The builder I bought the car from had an Optima red top installed in the hatch area. The car did not originally have a factory spare and I had the seller include it with the purchase. The battery not only took up cargo space but it also blocked access to the factory spare tire area, so the spare had to be carried on top instead of underneath the trunk carpet.





The factory carpet also had a nice cutout in it after removing the battery.



I kept the 4 gauge wire they used for the Optima battery. I re-routed the power wire inside the cabin under the carpet and through the firewall. The original route they used was through the fuel tank lid, underneath the car next to the exhaust and up into the engine bay to the factory battery mount. The battery post mount was coupled to the wire using a nut and bolt. Removed the post mount/nut bolt setup and just bolted the positive wire directly to the main fuse.


I added a circuit breaker for easy disconnect within the cargo bin. I connected the ground wire inside the passenger compartment to the seat belt mounting pount. I didn't take as many pictures of the process but anyone that's done a dual battery setup would know the basic details.





Battery was tied down to the car frame using a simple battery strap setup. I'll test the battery voltage from time to time with the terminal wire touching the battery ground. I used a Westco AGM Miata battery from GoMiata. It's been working well for the past 6 years and I keep it connected to a Battery Maintainer most of the time.



Voltage only looks high because it’s connected to the maintainer.

Future plans include rewiring the engine bay and the fuel pump once I get all the details together. The ground in the engine bay is pretty ghetto looking with the yellow ring terminal. The floating main power source is also just as non-asthetically pleasing.

I decided to do some work with the engine bay with air flow and the coolant system. I decided on an M2 intake, which took a while to hunt down. Didn't take too long to find the CF one from another member. The good thing about rare parts is that someone is always holding on to it and might be willing to sell to fund their new projects.



Then I also got an XSPower SMIC from a friend in Austin. He spent a good deal of time grinding away the XSPower logo and polished it up. Looks pretty close to an M2 SMIC to an untrained eye.



The oem SMIC looks like it does very little cooling if anything.


The only downside is that I didn't realize I needed the Greddy elbow to make this kit work so car was going to be down for a little while til I could make it work.


Actually if I didn't have the M2 intake box it would have fit fine because I could have shifted it over to fit the smaller connection that was meant for the stock elbow. I should have done more research in the end because I ran into overall fitment issues. My RZ bar wouldn't clear the hot side pipe. I didn't have a proper place to mount my AST anymore after installing this SMIC either. It's not surprising that I used to rush into things before researching. Now a days though I might spend too much time reading and making spreadsheets on information before deciding on anything.

Decided on the regular flow Koyo radiator. Looked so shiny and new that I almost felt bad installing it into my dirty engine bay. I also went ahead and bought brand new OEM radiator hoses from Ray Crowe.





This was a time that I wasn't picture heavy and I lost some of my back ups too. The cool thing about the replacement radiator hose clamps were that they came with these red metal ties that you just pull off and they clamp into place. So cool...lol


I bought an aluminum air separation tank from Tri-Point Engineering to replace the stock plastic AST. They don't make anything now a days but I used to like what FD parts they offered at the time. I never understood the shape of the stock AST being square, seemed like the coolant wouldn't swirl properly to get rid of air in the cooling system. It'd be cool to add something like this to the 4Runner but we don't have any issues with cooling plus a lot of RX7 owners end up deleting this. If you can properly flush your cooling system, you should never have any air bubbles in the first place.


I also met up with a local forum member to talk about the process for restoring the AC system. He had a pretty cool rotary engined pickup truck with TE37x wheels. He recommended on getting a full MANA set of lines, just in case the ones I had were bad, an extra condenser, new compressor, new expansion valve, and rig up a new drier. The new drier was to replace the MANA drier, which was a pain to find a replacement for. For FDs, there was the MANA (port installed) and a JDM (factory installed) AC setup. Differences were very small but mainly the drier for the JDM setup is very easy to find, while the drier for the MANA setup is pretty much impossible. I guess this is partly the reason why most people just ditch the AC setup altogether. The other reason would be racecar...

I decided that it was time to clean up everything and do a photoshoot.


Some last minute touch ups from exhaust carbon build up.





Exterior was mostly factory, most of the mods were to suspension and engine bay. At least the height was adjustable thanks to the Tokico/M2 coilover setup.



Also replaced the old PowerFC commander with an OLED commander.


I liked this shot I did a few days later too. If you're still keeping up, by this time I took off my R1 lip and ziptied on a 99 spec lip to my 94 bumper. A nice side profile of all of my cars at that time.

At the time, my friend was just starting out with his detailing business so he offered to do a correction and debadge what could be debadged from the rear.








The SBC RPF1s always looked great when they were cleaned properly.



I went ahead and fixed the sagging lip. When I first installed the 99 lip, I ziptied the factory holes to the ones on the 99 lip which obviously doesn't line up. So I did the reasonable thing and just drilled a bunch of small holes in inconspicuous areas and just did about 6 zip ties per side to get the lip as close as possible. I plastidipped the lip because initially it was white but the previous owner must have hit something so it had a giant spider crack on the edge. Looks good enough for a track build anyway.

I was still getting some wheel hop, even though I'm only on stock hp and have already installed my new rear end pillowball and poly bushings. I went hunting for a differential brace on the classifieds.



The PPF nuts were seized, so the studs just came out with the nuts when I tried to loosen them.



Nothing huge to note, except I was still getting some slight wheel hop so the search for an answer continues. I can tell the rear end has firmed up some or maybe its just a placebo effect. My differential bushings are delrin bushings so I'm sure its not that. I'll have to bring down the differential just to make sure though. I would rather have the new HPP 2 in 1 cradle, but there's still a wait list for that one as well.

All the parts for the AC refurbishment came in and I went over to another forums member garage to get started on dismantling the AC plumbing.



These are a mix of the lines I bought online from Fritz and the lines from my car. One of the lines was weirdly bent. Might have been for an non-stock intercooler setup


I had returned the SMIC back to stock so I could get at the AC without messing with the nicer couplings from the upgraded SMIC.


This is why cabin air filters are part of newer cars.



This was the old expansion valve. This is pretty much it for the disassembly portion. Chunked the deuce on most of the stock lines and some of the new lines. The next day is going to be spent on cleaning the lines for installation.

Started off the day cleaning the lines with this AC cleaning spray I bought from the autoparts store.




Prior to the AC refurbishment, I bought a new medium SMIC setup to replace the XSPower setup. Check out that new SMIC duct. Seems like it'll be efficient.


Here's the new compressor. It's actually the compressor off of a 93-95 Toyota Corolla. $130 off eBay vs spending $300-400 on an actual RX7 compressor.


The drier was a retrofit of the stock RX7 lines and lines off of a 1st gen Tacoma. It turn's out the 1st gen Tacoma / 3rd gen 4Runner uses the Denso drier instead of the MANA type. I had a local shop weld the aluminum lines. Turned out great.



Found some real R12 off craigslist. Held decent pressure. It wasn't perfect and we found out that the schrader valve was bad. Too bad it was after we filled up the system so that'll have to be dealt with later on after I finish my plans with the engine.


Spent roughly 20 hours refurbishing the system overall. AC works but it only gets super cool while at freeway speeds. Coolant temperature creeps while sitting in traffic or in the city. At least I can leave town with the car if I need to take it anywhere. However, now a days, if needed I can use my 4Runner to tow it with me for track days or if I need to go up to Rotary Performance in Garland.

I moved from the XSPower SMIC to an M2 medium SMIC setup. The fiberglass intercooler duct I installed with the AC refurbishment came from this setup. The new SMIC setup came from allrotor, the same guy that sold me my FD. It just took a while because I was waiting on the Greddy elbow and finding the fabled cast hot side pipe that allows for strut bar clearance.






Side by side comparison shows a slight difference from the XSPower and M2 SMICs.


This was pretty much the high point of the engine bay. Only other upgrades would be fuel upgrades, direct fire coils, v-mount intercooler, and single turbo. Not all but at least fuel upgrades would be the next step, behind the scenes upgrade.


Next up are these Stance XR coilovers on the next update. These are custom valved for the FD with 10k/8k front/rear Swift springs. Received these babies a few days (7/23/12) before the M2 SMIC install.

The rear coilover installation went fine..



Went ahead and replaced some of the old suspension bolts while I was at it.



It'll be nice to have proper suspension dampening again. Front bushings on the tokico shocks are known to wear out so hammering a seized bushing does nothing except just make it jiggle in place. This is where a BFG would have been useful but I didn't have one back when I was staying at the apartment. I didn't have access to a power saw so I'll be using a hack saw to get it but that won't happen for a few months.

So 8 months later, finally dusted off the FD and took her to my friends place so we can cut off both front strut to control arm bolts to put in the front Stance coilovers.



Pretty straight forward, just cut off the strut bolt and chucked the old setup in the trash.





Although factory settings from Stance has the car pretty low. I can't really tell between the settings on the coilovers. Soft and stiff feel pretty much the same to me.

Not many updates left before we catch up with the present. Ticked over 90k back in 8/23/13.




Then I moved out of my apartment back in November 2013, so I had to arrange to leave my car at my friend's house for long term storage.



Bought a few supplies (12/5/13) to get the brakes ready for track weekend in December of 2013.

For a combo of track / street use, I just went with Hawk HP Plus pads with slotted Stoptech rotors. I didn't really think there was a need for larger rotors / BBK calipers like I did with my 3rd gen and 4th gen 4Runners mainly because the stock system felt pretty robust already.





Ran into some issues trying to break the rotor off of the rusty hub.




Pads were almost done.



I like the bite the slotted rotors give. Prefer them over crossed drilled, which was what my RS4 had and my CTR has now. The calipers have seen better days though and looks kind of off with the shiny new rotors. I'll be doing a complete rebuild in the future of the calipers and probably new finish as well. Not sure what color I'll go with though, I already have red on the CTR and 4Runner so maybe black or blue. I was also debating on rebuilding these calipers or just buying rebuilt ones from NAPA or RockAuto.

The rear brakes were a bit of an ordeal. The passenger side gave me some hell taking 2 days to finish the job.



Check out that crusty goodness.


Ended up snapping the passenger side bolt that holds the caliper in place as well.


To end the day, I couldn't get the piston all the way in with long needle nose pliers. Must be some kind of seizure of the piston going on. All I know is, I spent 4 hours going no where and the sun was already going down. Good thing I wasn't in my old apartment parking garage.



The work on the driver side on the other hand went fine. I should always know that things won't ever go smoothly on this car.

In retrospect, I could have probably left the rears alone since I needed the car up and running for the track day. These setbacks almost cost me my track weekend.

Third day working on the brakes now. Reminds me of my recent venture with the 4th gen, taking 4 days to change out almost all braking components. I pray that the hard lines aren't rusted through like what happened later on with the FD.


The piston refused to go in, even with the rental tool from Autozone.





Next up was to drill out the seized bolt. Just cutting through the threads was enough to loosen up the bolt from the spindle. I can't remember if I tried hammering it with a BFH though. I learned alot more with my recent brake work on my rusty 4th gen.



Fluid looked pretty bad. The rears looked just as bad even though it came out a bit more golden brown.


The aftermath with all the rust and metal shards that came out from all the work. The new pads have that nice sporty noise that sporty pads have on BBKs. Unfortunately, I can hear the rear passenger brake binding a bit on the freeway, which eventually went away. I'll have to try to rebuild the caliper and if that doesn't work, buy a new one. My friend was telling me to do some soaking in vinegar to get the crustiness off the caliper before rebuilding.


The car had been sitting for a good while, so I borrowed my friend's battery tender to top it off for my road trip to MSR Cresson.