Weekend progress

Over the weekend I uncovered two of the rat's nests that are a part of working on a 3rd gen RX-7. The first is the most common, the vacuum hoses under the intake manifold. I had to pull the upper intake manifold to get to the coil packs and associated electrical connections. The 2nd rat's nest is behind the passenger side kick panel, made worse by the addition of an aftermarket ECU plus the J&S knock sensor. When I'm at the reassembly point, I think I'm going to have to work out some better mounting brackets for the ECU. All the adhesive Velcro used when initially installed has lost it's adhesion and came out with both halves of the Velcro attached.

Pictures to follow, when I get the camera back out to the garage.

Riley and I spent Sunday mid-morning checking pawn shops in the area for an engine hoist, air compressor, and metric tap and die set. We managed to find an air compressor used, bought an engine hoist new, and asked Dad to track down and send over his tap and die set when he has a chance.

Intercooler decisions

Not sure why, but I can't ever seem to make a final decision on which intercooler to use on the 93. I've been browsing the various options, and no closer to a decision now than I was 5 years ago when I was just looking at performance upgrades, before the engine started to fail. Who knows, I may end up putting the stock back on for a while when the engine goes back in.

Front mount is tempting, but I looked at the space and what it was going to take to route piping from turbos to IC to intake. V-mount is tempting, just not sure I like how the radiator sits, plus I really don't want to have to consider a vented hood. Guess that leaves me with a stock mount, but then I have to try to sort through all the information on various stock mount intercoolers to decide which one to go with.

At least I've got a bit of time before I have to decide on an intercooler, since I still have a whole engine rebuild to finish first.

1/16/2010 Gallery

First post of the 93 Rebuild

I finally started. the 93 is in the air, and missing some big parts out from under the hood (and the hood). I drained the coolant and oil, pulled the airbox, intercooler, battery tray, and radiator, as well as removed the power steering pump from the block. Unfortunately the only casualty of the day was the power steering pulley. The bolts holding the pump are behind the pulley, and without the SST to hold the pulley in place, I managed to break it in trying to loosen the nut holding it on. Maybe this is the excuse to pick up a set of underdrive pulleys.