www.RX7fb.com

Here's my factory leather wrapped steering wheel after some cleaning/restoration. I've been using Bowden's Own vinyl and leather rejuvenation products (Vinyl Care and Leather Love). They are an Australian brand. No silicones or oils and pH neutral etc. Results speak for themselves. Leather feels soft and vinyl has that satin factory finish not the sticky oily crap you have with ArmorAll etc (which apparently actually helps destroy vinyl).

Very nice mate. Interesting comment there about the qualities of ArmorAll. I used to swear by that stuff back home. Maybe I just didn't know any better

That's a nice looking car! Very interested to read this thread, I'm in the process of getting ready to install my S5 13BT into my S3 as well so good to see your experiences of it.
A factory leather bound S3 steering wheel.... I didn't know there was such a thing..... I really want to get one of those

Thanks!

Yeah when i was looking for wheels i discovered Mazda had 2 versions of steering wheels for series 3s: a plain moulded urethane wheel and a leather wrapped version. Different markets got different trim levels. In Oz we got the leather wheel on the top trim level. We also got cruise control standard whereas i think it was an option in the UK?

Funny thing is, under the leather, there's a perfectly preserved urethane wheel. In most Australian series 3s the leather has usually worn or suffered tears from the sun so people just rip the leather off and throw it away.

The car went into ACBron Motorsport on Saturday for the start of a lot of work. Steering and brake conversion plus adjustable coilovers is first up. We'll play it by ear whether we make it driveable again to play around with the setup and tune the suspension or proceed straight into adding the turbo and lpg etc.

I was fretting about the drive down as the car had done only 2-3 trips over 1km in 7 years. I'm pleased to say that it was a lot of fun and i remember why i love the car so much. Only real problem was a few minor electrical gremlins, mainly the left headlight motor winking up and down and the headlight washer idiot light coming on after a big bump. I also noticed the headlight washer reservoir has a leak so another bit to fix/replace.

The car is already very nice to drive other than being a bit tame in a straight line, needing some attention with the brakes and of course the achilles heel of all 1st gens, yhe wondersteer. All of that is being addressed very soon

Here's a little something I've been working on.

I've collected a few original 1st Clarion radio cassette decks, a couple from 81-83 FB GSL (Clarion model number PT-975C) and a couple of series 3 Oz-delivered (Clarion model number PT-9031C). Despite the different model numbers, they are basically the same. The difference is likely to be the AM tuning section, due to the US using 10MHz steps instead of 9MHZ like here. Everything else looks identical, although some of the US ones appear to have a more yellow coloured text on the faceplate and display panel instead of orange.

The problem with all of these is the display panel. It is basically a perspex cover with a screen printed transparent film behind indicating the functions, presets and status lights etc. The film is meant to be stuck to the perspex using some kind of adhesive. Over time with heat and UV, the film and/or the adhesive break down, bubbles form under the perspex and the display actually tears itself apart whenever the perspex falls off I remember my original series 3 radio had bubbles in the display panel and the various ones I've picked up are in varying degrees of being stuffed.

I'm working up a digitally remastered version. Instead of getting it a signwriter to print it up on a transparent decal (which will be difficult to apply without bubbles and not be properly transparent), I'm thinking the better and more accurate way to do this is print it in reverse on transparent film (think transparency paper used for projectors), then stick it to the perspex cover using a specialty transparent double sided tape they use for adhering mobile phone screen protectors. Tesa makes a tape for this purpose - Tesa 4972. This is the stuff mobile phone screen protector manufacturers actually stick to the product from the factory. The tape is only 40 microns thick and specifically designed to adhering clear plastic to clear plastic without bubble formation. I figure it's the exact same concept. Doing it this way will give me dozens of stickers and the means to stick them on 20+ radios for under $20.

Here is what I was working with originally... (yellow and orange versions shown)
And progress pics of my cleanup effort...
not too much work to go. Bear with me, as I'm not a Photoshop pro (although I'm using GIMP cos I'm cheap). I don't think I need to vectorise the image as the finished product is only 90mmx20mm. I'll just try to sharpen the text, recolour it to the more orange version. Then take it to a copy centre and get them to laser print 20 of them onto a single A4 transparency.

Any thoughts or tips much appreciated.

...or if you have a mint radio sitting around, you could always just send me that and save me the trouble

:-"

Some more progress on the weekend. The pull down began. I got the transmission out and began removing stuff from the engine bay. Engine will come out next weekend.

My mate and I got talking and he suggested maybe now's a good time to respray the engine bay? We sort of agreed why not, then naturally the next thought was, if we're going to the trouble of prepping, we may as well weld up all the unused holes. Then, if you're going to the trouble of cleaning up the holes, it makes pretty hard to stick the factory loom back in, so why not rewire with hidden looms (since I'll have to wire in a new engine loom for the ECU anyway). As Ron Burgundy once said, "Wow, that escalated quickly."

I'll likely be doing all the prep and rewire myself. It shouldn't cost much more, it's just a matter of the car being out of action longer. And, going down this route, there would be no point putting it all back in to run N/A and test out of the steering. No turning back now.

I also discovered I actually have a s1 bonnet. It still has the little hook from the integrated bonnet latch. It must have been replaced at some point (hence the lack of factory maintenance decals).

While I have the transmission out, there's two things I want to fix:
(1) shifter won't spring back to the centre from the 1st-2nd selector gate. The 5th/R gate springs back as it should.
(2) noise at idle when the foot is off the clutch pedal.

These have been shitting me since I did the 13B conversion and now's the time to fix them.

For the shifter issue, from my limited understanding, the spring that fits over the shifter ball bushing is responsible for the 1-2 return, while a separate plunger/detent arrangement does the 5th/R return. This should have pointed to a busted spring. I bought a new return spring, but upon inspector the shifter housing the spring looks to be perfectly in tact. So, either the spring has lost tension (doesn't seem possible) or the shifter itself has too much tension in it and the factory spring cannot overcome that tension to return it centre.

I have an aftermarket short shifter kit. Although it seemed to work fine, it was very tight to begin with, so I suspect that may be part of the problem. I'm going to try a standard shifter and see if that fixes the issue. I want to use a standard s3 gear knob anyway, so need to change to the early type thread size.

If unsuccessful, I'll need to think a little more on the issue :-k

That feeling when the part you need is no longer available from Mazda and you chance upon it NOS from some far flung part of the globe.

NOS cruise control switch from a former Mazda dealer in the US (FA03-66-340).

The screen printing on the Mazda plastics is really sensitive so I'll be taking real good care of them. Sweat and probably also armorall are no good for it. Waiting on a few more NOS switches I've tracked down for my resto as well since all of mine have faded to differing degrees.

Looked at a few second hand taillights and wasn't quite happy with them. Being far too picky, i just saved myself the effort and picked up a whole NOS taillight assembly.
Placed a massive order with Mazda too and should be getting a bunch more parts i need soon. Just waiting on shipment from Japan. I'm almost there in terms of collecting all the replacement restoration bits i need \:D/

After that hopefully I'll get stuck into some real building and not just pictures of parts!

Looking good mate! Sounds like I might do what you did to the carby to get more out of the standard 12A set up until I win Euro millions and get that 20B installed!