RX-Snake: Project Management and General Issues
 

This will be the Master thread, containing the project management and other top level stuff. Other threads will be created for dedicated subjects.


BASIC VEHICLE DESCRIPTION
1987 RX-7
Small Block Ford 302
Holley 174 Blower 12-15 psi with meth/propane
4 speed manual top loader
Ford 8.8" or 9" solid axle rear
Almost fully striped (minimal electrical retained)
6 Point Cage
Custom Paint and Logos
Custom Body work
==================

Video of torching off wheel, it's a hoot!


We expect the car to run mid 10s@130~ with a good driver. The car will be about 450WHP and 2,700 lbs.

joedls has graciously provided the engine transmission and blower. We owe him big time. :hail:

This thread is for active project participants. If you are not a participant but have any questions or comments, please use this thread. If you have any SBF, RX-7, other parts, money or time you'd like to contribute post in this thread and poof you're a participant.

Please see the next three posts for project management overview.

Project Schedule
 

UPCOMING DATES
Work on Tuesday June 8 and Thursday June 10.

PHASE BREAKDOWN
PHASE 1
- Acquire Car -- DONE
- Strip Car 90% -- DONE
- Transport SBF and Trans to Vettezuki's house for later installation. -- DONE
- Acquire Heads -- DONE
- Repair Holley 174 -- Underway
- Cage car 6 point -- DONE
- Assemble engine -- Fully dissassembled
- Acquire Headers
- Acquire Carb -- DONE

PHASE 2
- Setup Axle
- Suspension -- Fully removed and disassembled
- Check and rebuild brake system as needed
- Begin Body Prep -- Underway
- Body fabrication -- Front and rear bumper, well underway
- Gauge layout and dash fabrication

Phase 3
- Mock up, installation check
- Body and Paint

Phase 4
- Install engine system and trans
- Install interior
- Install electrical
- Shake out bugs, loose ends

Parts Needed and Open Questions
 

PARTS - This is a VERY partial list, but are for sure required.

Engine Related
- Starter - DONE
- Alternator - DONE
- Alt bracket - Joe thinks he has one
- Main Pulley - Joe thinks he has one
- Headers
- MLS Head Gaskets (can you say boost baby!)
- Distributor
- Plugs
- Wires
- Radiator
- Carburetor - DONE

Trans Related
- Scatter Shield - DONE
- Shifter - DONE (in shipping)
- Drive Shaft - We have one to work with

Msc
- Line Lock
- Battery
- Wheels and tires for the rear, tires on stock wheels in the front

Suspension
- Front Struts
- Rear shocks

Project Log
 

December 31, 2008: Decided on RX-7 with Forced Induction SBF. See this thread for history of discussion.

2009
January 3, 2009: Purchased 1987 Gen II RX-7, began stripping.
January 4: Removed engine and trans, continued to strip harness and clean. Decided to make the car minimally streetable, with "show car" registration
January 5: Received Engine and Trans from joedls. Continued to clean.
January 6-7: Continued cleaning and stripping
January 9: Purchased pair of Avenger 195cc Heads
January 10: Received Electric fan from kdracer73
January 11: Continued cleaning and stripping. Transferred to 94cobra69ss396 for caging. Caging begun.
January 23: Received Heads
January 24: Ron continued Work on Cage
January 28: Picked up Alt + Starter
January 29: Removed stock heads, began cleaning block in prep for paint. Discovered valves in new heads won't work with current pistons.
February 4: Ron Completed Cage
February 8: Purchased Carburetor, checked cam, continued stripping down and cleaning engine.
February 13: Picked up blower from Joe
February 14: Joe dropped off oil pan. Picked up SBC Crossmember, TKO Trans Mount, DS, and MC from buddy.
March 1: Joe acquired Scatter shield at swap meet.
March 13: Ron completed fabricating installing modified trans cross member and fabricating motor mounts, including fitment checks
March 14: Ron dropped off RX-Snake back my house
March 21: Full day group effort on body prep
March 22: joedls dropped off scatter shield and blower intake
March 25: Death Cult Aaronmageddon began working on front bumper, I began removing sound deadening material, etc.
March 28: Death Cult worked on Front Bumper, I continued removing harness, sound material, etc.
March 29: DC continued with front bumper, I did msc, clean and prep, big2bird dropped off C5 radiator for trial
March 30: DC continued with front bumper,
April 3: Major patio and garage cleaning
April 6: Received Renagate shifter
April 10: Worked with DC on front bumper and misc stripping cleaning
April 12: Major cleanup of work area
April 13: Pull internals from engine with Ron.
April 19: Began stripping the remnants of the sou
nd insulation with a Scotch Brite pad
April 24: DC worked on the bumper
May - August Front and rear bumper fabrication related work, engine dissassembly and lots of tidbits
September - June: Here and there on the front and rear bumpers, and getting the blower sorted.

2010
We're back yo!
June 8, 10: Front and rear bumper, body work, etc.

I'm excited. :D

Me too, it should be interesting. I'm hoping to learn a lot (especially given how little I know currently :laugh:).

I would ask TT to do a cad overlay, showing the integration/fitment of parts. He has the skill, just don't know if he has the time/interest.

Top 4 Posts
 

I'll use the top 4 posts as our ghetto project management. Keep an eye on them, they'll change continuously.

I am down to help out with time and maybe even a little money. Lets do this!! :nuts: :woot::creepy_thumbsup::thumbs_up:

See Phase breakdown in Project Schedule to see if it makes sense to you guys. Ok, I'm going to clean up my patio now for this project.:drink:

Ben,

We may want to at least drop the motor and trans in there before we go to paint to see if we need to make room/modify anything. That way we can do the modification and not have to worry about messing up Adam's awesome paint job. Once we get a car I can photoshop some paint schemes.

Paint should be last, unless you want to mock it up first, then disassemble for paint and re assemble.:sm_up_there:

Not likely with a blower! :D But hey, that's what a sawzall is for.

Ben, as far as traction goes I'm invisioning some huge 4" +? Type flares in the back. With some finesse and some art work it can be made to look nice... and mean. Is that something that you guys would want me to do? What are you thinking as far as tires go?

As far as the paint job, Ben, can your air system be set to run at around 35 psi? I'm looking into buying an HVLP gun just for this cause.



And let's give three cheers to Joedls for donating a wicked drivetrain! :beer::beer::beer:

:iagree::woot:

That's the spirit. Even if it's a coupe, a full cage then ,"voila", instant vert.:sm_laughing:

Tires should be dictated by power and function. If we're thinking >=500WHP there isn't any reason to run anything wider than 10" slicks. At least as far as my primitive knowledge goes. But hells yeah, let's make it mean. The flares should just follow the function of the tires we end up with.

I think the regulator will go that low and if not we can get one. I have a paint gun (my brother's) around here somewhere. But it ain't no fancy one.



In deed.:drink:

I think a mock up before paint ain't a bad idea. It'd kinda suck to run into a whoops, that don't fit, after paint. :huh:

Yep. You have plenty of HP. Draw it, mock it, fab it, disassemble,paint,assemble, finish work like wiring,gauges,etc.

Your brother does indeed own a gun and it is a fancy one. It's modeled after a super mega expensive German made gun. It will do anything you wanna do. Your brother doesn't buy cheap tools. Also the air compressor your brother bought will definitely support 35 psi for extended use. It's been used to prime a roadrunner before.

Well heck then, game set match. I thought you once told me it was the older type of gun and not one of these new fangled low pressure types. :huh: But word.

Said brother also has a mig welder that I used to weld the trailing arms on the vette and a bracket for enkeivette. I also have his blasting cabinet for cleaning up stuff with an attachment for doing media blasting. In short between the stuff of his I have here and my own relatively well equipped tool set, we should be ready to rumble. And I'm very willing to add to my tools as necessarry, like maybe a cold cut saw, pipe bender, who kows. :smack:

I think that a Pipe bender would be a good add. Besides being able to use it on the project car, we can build you some bumpers for the jeep.

I've got nice (expensive) rock crawlers on the Jeep. But a pipe bender is one of those "you're cool now" tools. Especially if you know how to use it. I don't think it'll be so necessarry for this project, unless we think we want to try and build our own cage, which might be fun and educational . . . But first things first. Get car. :smack:

A good mandrel bender is $$$$$$$$. I have buddies with those. Save your $$$$

Good to know. :)

See poll and please vote for basic direction of car. This has implications from engine setup (how aggressive, what can be tolerated) and electrical, etc.

I voted for vaguely streetable. I think it would be cool to be able to drive it to car shows or something occasionally.

With the drivetrain basically set and a tight budget in mind, I don't think that we have to worry about keeping streetable. I think we can go as crazy as we want and it will still cruise on the highway and put around at Sonic Burger.

This is sort of like when people ask me for workout advice with the preface "well, I don't wanna get too big." Hey, don't worry about it, aint gonna happen overnight!

Seeing as how this will be a track/ meet only car. I see no reason to hold back any, we will have plenty of limitations. We don't need to impose any of our own.

I don't see how the poll options are mutually exclusive. Unless we're talking about 5lbs for headlights and turn signals.

Purpose built cars don't have to account for side view mirrors, indicator lights, headlights, etc. Nor do they have to have more than a couple gallons of fuel. A street car needs these things and tune, plus cooling system, that will handle street driving. I think it's important to distinguish. Also the registration is totally different. Not something we have to decide so quick, but if I manage to get the car tomorrow or this weekend, we can begin stripping immediately. I don't want to put things back on. :smack:

Is a manul tranny cast in stone? Unless your gonna get a narrowed 9" rear with a spool, a highly modified C-4 might help keep you from grenading the rear. A good set up C-4 with a real high stall can be made to beat a manual tranny.

I agree. Streetable costs weight, and limits what you can do.

It only need to be minimally streetable, like a street legal (show car registered) race car is ok. Race seat(s), no back seat, no insulation all is "fine". My concerns would be more of the chassis harness, engine tune/cooling, and the like. Can be decided later, just want to get an idea of other issues I might not be thinking of and flesh out opinions.

As for the tranny, nothing is set in stone. I would actually lean towards the Auto if it's going to be a purpose built straightline car, and keep the manual if it's going to be anything additional. Plus I'm exploring some lines on 8.8s and 9s anyway.

Well, I'm gone 3 days and nothing has been done. Damn.:laugh:

Ben picked up the car today and just had AAA tow it home :bigthumbsup:

If you can build the cage that would be awesome. I think we can figure out the tubing.

hey eveyone I've been out of town all week, I wanna see pics of this beast. I def. wanna get in on helping with this beast! Seems like an awesome idea, can't wait to see pics!

Brian

I'm about about to give a ruling on the street/vs. non-street issue.

In any event we are on the same page. enkeivette and I were talking about the dash. I always wanted to drive a car that was started from a switch on the roof. :motorsmile:

Ben, did I call it or what? :D

How did you get the steering to unlock? Did you dremel off that lil doohicky?

Indeed, you called it. BTW, bird, I have the resources to punch out any pattern on a 2D piece of sheet metal you can dream up. So let's think about all the gauges and switches we might want.


I started by dremeling the locking mechanism. Then my little lazy monkey brain said, there's got to be a better way. Hazaah. There was a set screw for the key mechanism. Once unscrewed said mechanism was easily pulled out. Then, using my favorite tool, the big-ass-screwdriver, I could turn the "key" (a.k.a., screwdriver) to run. Poof, unlock had been achieved.

Ben, can Adam and I come by and check it out today? We could pull the engine if you have some free time. We're going to Savi at noon, so I was thinking 1ish. I'll give you a call and see what you're up to.

That'd be great. See you around 1:00 - 1:30.