Hello all,

I have a 83 RX-7. I am pullingthe engineand putting it in a different car. I am going to pull all the wiring, gauges, headlights, AC Unit, seats and using it all in the other car. I have a few questions about this.

1) Can all the emissions stuff be bypassed?
2) I am going to have to use adifferent sending unit for the speedo. With the tire sizes being different, is there a way to change the speedo reading?

The car I am putting the motor in you can find here. www.sterlingkitcar.com

Thanks for your help.
Donnie

 

Hey Donnie. Welcome.

You must be a fiberglass mad-man as that body has seen better days and will need a lot of work. Besides what appears to be damage from an accident, it seems to have stress cracks caused by a flexing chassis. If that"s the case and you plan to rebuild the body, may I also suggest that you do a lot of reinforcing to whatever chassis you plan to use. This reminds me a lot of a Lotus Élan a friend"s brother took on many years ago. The body was in two pieces and showed stress cracks much as this does, and the chassis needed further structure so that it did not happen again. (This was a common problem in the Elans.)
That said, more power to ya" if you can pull it off, Man.

As far as the rest of your questions, I will leave that to those that know 1st gen 7"s better than I.

Best Wishes, keep us informed and Good Luck!!

 

yes, the emissions stuff can be bypassed, but it is a little different than just pulling it like a lot of cars. IIRC, this engine has an airpump that either has to be removed and blocked off or re-routed to blow straight down the cat or, in this case (i am assuming), down the exhaust ports to a header. other than that, the others can be removed. i would recommend just pulling it and blocking off the openings. the airpump isn't essential to the exhaust ports like later engines, so it is expendible. just be careful in pulling cats and opening the exhaust up, since backpressure is really important to these motors.

the sending unit and speedo can be calibrated by most anywhere who has a dyno(depending on the sending unit that you use). just call around and check it out.

 

virgin1 - You are probably looking at the pictures from the one I crashed a few weeks ago. I have bought a new car sense then. http://www.sterlingkitcar.com/NewSterling.htm

wsoape281 - Thanks for the ideas. That’s exactly what I am going to do. (getting rid of all the air pump stuff). The speedo is mechanical. I am not sure yet if it is ran off the trany or not.So I will have to call and see what I can find out.

Thanks for your help,
Donnie

 

Donnie!! Is that thing on a VW Beetle chassis? I see an e-brake lever and cable operated heater controls that look awwwfulllyyy familiar??? If it is, I would definately consider de-flexing (reinforcing) the chassis. Beefing up the brake system would be in order too, imho.
And would you be reusing that shifter? That"s one I haven"t seen before, but it looks like a Hurst wannabe.
What is it about this car to you anyway? Not a put-down or insult, just curious.
Different tranny gears to drive the speedo is the old-school waybut is probably your only option here. You may be limited as to what output shaft gears are available.

 

Yes it is a Beetle chassis. Good eye. The shifter is a Hurst shifter. I don’t know if I am going to reuse it. One came on the last Sterling i bought, but I never could get the reverse lockout to work on it. I don’t think it even had one. Everyone said they did.

I have heard of re-gearing the cable. I am sure I will find something that will work. As long as I can get it close, that will work for me.

I don’t know what it is about the Sterling Kit Car. But I just cant seem to walk away from it.

Thanks for your help,
Donnie

 

I used to feel that way about the Bradley... another VW based kit car, and always thought I"d own one some day.
Will you be using the VW transaxle? If so, you should have a number of options available from many sources. If the Mazda tranny, not so much. Very little call for them I"m sure.
The VW Hurst had a ring handle that needed to be pulled up when shifting into reverse, but there was another AM shifter I remember that worked by pushing the shifter down, like the OE.
I had a bus (type II) once w/the stock shifter and the reverse lock-out didn"t work very well on it either. It still had to bepushed down, but not very far. It was possible to mis-shift into reverse if not careful.

 

there is a kit now that you can bolt the rotary engine up to the vw transaxle, so i imagine that is what you are planning on doing, right? there was one of these for sale locally a while back, but i didn't jump on it. it already had the hard work done, they just needed to do the body work (i am a god with glass and a paint gun) but i didn't want to get into it. i may consider one later.

 

I figured. I know they"ve made an adapter plate to install a sm block Chevy to a VW transaxle for years, so why not a 12A. I may have actually read about that being done before, now that I think about it?
I wonder how the VW tranny handles the power, andespecially the torque, from a 283/327/350? That"s gotta" shorten it"s life in the long run.

 

i don't know, all of the vw's that i have owned had pretty solid trannys. everything else broke, but the tranny is solid. that's not to say that adding a few more horses wouldn't destroy it, seeing how the stock motor was about 40 horses at the wheels IIRC.