Project Purple Nurple
 

So I finally got ahold of an FC to start a decent project with. The car I bought is an 86 base model N/A, but has a recently rebuilt street ported 13b along with a lot of other misc goodies such as a decent syspension system, and some other small mods. I chose the name Purple Nurple well.... for obvious reasons.

Finally got around to getting my rear strut bar installed today. A guy I work with let me use his cutting wheel to get the rear speaker towers out. After him watching me butcher one of them he took the other one out much more cleanly, and in about half the time. Also the steering wheel was some ratty aftermarket one the previous owner had installed and the cover was rotting off, so I made a psudo Mazda racing wheel out of an old no name brand wheel I got from a friend, and an old wheel center cap.

so what are your overall plans?

I have a lot of different ideas Im considering. Eventually I plan on going turbo with ITBs. The motor I have now was actually built to be a turbo 6port so Im not sure if I want to spend the money involved turboing this one, or get a turbo motor and go from there. Right now Im mostly planning maitnance upgrades like a new trans, a new set of injectors, and a few other things. After that I want to get an exhaust and some other things I can keep when I figure out what I want to do long term.

How was it "built to be a turbo 6 port"? I would definitely just swap the 4 port turbo in and call it a day...

From my understanding all the internals are upgraded to handle some boost, not a lot but enough to give it some decent power. The problem is Id like to eventually put in a RE motor so Im not sure if I want to spend the money doing a Turbo-II swap only to yank the motor back out again in a couple years. Right now its just one thing at a time until I get to that point though.

turbo 4 port could be a T2 or RE block :) both are easy swaps...

Purple cars make me weak in the knees. I look forward to watching you update and mod the car! if you ever need a hand for menial work or just hanging out, let me know!

Deffinatly will do. And its odd I originally planed on doing a completely different color scheme, but the purple is deffinatly growing on me. Im just gonna gave to get a better paint job so the white door/hood panels don't stick out so bad when I open them.

Not really an update but some good news nonetheless. Found out that I have the Turbo-II LSD rear end in my car, which makes me happy in so many ways. One less thing to have to upgrade in the future.

Did they just redrill it for the NA driveshaft?

Im not sure to be honest. I think they just took the LSD out of the T2 axle and put it in my car as I still have the stock 4lug axles... That or its also possible the guy was BSing me, which I don't want to think is the reality. Shady rotary people scare me.

I'm pretty sure the T2 ring gear won't physically fit in the N/A housing due to its larger diameter. The hubs are a separate assembly and I think all you need are the TII stub shafts nad the N/A axles will bolt to them. As mentioned above the TII pinion flange would have also had to be machined for the N/A driveshaft.

Is there any easy way to verify what may have been done to it? I guess next time I have the car up on one of the lifts at work Ill give it the ol rear tire spin test and see what happens.

I don't have a comparison picture handy but there's a pretty noticeable difference in appearance between the N/A and TII rear ends. Here's a picture of my N/A rear end when I had it out of the car:

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-l...-27-05_472.jpg

The TII rear end is much beefier. If what you have looks like mine they're either straight up lying or someone's done some work. Direct swaps are the clutch-type LSD's from '87-88 GXL's or viscous-type LSD's from the '89+ GTUs. Of course there's always the Miata torsen swap (what I have). Other than that it's going to be an open diff.