GSL-SE in Tennessee

[Spannerhead]

All UK cars were to the same spec, choice of colour that's all.
Oh and there was an Elford Turbo option plus a few bolt ons from Elford. That was all approved by Mazdsa but carried out in UK to order.

Our Stereo fitment on the UK Series 3 cars was a simple but good Clarion cassette player/ radio.
Ours still works but we rarely use it. The cassette player is probably not up to much now.
The electric aerial is still a hoot though.

Interesting. Did you get the updated interior we got for the S3?

That Elford Turbo sounds like a nice piece. We had CarTech turbo kits over here but they weren't factory sanctioned.

Welcome to the forum Matt!
Looks like you got yourself a great project there, Im looking forward to a build thread

Thanks very much! It will be a great project. On the whole, I probably overpaid a bit, but I did get free access to the previous owner's parts car, and most of the trouble with the current car is nothing more than cleaning and freshening (other than the bodywork). The car itself runs great.

As a part of my continuing efforts to shampoo and clean every last bit of the interior, earlier this evening I pulled up the rear carpet and found a good bit of rust on the storage bin frame:





Fortunately the whole piece comes off, which will make it much easier for me to sand and apply some POR-15 to the affected areas.

[Lucky]

That's another thing we never got; the storage bins. All UK cars came with rear Dwarf Bucket seats. Those bins look like they would actually at least hold some sensible-sized objects judging by the framework. I've never really seen inside a set before; only seen FD ones which are worse than useless, they're so small you often need to carve the plastic surround up to even fit a relocated battery setup into one

I don't think we got the last interior upgrade; maybe the upholstery, I'm not sure, but we never got things like the clockset with the offset rev counter that was on the last models Stateside

[codge]

Hi All,

Intro posts moved to make an ongoing 'RX7 Rides & Projects' thread at Matt's request.

Matt.....Your Tennessee weather may have sheltered you from our biggest rust problem. That's inside the rear wheel arch. Lift any plastic covers - looks like you might not have them - but whatever you've got make sure rust isn't striking through from inside the rear wheel arch area. Just about all of our cars fail there sooner or sooner. (There's no later with this rust attack!).

codge (Dave)

[Spannerhead]

That's another thing we never got; the storage bins. All UK cars came with rear Dwarf Bucket seats. Those bins look like they would actually at least hold some sensible-sized objects judging by the framework. I've never really seen inside a set before; only seen FD ones which are worse than useless, they're so small you often need to carve the plastic surround up to even fit a relocated battery setup into one

I figured the reason the bin frame was removable was to allow for the installation of the midget seats. We never got those as an option; the only US-spec RX-7 with optional rear seats was the S4/S5 and even then they're exceedingly rare.

The bins are rather commodious. They got locks and inside lights for '85. I'll take a picture when I have it all reassembled.

Intro posts moved to make an ongoing 'RX7 Rides & Projects' thread at Matt's request.

Thanks Dave.

Matt.....Your Tennessee weather may have sheltered you from our biggest rust problem. That's inside the rear wheel arch. Lift any plastic covers - looks like you might not have them - but whatever you've got make sure rust isn't striking through from inside the rear wheel arch area. Just about all of our cars fail there sooner or sooner. (There's no later with this rust attack!)

I'll check that area; thanks. The underside of the car is pretty clean. Even the rockers are reasonably straight, which was a big selling point seeing as how most 1st gen RX-7 rocker panels are all banana'd from being used as jack points rather than the frame rails.



As far as I can tell, the only rust on the car is on the sunroof, which is being replaced, and on the battery tray where one of the POs apparently had a battery explosion. That will get a good coat of POR-15 when I do the engine pull and scrub.

[Spannerhead]

More progress:

- Painted the hatch surround plastic
- POR-15'd the rust on the bin frame
- Shampooed the hatch carpet

After cleaning, I hit the rust on the bin frame with a good coat of POR-15:



I would have removed the frame but ended up stripping several of the mounting screws, so I just did it in place.

As for the hatch plastic, here are the "before" pics:





Typical UV-bleached plastic.

The switch plate was my doing; I boiled it in water hoping to restore the flexibility of the plastic, which it may have done, but it whitened the plastic as well:



So I used this stuff, SEM 15303 Graphite:



The bottom line: It's not a perfect match (next time I think I would use 15243 Satin Black), but it's much cleaner, more consistent, and it's a nice product.

Here's the switch plate:





And the hatch area:







I'm satisfied for now. Will do further plastic, and probably respray the existing plastic, in 15243 in the future.

[Lucky]

That looks a hundred times better already! Amazing how practical a car it suddenly seems without the back seats

[m swann]

Thanks for showing the plastic paint. what prep did you do to the plastic before painting it. And any other recommendations re this procedure?

[Spannerhead]

That looks a hundred times better already! Amazing how practical a car it suddenly seems without the back seats

Thanks! I'm happy with how it turned out, even if I would like it match a little better...

...and yeah, I can't even imagine what kinds of kids would fit in a pair of back seats???

Thanks for showing the plastic paint. what prep did you do to the plastic before painting it. And any other recommendations re this procedure?

No prep other than cleaning. I hit it with a Simple Green solution and followed up with Windex (glass cleaner). Supposedly you can apply plastic adhesion promoter, but I didn't. It does scratch, but:

A. Plastic is gonna scratch regardless, and
B. If it gets really bad, now that I have the color, I can just pull off the plastic, sand down the scratches and respray it.