Rexanne!

[Steve-A]

Selling my rx7 seems to be taking a while, so for now normal service shall be resumed!

My silly paddle clutch has starting to feel a bit long on the tooth recently, and on top of this I do wonder if it's been putting people off buying her. Whilst I was happy to daily drive it, it wasn't exactly civilised

Having taken the old clutch out it showed just how dead it was, I'm surprised it wasn't slipping but it was fine.



In the past I've always done clutch changes by pulling the engine out, but I could really be bothered, so went for the bench press the gearbox out from under the car option. It was quicker this way, but I'm glad I had a strong friend to help as it's definitely not a one man job.

Anyway new clutch in...



Gave the gearbox a quick wipe over too and was pleased to see how shiny it still was!



Got it all back together as the daylight died so no pics, not that there's anything exciting to see.

The good news is the new clutch works great. It's so much easier to use I can now drive smoothly in traffic again! Result!

[spoddy]

great stuff steve, you're a brave man to be under a car like that.

who ever eventually gets your fb will get a good one as you have pampered that car with everything and it'll not need
anything done to it.

[Steve-A]

Cheers mate

Yeah, you'll notice the 6 axel stands, plus two stacks of wheels, there was no way I was having the car drop on me!

[spoddy]

it makes me squirm when i see an fb like that as one of my mates
had one up and he heard it creak and got out just in time before
the car came down.

scared the life out of him as you'd think, chassis was rotten in her.

never again will he lie under a car, can't blame him myself.

[Herman]

Hello all,

I bought Steve's gold FB, so rather than starting a new thread, I thought I'd continue posting on this one to make one continuous 'story' for the car.

First thing to take a look at what appears to be a coolant leak from the inlet onto the exhaust header...



... Causing a lot of smoke / steam on start-up as shown (click to play video)



So off came the throttle bodies...



And the manifold...



And manifold adapter... 2p pieces and RTV will be replaced by core plugs





Obvious when all stripped down where the leak was coming from


So the plan is now:

1. Clean everything up with solvent

2. Properly fit the core plugs kindly donated by Harden AKA "Mullins" - cheers dude

3. Weld a nut onto this and remove it from the motor

4. Fit gaskets between the motor, adapter and inlet. Likewise for the base plate of the throttle bodies. Hopefully this will help everything seal better and also reduce heat soak
5. Replace the bolts with new ones

Before I crack on, a couple of questions I'm hoping someone can help with:

I'd like to replace the bolts with studs to allow for thermal expansion. Would the car have had studs as standard? If not, can anyone see anyone see an issue with fitting them?

When I drained the coolant out it looked suspiciously clear in colour - is this some fancy antifreeze you rotorheads put in, or has Steve just forgotten to use any? (I wasn't quite brave enough to taste it!)

What is this hole for?


Cheers dudes, hopefully the first update of many to come...

[Lucky]

Good work! Looks like exactly the same leak I put right on mine earlier this year. Glad I put in new O-rings rather than the recommended 2p pieces now You may find you're glad of that stuck stud when it comes to locating the manifold back on with the new gasket...

[Steve-A]

I'm sorry to hear about the water leak issue, as I said on the day it must have sprung up recently because it was never anything I noticed. It definitely had anti freeze in it! 1 part blue antifreeze to 2 parts water, though I did notice when I filled it myself that cheapo concentrated antifreeze I'd goto from the local motor factors wasn't very pigmented.

Where there is already a stud on the rotor housing, it would have been a stud from the factory, and in the other rotor housing. I couldn't get that stud out, so just left it. I'd tried the welding a nut on the old stud with my old engine that blew to remove one of those studs and just sheared the stud off closer to the housing behind the welded nut, so I figured it was safest to leave it. The outer mounting points where I used bolts were all bolts from the factory.

[ian65]

yeah, as Steve says, the bottom 2 inlet fixings are studs and the upper ones are bolts

[Herman]

Good stuff - cheers gents!

Any ideas on the mystery hole?

Also, any idea where I can get a part number for a 13b inlet gasket to suit the adapter Steve made?

[Steve-A]

You should be able to get a gasket from Mazda without much hassle (if you pick a dealer with a friendly parts desk man), I did port the intake manifold to the adapter quite aggressively though so you'll probably need to trim the 13b gasket a bit to make it work. Might be just as easy to pick up some gasket paper and cut your own out?