James' Race car build

[Hobbawobba]

Those throttle body dimensions look familiar bro!

[gt_james]

Been slacking at updating this but things have been happening.

Plans changed slightly as Tony Ellis offered me his ex race car ‘79 shell, so some questionable decisions later and I have 4 RX7s at this point.



Tony raced this car for years, and won the Toyo Tyres saloon car championship, so I think it’s a cool car and will be great to get it back out on track.

Unfortunately it’s not been raced for probably 10 years, was completely stripped to a bare shell and even its roll cage removed, and then sat outside for a while. So it’s a big project. This is how I got it.



Jesse helped get the 12A out the yellow car that I will use in this car.



I got a roll cage and seat mounts and a couple of rust repairs including a NOS rear valence and also a tri link and panhard done by Tubeworks custom fabrication. The car had a G force engineering set up before but the axle abs arms were gone, so all that was there were the body side mounts. Tubeworks did the axle side brackets and chromoly links. I picked the shell up from them end of March and been spending my free time building it back up.

[DB RX63]

Some great work there James, just check that the series you intend to race in will allow fibreglass doors.

[Casey]

Great to see this update, especially after our recent chat at Goodwood

[gt_james]

Some great work there James, just check that the series you intend to race in will allow fibreglass doors.

Cheers! Yes you’re right, for some series I will need to change to steel doors. I have a single passenger door but need a steel drivers door.

[Threesevens]

Awesome work James.
I presume the exterior colour will remain unchanged?

[gt_james]

Yes I'm trying to avoid a time consuming total respray, so I will stick with the orange, and just paint the panels that I need to. I like the orange anyway.

[Casey]

James, what paint did you use on the underside and wheel arches? Just grey paint or POR-15 or.....?

[gt_james]

I used an underside kit from SR autobodies. First I took it all to bare metal (a lot of work haha), applied rust-I-sol which is a ph neutral version of kurust basically.

Then the floor pans just red oxide primer, then brush on non shrinking seam sealer and enamel brush paint, can get any colour, I chose anthracite grey over black as it makes it easier to see what you’re doing underneath imo.

Wheel arches I did high zinc brush primer, seam sealer, spray on stone chip (Shultz type), then the brush on enamel.

On a road car you do the whole underside like I did the wheel arches, but on a track car trying to save a bit of weight I left out the stone chip basically except for the arches.

The inside and engine bay it’s painted with the same colour but it’s synthetic enamel mixed in an aerosol can.

[gt_james]

The brake saga is over with. New kunifer hard lines everywhere, through the car not underneith to the rears. I have a driver adjustable proportioning valve in the rear line. Braided HEL/Goodrich hoses throughout. Stock calipers, running an MX5 BMC 7/8" bore, fitted a honed developments brake servo removal adapter and changed the brake pedal ratio to 7:1.



Then fitted the engine and box back in.