Project: "Last RX-7" by Herblenny

Circuit said:

Amazing as usual.

So what has become of the 3-rotor car?

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I'm actually working on it now.. Will get there..

More Update..

I started to add some rare parts I had..

C's short shifter.



Mounted the Radium Surge Tank



Chase Bay overflow tank and eliminated OE tank.



Finally its all bolted up



Andy from Adaptronics flew in from Australia and with Elliot from Turblown, they came down to Birmingham AL to tune my car.







Video of the dyno run..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARhV6UW0950

Due to some boost controlling issue, we ended the tuning and decided to do couple of days later.

Couple of days later (day when all of us were heading to PRI) I brought these with me in case..



Here is Andy watching the car being loaded.



And done!



Several days later, while trying to put some miles on the engine and such, I ran into my friend Zach with 20B.

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Quick recall from PRI in Indy..



Couple of cool stuff I saw at PRI

Davies Craig EWP


Holley's new fuel pump sock


Alpinestars gloves


And got to have steak at St. Elmos place.. little hyped but good.



Back to the project updates.

So... got these lights


And also changed the color on the car.




Trying out what wheels will go with the new color..


Decided on the Volk Racing RE30





Hit the local car meet





Track day at Barber Motorsports Park, with Just Track It! They are one of the best groups to track with.

Wow. I love your car. It's the perfect blend between street car and track car.

IllaNoizeTV said:

Wow. I love your car. It's the perfect blend between street car and track car.

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Thanks!!

I like that it gets driven for real and isn't a dyno/garage queen! Still looks awesome.

IllaNoizeTV said:

Wow. I love your car. It's the perfect blend between street car and track car.

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Thank you! I try to drive it as much as I can... Only car I have trailered it to a car event is my 3 rotor sema car and all others I drive to the locations. Hence, I can't go all out to be a track car

More Update..

I had a photoshoot with Ryan Lopez, who shot my car other times.. I can't share those photos yet as they are still in bound to a media for publication.. but here are some I took..





Ryan Lopez's shoes matching the color of the car.



Preview of one of the shot



Couple of other things...
I put my SSM at my friend's house



Also started to work on my engine harness at Chase Bays. No one have made a quick disconnect for sequential twin



And since I'm a family man and with a dog, I been secretly searching online for a unicorn... Lexus IS300 Wagon. And finally found one!! 2005 Sportcross, only 1 of 240 ish sold in USA.





And had to get a custom plate


I had some old SSR's from my FD and put some new Toyo T1-Sports on them. I had great luck with these tires.





Talking about wheels.. I also picked up a set of MS-01S in 18s for the FD. Bought them throught GTR-Garage on Yahoo auction japan. Those of you looking for people to bring in large parts from japan, GTR Garage is the place! More info and their contact, http://www.gtr-garage.com/



I also got some goodies from CR3 Motorsports
I'm sure many of you know this company..

Catching up on my updates..

So, I've decided to pull the dip off and rock my Montego Blue paint. But to protect the paint, I've added some dip to areas where its prone to chipping.. Mainly using Toyo Tires, R888's.









Also, I was getting my RZ Recaro Carbon Kevlar seats recovered.

I didn't want something too crazy, so sticking with neutral grey suede.


perforated center cushions


All the original material removed.. I'm saving it in case for the future..


Meanwhile, still working on the OE harness at Chase Bays.. Completely disassembled and ID'd.


Also, working on a bumper. I've been a huge fan of FEED (Fujita Engineering) and RE-Amemiya. Both bumper has its positives and wanted to build a bumper that utilizes best of the both.
I was one of the first in USA to have the FEED Type 2R bumper and lights and its the signal Driving lights of Type 2R that I loved.
What I liked about the RE-Amemiya was the lower half. The aggressiveness of the lower half of the RE-A bumper is what I loved. Hence My 20B FD has the RE-Amemiya N1-02 bumper. So, I fused the two together.



But what I did not like about either bumper is the center lower section raised. This caused a problem when wanting to use front splitter. So, we are making it flat.




Everything smooth out



And Mold being made.. (credit goes to LC Racing for making the mold).






Bumper is currently on my car and few things to be adjusted and new mold needs to be made.

More Update...

No dip


I run an all rotary car event called, 'Deals Gap Rotary Rally' (www.DealsGapRotaryRally.com). Because this is almost 1000 mile journey at the end, I decided to dip portion of my front bumper to protect.



Event T-shirts


Video from my event
https://vimeo.com/126193813

After the event, I had a photoshoot with my friend Kenny Glover aka Super Model
These are photos I took of him taking photos.






Here are his photos

Update..

So, I drove to Atlanta for Import Alliance to be booth car for Grip Royal.





After the event, I went to Downtown ATL to do a shoot with Mike Kuhn and his girl Sami




Here are Mike's photos

More Update..

Just before my event, Deals Gap Rotary Rally (DGRR) (www.DealsGapRotaryRally.com), I got my seats back.



recovered Recaro RZ seats in grey suede


Installed in the car.


DGRR takes place in North Carolina/Tennessee and is one of the largest rotary car event in USA.



Its supported by the following sponsors


On my way it rained and when parked, I saw this




More photos from the event..











after the event, I got this box

More update..

Just before DGRR, I was asked by Speed Academy (http://speed.academy/) to do a write up about Plasti Dipping my FD. So, I've documented the process and they published it!









Go here to read the entire article.. http://speed.academy/plastidip-how-to-guide-tips-advice-spray-car/


Another photo.. from my event DGRR



Now that DGRR is over, I had approximately 3 weeks to get my car ready for the Exedy Booth at Formula Drift.. Also, I had a feature shoot with SpeedHunters.com
Its been my dream to be featured on SpeedHunters and one of my favorite photographer was going to shoot it, Larry Chen.

In 3 weeks, I'm going to install Turblown EWP kit, my new bumper, new color, new interior, etc.

To start, Turblown EWP kit (aka Davies Craig Electric Water pump)








I'm going to say this is one of the best mod I've done. Why?? Unlike other EWP kit I've seen, the controller will hold the pump from kicking in and pulse circulate during warm up, and once its fully warmed up, it will pump, when temp is too high, it will kick on the fans, and maintained the temp amazingly!! Another awesome feature is to continue to circulate the coolant and turn on the fan after engine is shut off.
Also, getting rid of air after filling the system with coolant was an ease. Just power the pump and fill!

Here is a video I did of the pump set up..

https://youtu.be/zOIlZNCwQ_Q

congrats on the speedhunters feature...love that site.. good write up on the plastidip also... just read thru it

ilovewheels said:

congrats on the speedhunters feature...love that site.. good write up on the plastidip also... just read thru it

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Thank you!! I was told SH feature will be coming out next week sometime

More Update..

After my event DGRR 2015, I had a photoshoot with my friend and a photographer before I started to break down the car. I had at this point about 3 weeks til my photoshoot with SH.











Clean up my garage and hung my Exedy and Rays Engineering flags.



I than started working on the interior of the car. Replacing my old interior (CF) with all OE plastics with zero broken tabs.. and got them refinished.







With Spirit R cluster



Changed the Steering wheel to match the recovered RZ seats.





Changed out the Catback.. replaced the RE-Amemiya Dual Dolphine tips to Ganador full Titanium catback



Got my Defi BF gauges I had for severals years, got new sensors, wires, and tested them out.


New AutoEXE hood struts.


Full Function Engineering goodies


Some Carbon goodies...

Feed interior covers and Feed Ganador mirror cover in CF.


I been a fan of Samco Sport product since knowing Samco were first to produce OE upgrade rad and IC couplers and hoses. Mazdaspeed kit, Samco were the supplier for MS IS kit. So, i wanted to run their goods.



Ended up getting box full of Samco goodies..



And finally the bumper...



And Engine bay

More Update..

I put all the new stuff on mainly to make it to my feature shoot with SpeedHunters. Unfortunately, I had about 3 weeks to pull it off but been working on it on the side for months.
I literally pulled it off the morning of the shoot.

Here are preview shots taken at the house, just before leaving to Road ATL.







My journey wasn't a pleasant one... My shoot with Larry Chen from Speedhunters was set at 4:30. I wanted to make sure I had plenty of time to get to ATL, avoid ATL traffic, goto my favorite restaurant for lunch, and have plenty of time to clean the car... as I drive this car to all the events.

So, Me and a local V8 FD owner who have never been to Formula Drift left my house around 8AM (9AM EST). As soon as we hit the main road, my car started to accelerate without my pushing the throttle, Since I changed up the several parts, I thought I might of not set the idle and such correctly.. After adjusting and stopping every exit on the interstate, I plugged in my laptop to the ECU to see what the possible issue was.. one of the great thing about Adaptronics ECU was you can reset/recalibrate the TPS. We reset and car seemed fine. Until 5-10 mins later it started to accelerate by itself again. At this point, me and my passenger had no idea what it was doing. Finally we got the car idling fine again and hit the road. Again it started to accelerate. Me and my passenger finally figured out, with the laptop, you can reset and recal the TPS on the fly. Everytime we reset, the car will stop accelerating. We ended up resetting the TPS over 100 times from Bham, AL to Road Atlanta. Our favorite was when we hit 3PM ATL traffic. One of the nerve wrecking drive I had was this drive. I would just shut the car off on the interstate as reset didn't help much. I had literally started the 20-30 times during the over an hour traffic I was stuck in.

At the end, I was amazed about two things I put in to this car,
1. Adaptronics ECU... the abilities to reset on the fly helped. Also, my laptop just plugging in and read the ECU without starting helped.
2. Turblown/Davies Craig Electric Water Pump (EWP). This thing truly worked. It was my first time running this kit and it truly did its job. During my ATL traffic off and on engine, I could hear the fans kicking in and waterpump circulating when engine was off. It kept my engine cool during this stressful time. Which one thing I didn't have to worry.

Oh, I forgot, I was also stranded on the interstate because my Aftermarket Industries (AI) surgetank went out. I was going 80MPH and all the sudden, car just dies. I was about to move from fast lane to right shoulder safely.
What I think it happened was, the fuel line I used inside the tank got undone. Luckily, when I was going from Radium single Bosch 044 to AI triple Walbro 440s, I had to extend some of the lines using brass barb fittings. Luckily, I was able to re route the lines so that I could use the stock pump instead of the AI tank. If I didn't use those barb fitting, we would of had to walk to the next exit, buy some fuel lines, and do all kind of fun stuff. Instead re routing took 15-20 mins and we were on the road.. still with acceleration issues.

We finally made it to Road ATL right around 4:15. I called Larry Chen asking where I needed to meet him and he said to just come down to the paddock. Going through the paddock, I felt little embarrassed. Mainly because car sounded horrible and I kept stalling out because it idled like ass.
When I met Larry, one of the thing he asked me was, "are you going to clean your car?". I guess he thought I was going to trailer the car and not drive what it was suppose to be 3 hour trip, now took 6+ hours. I told him to give me 10 mins.

I cleaned up the car as best as I could with my friend Michael, aka TPS resetter. and we went on the Road ATL for the shoot.

Here are some photos I took with my phone..











I'm now out of time.. I will update more later..

I'm glad you got to make it and get it done. I definitely understand how embarrassing it can be, I'm actually have A LOT of idle/stalling issues myself when the engine isn't fully warmed up. But your car looks great as usual!

IllaNoizeTV said:

I'm glad you got to make it and get it done. I definitely understand how embarrassing it can be, I'm actually have A LOT of idle/stalling issues myself when the engine isn't fully warmed up. But your car looks great as usual!

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Thanks!!

Great post, Phil! Happy to see you're updating your thread here with lots of juicy details. I think it's very cool of you to take the time to tell us all about not only the awesome upgrades but the challenges and mishaps as well...In fact, I think it's really interesting and educational. (2thumbs)

I hope that everything works out and as always, I'm looking forward to your next update!