OK, well ive decided to start my project thread, been meaning to do this for a few weeks but never got around to it, im hoping for as much advise as you guys can give me and hopefully this will be alot of fun.

Right lets start at the beginning, after looking around for ages to get myself my next car i get myself a budget of 3-4k for something.

My criteria was that it would have to able to take a good thrashing and i didnt have to watch the rear view mirror for smoke everytime i put my foot down(5yrs of running a 12sec r5 turbo)


so i was left with an evo 4, and rx7, 200sx and a r32 gtr.

After thinking, well how fast do i want to go and at what point with would i be happy i had enough power i sat down and thought, well my 5 was 325bhp/ton and i want to go faster than that so im looking at 450bhp evo/200sx, that will cost a fortune and will only match my old car.

I then did some more research on the gtr, at 4k im looking at the very bottom end of the market and id again need 470-480bhp to match it, skyline tax is pretty bad and id need at least injectors, turbos etc to get that.

So finally i looked around and after watching many a youtube video and also alot of initial d i realised the best handling and cheapest car for big power was the rx7.

So basically lived on beans and noodles to try and set myself a decent timescale to get the money together, i then started to look at cars.

Eventually i found one in derby, pics look good and was decently priced at 3k
(pic below)


when going to see the car i marvelled of how good condition it was, not a spot of rot, with it coming into the uk in 2006 and only done 55k it was worth it, i knew the clutch was on its way out, but compared to 6k for some of the others id seen i thought it was a bargain.

Well a few weeks later it developed a water leak, because of the undertray and the cramped engine bay i couldnt work it out where it was coming from, since it only did it after driving for about 10mins i took the guess that it was coming from the overflow on the AST, so i blocked the overflow and took it for a very steady drive for 5mins, looked underneath and no water, thinking i had cracked it, i headed home and pulled outside only to be greeted with an bang under the bonnet

(im sure you can guess what happened)

The plastic AST exploded! So im stuck with a problem, OK, ill just bridge the between the 2 hoses using a hollowed out pen as it seems to fit the bill and people on the forums say they run without an AST anyway.

So drove it around for a few days, everything seemed fine, even had a couple of 160mph top speed runs...seems people on the forums were correct

Anyway came to my car one morning only to see it surrounded by water, popped the bonnet to see my main waterpipe to the top of the radiator has exploded during the night, ribbed it literally in 2 and i find its my main water hose that was leaking that caused the leak but because the water ran to almost the other side of the engine bay before dripping onto the floor it made it hard to work out it was from there.

A call to WGT to see if he can get one for me, he says he will get one ordered, we after waiting a few days and getting panicky as its my daily driver for work i ring him again to see whats happening, after some research mazda have told him that part is not currently being made anymore, the company mazda used to have make them has gone bump so thats it.

A search of ebay i find a guy selling them blue silicone ones for £29.99 for the set and he only lives 10mins from my house, beats £50 for rubber ones from mazda!

After fitting them i dashed up to WGT to get a metal AST to save the same issue happening again.

Well after a few months i decided i wanted more power so installed a set of second hand HKS filter kit i got cheap(£70) from carl at harward.

Then a month later i fitted a xspower cooler(£120) with the idea that id build some ducting in the future after fdash's decent results with his so the engine bay looks like this.


A few weeks after i decided the clutch really needed to be sorted, i could drive the car but as soon as i put my foot down it would slip madly.

Talking to pip again we discussed clutches and i went for a stage one uprated exedy clutch thats rated for 340ft/lb which i thought should be enough to keep me going for a while.

While i was in for a clutch i got the chance to watch and film this quad rotor monster being mapped(normal car has 2 rotors)


Well from this point i was pretty happy with the car, drove really well and was alot of fun, though there was no camber at the front and would understeer at the limit so i decided suspension would be my next port of call.

After asking a fellow fduk member(mattie) about his suspension he offered me his set, only been used in the dry and hardly done any miles, pretty much like new for £300


so after fitting them and messing with the dampering and ride height i noticed alot more grip on the front end by gaining camber, first test was the local roundabout that i used to understeer around, well a big second gear sideways moment definetly told me the front end gripped better!

Looks alot better aswell



So this brings me up to the more present time.

NOW THIS IS WHERE IT GETS INTERESTING


My water seals had been going for quite along time, so i just kept topping the water up but it finally got to the point of no return so i was left with a non-running rex, luckily i knew this would happen eventually so i had been saving for quite a long time in the event id need to get my wallet out.

Now im sure you have been browsing ebay and seen the adverts for rebuilds well i decided to give him a ring and see what he had to say.

Now what can i say about this guy, most companies ive ever called in the past cant get you off the phone quick enough but steve rivett was completely the opposite, if you call him you best have a good 1hr of your life free to talk.

We spoke about everything rotary from the simple stuff to everything complex, never have i met a guy so passionate about what he does, or infact so honest. He told me about the first 2 engines he built that didnt even last 500miles because of mistakes he made while he was learning, that spoke to me about how open he was, i would never imagine any other tuner tell you about there fuckups! He is a retired engineer and only started this because his son is a racecar driver and owns a rx7 trackcar.

So after a long chat i decided to take my car down there, upon arriving im surrounded by other rx7s that hes working on, he borrows a garage from a friend in return for looking after his rx7(also owns a f355 and f40!), this was all very grass routes stuff and i like the personal touch he gives.

Anyway, we begin talking about what he will be doing to the car and what i want from the car.

This is the point where we sit down and have a good think, realistically how much power do i truely want, what level will i need to be at that ill never want anymore, i come to the conclusion that 550bhp on pump gas should be enough with another 100bhp for race gas.

So he shows me this tools and we talk about porting, he owns a set of racing beat large street port templates and shows me a current engine he is in the middle of porting. We look at rjpartri dyno graph to see what he has done in the past.

this is on standard twins with 0.8bar of boost, as you can see its making good power up at 8k, if was even making decent power at 8.5k and from what ive read that means that the ports are quite large and are flowing well.

So since he has never built an engine that he knows is going for 550bhp we talk some more about the porting, using the templates to start him off, once he has done that he is going to push the porting a bit more than normal for maximum flow, also hes going to port my UIM, LIM and remove the secondary throttle.

Finally when building it back up he will fit a sump brace and fast reacting air temp sensor to help out in future mapping.

This now brings me onto bolt-ons to make the power.

TURBO kit

Im going for the rx7 store GT4088 TURBO KIT


Which according to the compressor maps should flow a nice 550bhp at 1.3bar


ill need a 3inch decat which i can get done cheap locally
a power fc to control everything

FUEL

Im going for the rx7 store Extreme Fuel System

with uprated fuel pump of course.

Now intercooler is where im unsure of, ive looked at the ebay greddy style setups but i need to do some more research on them to see what sort over power people have made on them


All in all including my rebuild im budgeting 5k to acheive this, which aslong as im careful with my money i believe is achievable.

This very much is a budget build so im not gonna be throwing £3000k t51r turbo kits around.

So what does everyone think, the car will be ready to run the engine in 2weeks time, so it will be a while before its on the dyno but im pretty hopeful.

I will update this thread as i go along but everyone is welcome to comment good or bad as im happy to learn off anyone