s littered with extra hazards like studs welded onto the tub for things like footrests etc, and bits of heatshielding rivetted on and stuff. This means that to get it over the transmission tunnel to one side or the other is almost impossible. We tried everything we could think of; slicing up the carpet to get it past obstacles, taking out most of the dash support bolts to make it give a bit, phoning a friend, lol.

well, we rang Dale (I think he suggested hitting it with a chair or something) and Andy T , who suggested dropping the steering column to give the dash a bit more play... a tactic which made fdukall difference but did give us some more really annoying and inaccessible bolts that we had to do back up again later. By now we had all but about one square foot out, the most irritating bit right under the dash, on top of the trans tunnel behind the centre console. We were debating whether we were going to have to take the entire :censored::censored::censored::censored:ing dash out or just leave the bit of carpet wedged in there. When I gave it one last try, fueled by annoyance, frustration and a desperate desire to NOT take the dash out.

Success at last, if you can call success the last bit of carpet suddenly coming free, thus meaning I smashed my forearm into the razor-sharp edge of the door aperture. Once I\'d stopped crying it was now a small matter to get the new one back in, made easier by the fact the previous owner of it had very helpfully cut it around all the really nadgery bits that had given us so much trouble getting out. I honestly don\'t think it would have been possible to get it in over the trans tunnel without taking the entire dash out.

Anyway, I\'ve been talking for a while so have another picture, here\'s Ada-san doing the domestic chores, lol



I didn\'t take as many photos as I should have done, really, mostly because half the day I was wedged upside-down in a really small space trying to remove impossible bits of carpet, so this story jumps about a bit, sorry. But here\'s one of it before we started putting all the trim back in



And then shazam! Finished :o  Fair to say I do suck a bit at chronicling stuff, lol



Right, I\'ll shut up now and let the pretty pictures attest as to whether it was worth it or not







Well, I think so, even though I\'ve got a big chunk missing out of one arm and one shin, makes a massive difference and really lightens/brightens the interior up. And I got a bacon and hegg sarndwich for my pains, so happy days Anyway, as my old tapdancing teacher always used to say, always leave them wanting more and always end on a penguin*




*some of this might not be true

I have wanted red carpet in my car for as long as I can remember owning an FD so for me this was a massive and great addition

One last update. This was at the end of last month....

Got another point completed (almost) off my To Do list today.
I\'d bought some new aero catches for my bonnet ages ago but have never gotten round to fitting them. Well today Hannah took Our Kid out for a stroll and so left me home alone with a few hours to spare to try and not make a huge mess of my bonnet. I know this isn\'t exactly a major job but seeing as I\'ve never done any body work type stuff and I was going to be putting two big holes in a bonnet I love then it was a little scary
I didn\'t take a picture of the pins I already had but they were very small and had started to rust and look tatty. In a way I was lucky someone had already fitted them as it meant I already had the holes where the pins would come up through the bonnet. All I had to do then was mark up where the new catches would be, make sure they were straight and even, cut the holes and fit them in. Simples

Bonnet off and old pins drilled out


Its seems someone called REG has something to do with making these new ones :p


Our Kid came home earlier than I thought but that was cool as he could lend me a hand


With the holes for the catches marked up it was time for a bit of Dutch courage in the shape of lunch before I took the plunge and started cutting



The instructions had said that the catches would be better with the smaller end facing the front of the car. Due to where the pins would be coming up through the bonnet I couldn\'t do it that way as they\'d not fit on the bonney right and look crap


So with a steady hand it was time to unleash the dremmel and get with the cutting


With the top skin cut I was left with how to match up the bottom. I just had the idea of making loads of small hole with a drill to make out the shape on the underside and then cut this straight again with the dremmel.


With a little sanding down of the edges and widening of the holes to allow for the screws to fit in the catches just dropped in to place. I did make a stupid mistake of fitting them in but forgot to remove the masking tape i\'d used so had to undo the screws again and take them off, remove the tape to then fit them back on again. But once done they look great and are damn straight too


It was just a matter of fitting the new pins in the bay and job done.... Well almost


I just ran out of time to get the pins at the right height to be able to lock the catches but that shouldn\'t take to long now they\'re in


Happy days and a job well done I thought. Yes the car is damn dirty but no point cleaning it yet as I just got rolled back into the garage till the next time I get to work on it again
My only bit of advice I give about doing this job is that if your bonnet is FRP for god sake wear gloves and some eye wear. My hands, arms and eyes are itching like mad now from the dust. Stupid me!!!

So there was have it. More or less upto date. Car is back in the garage awaiting the next day of work on it. What with moving house, having a baby and doing a lot of polishing work for other I\'ve not really had much time working on it but as I said hopefully everything will get done and the car will be ready to hit the strip again next year

Over and out

Adam

[gonzoninja]

Pretty sure I\'ve seen this around Guildford a few times. Looks great, sounds good and is nice to see an RX7 driving round the town as it a change from badly modded hatch backs.

[Grant Monkhouse]

I do believe there are a few around the Guildford area but like Adam they\'re mid rebuild upgrade phase.

They have done a few meets I believe too.