1983 RX-7 GSL "FB" gets it's new lease on life

[P71]

Well I promised an update and it's a big one, so grab a beer and take a seat.

I bought the car in February of 08. The original owner had given it to her nephew to sell. He traded it to me for a running 87 5.0 EFI motor with AOD trans and wiring for his Falcon. The title was still in her name and it had a folder of service history in the glovebox with the original owners manual. Here's what it looked like after a quick detail:



It was straight, clean, and most importantly, rust free. It had never been in a major accident, but it did get backed into on the nose messing up some paint and the bumper cover. I got the metal and glass tops with it as well as the original leather carrying bag.



It's a 1983 GSL so it has the 4-wheel disc brakes, LSD rear, and the 4-spoke 13" alloy wheels. It's fairly well optioned with a rear wiper, power windows, power mirrors, cruise, A/C, power antenna, and a sweet 80's graphic equalizer. Everything worked!



The car was all-original, never rebuilt, and had 227K miles! The engine bay was so unmolested that all of the emissions were present and functioning! The nephew did disengage the flapper thing that deactivated a rotor and took off the heat riser tube to the air filter assembly. Here's some "before" photos:




A few hours of cleaning and some elbow grease later the engine bay was presentable. The radiator shrouding had some surface rust and scale so I cleaned all of it up, sanded it, primed it, and painted it. I also sealed all of the gaps and holes to better keep airflow going to the radiator. Afters:





I then dove into general maintenance. I changed the oil and filter, flushed the coolant, installed new pads and bled the brakes, new battery, new starter, new rotor and car, new NGK plugs, and even did the first upgrade of Magnecor Competition wires. Then I made the mistake of taking it drag racing twice. The first time everything went excellent. The second time the driveshaft failed...



I luckily found a S3 driveshaft at a local shop and had it rebuilt with new HD U-joints and rebalanced. That's when I figured out I needed an S4 rear flange for the diff. So I got one of those too and "Blinky" was back on the road.



The original seats didn't work out so hot on the autocross course so I swapped in a set of blue S4 GXL seats using a combo of FB and FC sliders (check the 1st Gen section for that thread). The red/maroon interior has held up surprisingly well, but I'm still swapping it our for the black interior I have in the garage.




I started autocrossing like crazy but I also drove the car on nice days. Then I started driving it whenever I felt like it. I just loved driving it! You can't say Rx-7's aren't useful though. We had to buy some 2x12's that were 10 feet long to build some flower boxes. Buy were the F350 guys at the Lowe's embarrassed!




That should pretty well catch us up to the original post about the racing. I competed in over a dozen autocrosses and made nearly 100 runs in my Rx-7, without a single failure! It's been a great car and never let me down. It has 233K miles on it now, and yes, I did drive it Saturday and Sunday.

[JoeNoble]

Originally Posted by P71

I started autocrossing like crazy but I also drove the car on nice days. Then I started driving it whenever I felt like it. I just loved driving it! You can't say Rx-7's aren't useful though. We had to buy some 2x12's that were 10 feet long to build some flower boxes. Buy were the F350 guys at the Lowe's embarrassed!

I fit a medium sized deep freeze in mine. It just barely fit even with 1/3 of it sticking out the hatch lol. wish i had snapped some pics.