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Well it took me long enough, but the car is finally moved to my new apartment, the only thing that sucks about it is that I only have one garage so the 7 will have to live outside for the time being:/ But anyway, now that the car is here I can get back to actually working on and "finishing" this damn thing!
I have drill this weekend so i wont really be doing anything until next weekend which my main focus will be on stripping the interior down and replacing with and laying down the S2 wiring and possibly get to troubleshooting the security system (going to try that before looking towards an S2 partout for the blackboxes and ECU). So far i've only cut out the under dash wiring (decided to cut it just to get it out of the way sooner) and i've also decided to remove everything A/C related (A/C compressor, condenser, A/C lines and under dash condenser and A/C lines). My daily RX-7 doesn't have any A/C stuff and neither did my last RX-7 both of which I drove during the summer and it was just fine, so that's why I decided to go the same route on the 8 as it's just dead weight is all.
Still a long ways to go huh? When do you plan on having it up and running by?
I don't have an ETA or deadline for this car. It's pretty much just "it gets done when it does". Right now my only focus on this car is getting the wiring installed so I can move onto the troubleshooting phase and once there I might have a better idea for a running and driveable timeframe. A lot is done yes, but there is also still much left to do, so as progress is made I will keep you updated
Well I didn't make the progress I was aiming for this passed weekend, but I did make some progress which is at least something. I removed most of the S1 interior wiring from the cabin and ended up cutting most of it out just to make things more convenient (**** gets in the way very quickly, but it's not being resused, so I don't really care about it unless I need spare wiring or something). But that's where it's at now, this coming weekend I plan on laying the S2 wiring down and keeping my fingers crossed for a possible first start or at least getting to the troubleshooting stage (which is very much expected for there to be alot of troubleshooting). I would've hit it harder last weekend, but nights are still colder than ***** here, so had to call it quits, otherwise i'd happily lose some more sleep working on this damn car all night lol
Other stuff: My koyorad needed some better protection seeing as all of the A/C related **** is now removed and there's no longer a condenser in front of it, so I ordered a racing beat rad cover and oil cooler covers and installing was easier than a $2 crack ***** lol
I also ordered a new set of red/blue Prosport Evo series gauges to replace my old ones which read in celsius (Not a fan of celsius, they just came with the car when I bought it) and I just got the same type of gauges as well (Water temp., Oil temp. and Oil pressure). The old gauges will be going into my RX-7 which it badly needed seeing as the stock analog water gauges sucks and there are no oil gauges in the 80' SAs
Made a bit more progress, no where near where I wanted to be a few weeks ago, but oh well. Progress is still progress I guess. The interior wiring is at least in the car now and untangling it was an absolute pain in the *****, but it's pretty much laid out where it needs to be. From here i'll be reinstalling the dash bar and getting everything connected and then move onto the rest of the car for the wiring. I wont reassemble the interior yet as i'd rather troubleshoot the car as it is to leave everything easily accessible in case I need/want to get to whatever I need to without hassle.
Also a few other new things. I had a friend of mine weld the clutch pedal out of the R3 and he did a very badass job on it. I was going to have him do my old pedal as well, but he said it was in too bad of shape for it to really be worth it and even the R3 pedal looked to be going the same route as well. Not bad shape or anything, just looked a bit worn and torn and had signs of beginning to fail. But anyway, the gas, brake and clutch pedals out of the R3 are also in the car now, so that's nice (the old brake pedal was in terrible shape as well).
I have drill this coming weekend, so I likely wont be doing much of anything on the car (if at all) until the following weekend, but i'm very happy and excited to see this build finally at it's last big step:D
Finally made some more progress with getting the series II wiring sorted out and dashbar finally reinstalled. Things do work, but there's still a **** ton of work left to do. I'm hoping that I can have the dash at least reassembled this weekend, but we'll see how it plays out.
Not too much has changed in the last bit, but the headlight issue turned out to be a missing fuse. The foglight still don't work and fuses are good, so i'm going to have to figure that one out, but not a critical issue now. Engine fuse (15A) was also blown so replaced that and now if I turn the car to ACC I can hear the fuel injectors working, but cluster still does the same thing. I'm either going to keep trying to figure out how to bypass the immobilizer or, as a last resort, i've made a deal with someone to buy a complete ECU, immobilizer, lock ignition cylinder with keys and door lock set for about $300 from an R3 part out which i'm leaning more towards because this immobilizer issue is quite annoying. Another issue is that the bleeder screws on the R3 calipers may be blocked, so i'll try a couple new ones I have and see if that fixes the issue because my brake lines are still bone dry (except clutch line bled just fine. Other than that most of the interior wiring is sorted out and I may be able to start reassembling the interior as soon as this weekend
and, not sure I mentioned it yet or not, but I traded my friend my black and red door cards for his all black door cards which should go much better with the spirit R seats, so that will be nice to get those in.
Ive made very little progress on this build but just wanted to share some great news and a few updates as well.
Found a manual S2 part out and purchased the ecu, immobilizer, matching key and lock cylinder and black boxes from it (car was verified to be able to switch onto ACC/ON mode) and should be here next Thursday. Keeping my fingers crossed that this will enable my car to do the same once installed, but I'll let you guys know how that goes once I get to that point.
sold the shitty eBay rep wheels and tires, so the car is back on jack stands again. But I picked up a set of stock Evo X enkeis and should have tires on them by Monday or Tuesday and those should go very nicely with the car (will be painted graphite before putting them on as well).
other than that my focus has been mainly on organizing the interior wiring and reinstalling interior pieces. Some mounting tabs have been broken as they were like that when I bought the parts car, so I'll have to improvise for that, but won't be much of a hassle.
Anyway, that's all I have for now, I'll be back from my army annual training in the next few days and will likely have a YouTube progress video up then as well.
Last edited by @italia916; 07-21-2017 at 08:52 PM.
I can see you really like to pass on your wisdom re people not holding their breath! It's the second one in this thread.
Projects like these take time (everyone knows that), it's just that we're excited for updates.
Sorry for the wait on the youtube video, every time i've gone to make it I get interrupted by air force jets flying low over head every few minutes, as I live right outside of base, on any given day and just kills my sound quality, so just give up eventually. But there will be a video damnit! (sorry if one of you dies from holding your breath for too long tho lol)
Aside from that I got the new (used) ECU and immobilizer set and have installed it and, unfortunately, nothing really changed except my key fob for the door locks works now (which is good, but doesn't get the car up and running still). But i've been talking with a dude named Jason Goode (Grewvin tuning) about it and i've ordered a diagnostic IDS scan tool that he suggested to reprogram the IDS system so all of the codes it needs to read in order to start match. He's done this in the past with success, so this is why i'm going this route for my plan B. The Scan tool should be here on Saturday, so hopefully it can get knocked out then and hopefully i'll have a first start video to post shortly thereafter.
Also I got the tires put on the Evo X wheels and on the car, so the car is finally back on the ground and off of jackstands (again) lol
... But there will be a video damnit! (sorry if one of you dies from holding your breath for too long tho lol)
Originally Posted by @italia916
...But i've been talking with a dude named Jason Goode (Grewvin tuning) about it and i've ordered a diagnostic IDS scan tool that he suggested to reprogram the IDS system so all of the codes it needs to read in order to start match. He's done this in the past with success, so this is why i'm going this route for my plan B. The Scan tool should be here on Saturday, so hopefully it can get knocked out then and hopefully i'll have a first start video to post shortly thereafter.
So how does it differ from the $3 bluetooth OBDII scanner (with app) that you can get from ebay?
That scan tool is just a reader you connect android devices to and use with Torque pro (may order one to use with the cheap android radio I got for the car). The IDS scan tool allows you to do all of these nifty little things:
VXDIAG VCX Nano Function:
1. Programming & Installation of new ECUs (PCM, ABS, Instrument Cluster, Air Bag, Fuel Pumps, etc.)
2. Live Data-stream with Recording & Playback Functions for Main ECUs
3. Read & Clear Diagnostic Trouble Codes (DTCs)
4. Set, Adjust or Remove Speed Governors
5. Automatic vehicle recognition
6. New Software Re-flash for Existing ECUs
7. All Other Dealer Functions
8. Steering Angle Resets
9. Guided Fault Finding
10. Program New Keys
11. DPF Regeneration
12. Brake Bleeding
13. Injector Coding
Yes I know, it been a long *** time that I've been working on this project for it to not be running yet, but it's alright though. At this point I really don't care about getting the car finished asap, there's no event this is planned for and no deadlines I'm trying to meet. But the car has come a very long way and that's all the video was meant to cover as well as a few other things.
Besides that I know many people think this swap is absolutely pointless and should never be done period and I completely agree. This build's only goal is to run and function as a stock Series 2 RX-8 with a few common (and not so common) OEM and aftermarket mods/parts. There is no real justification for this swap, just buy an actual series 2 instead seeing as their prices have dramatically dropped since the build started. They've actually dropped so much in fact that I even considered buying a red 09 R3 that popped up for sale near me with 80,000 miles for $7,000 and just ditching this build and swapping everything over from this car to the red R3, but it had already sold as I pulled up to the dealer to check it out, so I guess I'll just stick to the original plan and finish this build instead lol
02-07-2017, 11:10 AM
It's the second one in this thread.
