I'm gonna try to keep this short, since this is a recounting of events from seven years ago and wouldn't want to drone too much. The white RX7 is actually not my first RX7, I bought my first one about 6 months prior to getting the current one. I spent about a better part of the year on and off looking at RX7s, even while I had owned an AP2 S2000. I sold the S2000 to get my second 3rd gen 4Runner for practicality purposes since I was moving out of town. I tried to fill the sports car void with the purchase of my B7 RS4, but that was more of a grand tourer than a light weight sports car. I debated between getting another S2000 or trying my hand a new platform, the FD RX7. The rest is history.
05/23/11
My first RX7 was silver just like the 3rd gen I got the year before. It was a 93 with a manual swap and a few issues, including the usual blown pillow ball bushings, leaking ac system, and couple wiring issues due to the manual swap. It was a great deal at the time being less than $10k. The guy delivered it to the Target down the street from my apartment (on and I had to get a co-worker to bring me back (pre-Uber days) to get the 4Runner. I cleaned her up and got a few nice photos together.
Ended up learning several lessons along the way. The 93s had weak ass paint because blue painters tape tore off the clear coat. The keys to RX7s were pretty weak, being really long and having a slim point due to the cut, are prone to breaking. The clutch master cylinder ended up giving out a month into owner ship, which I replaced with a factory fresh one. I restored the AC system and got the system to blow cold air again. I also did a few "mods" including getting the RZ strut bar and replacing the wheels with some Enkei RPF1s that I had laying around. I bought them before I knew I wasn't going to have the S2000 anymore and didn't want to lose my $600 deposit on them. Funny though because I just sold those wheels last week on craigslist to fund my garage clean up project.
Here are the brand new wheels I had laying around for almost 8 months. Gotta admit, it was fun being able to mod again because at this point it was close to the end of my residency.
5/29/11
I did get in a couple other mods because my friend over in Ft. Hood, I was in Temple at the time, was doing an LS2 swap and was parting out his 13B parts. I bought a B&M short shifter and an HKS carbon ti catback off of him.
6/24/11
I remember being glad to get rid of that heavy stock exhaust that was already missing a tip. I also put in a mid pipe deleting the catalytic converter. The RX7 sounded pretty sick afterwards and I didn't care that it droned because I had three other cars at the time I could drive if I wanted to have peace and quiet.
7/5/11
I bought a full polyurethane bushing set along with "new & improved" bearings to replace the stock "pillow ball" bushings. More to come on this, but I was planning on it being a track build so I was moving towards a more solid suspension setup prior to fuel / power upgrades and ultimately exterior cosmetic upgrades.
7/30/11
This was one of the last things I did besides the AC, which I'll leave it out of the introductory post, was the clutch MC. I completely forgot I did this until I reviewed my build thread from back in 2011. Looked like at the time the car badly needed a full hydraulic system bleed, the RX7 shares its brake fluid reservoir with the clutch system. The clutch MC was weeping and caused the clutch pedal to not come back up after trying to clutch the car.
After restoring the clutch hydraulic system and ultimately AC system, I was able to daily drive the FD for the next four months. Until I found the white one with 50k less miles and a fresh engine swap. I jumped on it and flew out to Raleigh, NC to pick up the car in November of 2011. Stay tuned for part 2.