The Road to ChumpcarThe home of "Apex of Failure" a crap-can racing team.

A deal popped up on rx7club that seemed good for the team.  One of the forum members up in Seattle had a White 1987 GXL RX7 (same year and model!) that they were parting out.  I was originally just shopping for an alternator but it looked like he was getting rid of a whole car.  For the right price, we really needed spare parts of everything.  Lots of things can and do break during a 24 hour race.  While racing with FreeRange we have been lucky enough not to need them (knocks on wood) but we have saved the race of more than one FX16/MR2 team who needed parts.  This is high on my list of “good things I learned from other teams”.  With the intent of keeping nearly everything off this car I was able to negociate a price of $400 for the car and all the parts.  This included an aftermarket strut tower bar, exhaust, wheel, and short throw shifter.  Upgrades!

The car had been in a collision with a semi (side swiped, hit and run too.  Everyone was ok).  Nearly every body panel on the car was bad.  The good news was that it was driving fine less than a year ago and had spent that entire time wrapped up in a giant tarp under a car port.

I joined forces with a friend of mine who just happened to be taking an Audi up to Seattle to sell (the same weekend too).  Towed the Audi up and brought the RX7 back.

On 11/15/09 we started work dismantling the car.  This was our first major work day for the team.  All hands were on deck!  Max, Ben, Rob, and Nick all came down to get it torn down.  No real major drama here.  We managed to get nearly everything off in one day.  The pictures will speak for them selves.

We found a complete set of these sockets hidden away in the back storage bins.  Bonus!

Day 1 finished with a short list of things left to do.  Front subframe, gas tank, rest of the carpets, heater core, head lights, and engine accessories.  Less than 2 weeks later Gabe came over and we finished it up.

Rob works with a couple guys who offered to take the shell off our hands for the scrap metal money.  Not wanting to deal with it we got them involved.  I’m not sure they have done this much.  A late night a couple days later, they came equipped with a saws-all and a toyota pickup.  They eventually gave up cutting it in half and found a way to get it out…   Apparently he even drove to work with it like this a couple days later.

Now we have a large pile of parts to sell and parts to keep.  We should now have every part we need (and plus some!) to get our car running.

I received an e-mail one day from a friend of mine offering a free RX7.  Free car you say, what a deal.  Well rx7 enthusiasts don’t always have this reaction.  These cars are notorious for having blown engines (a design “quirk” of the wankel rotary engine) and being money pits.  Many cars have popped their motors and have been left to rot in black berry bushes.  This leads to rust, mold, and rodents.  A free rx7 always ends up costing you something.

For our purposes these kinds of typical problems wouldn’t really matter that much.  We were going to strip everything off.  Many of the creature comfort systems (like uhh, the windows) would be removed.  We needed a big hunk of metal to put an engine in and connect to some wheels.

I took my friend up on his offer and when to checkout what would undoubtedly become my second job for the next year.  This is what I was greeted with.

Way better than what I was expecting.  Look, the paint is even shiny.  The car was 100% complete.  Clean title.  Keys.  Spare snow tires (it already had snow tires on it, lol)!  130k on the clock.

Here is the story that I got.  A woman owned this car and loved it.  She was either the first or second owner, I can’t remember.  After over a decade of service, it had developed some kind of serious problem.  At that point (some time in 2002) she purchased a nice Toyota and this car was parked.  There is stayed under a tree.  There is good evidence (broken windshield, half the car literally covered in small dings) that some punk kid had used it has his rock throwing target (is this what red necks do before they are old enough for their own “shootin’ car”?).  Earlier this year, my friend was offered this car if he would come pick it up (Grants Pass, OR if I remember correctly).  He confirmed it was a 5 lug (5 bolts on the wheel, the more desirable form of this car) and brought it back.

(Pictured here, Rob, one of our teams principals, aiding with the loading of the vehicle).

It was then brought back to yet another tree to sit under.  Three weeks later we started work.  The mean goal was to try to figure out what was wrong.  Was the engine completely shot?  Could we get it to start?  What are the major areas of repair we would have to deal with?

RX7′s have crazy spark plugs.  Turns out this car uses the exact same plugs as my 93 twin turbo.  I grabbed a set of used plugs from by car and put them in.  Pictured are what came out of the car.  Relatively uniform, thats a good sign.  We also created a gheto siphon system with a garden hose to suck some of the presumably bad (sitting for 7 years) gas.  It was mt dew colored.  Nasty.

With fresh plugs and gas we hooked it up to some jumper cables and gave it a shot.  It would turn over but no combustion.  A plug was removed and observed while we cranked.  We were definately getting spark so are problem is probably fuel.  To confirm the diagnosis we opened up the air box (slightly damaged, we will need to do something about that.  This is a easy place to modify for simplicity and power anyway) and sprayed starter fluid (to act as a fuel source) right in.  After a couple tries we were able to get some combustion but only as long as we were spraying fuel in.  We weren’t getting fuel delivery.  The fuel filter was try and there was no pressure in the lines.

Fuel pump.  We checked wiring and we were definitely seeing some voltage.  Something had to be wrong with the pump.

See the rubber insulator mounting at the bottom of the pump?  That had been dissolved to the point that it acted like silly putty.  When turned over a nasty brown fluid came out the top.  This pump was shot.  Rob had a walbro 255 sitting around (for a 240sx but we could make it fit for testing).  I wired it up and got it in the tank.

She fired right up and purred.  No overheating (at idle).  No strange noises.  Would rev all the way to red line.

Known issues at this time:

Alternator – Belt was broken and sitting in the back hatch.  Would not freely rotate by hand, probably why the belt was broken and sitting in the back hatch.  Needs to be replaced.

Belts/Fluids/Battery/Normal Maintenance – I’m surprised running this engine at all didn’t break the rest of the belts.  They are in horrible condition.  I’m sure everything needs to be done to this.  Battery is of course shot.

Electronics -Radio doesn’t work (don’t care).  Power windows are definitely showing there age, the motors are almost shot.  Same thing with the sun roof (why did we even try to open that?).  Most of this doesn’t matter.  I just hope it isn’t a bad sign for the things we want.  Electric door locks don’t seem to do anything on the driver’s side.  Neither does the manual nob (key works though).

Clutch- Clutch pedal is sitting on the floor.  Seems to be a hydraulics problem.  This coupled with the bad battery means we couldn’t move this car under it’s own power.

Windshield – The only glass we actually want in the car is broken.  We will need to find one of these.

That work was done in early August and that is the way it has sat until now.  It’s been relocated yet again, to my house.  My garage is going to serve as team head quarters for now.

Next up?  Completely strip the interior, remove the sound deadening, skin the doors (remove all the glass and metal supports so its just a piece of decorative sheet metal) and get ready for the roll cage!