1983 RX7 on $100 a week

Ah crap, budget is really $292. Thanks for catching that. I think I want to have more money than I do.

What are the biggest changes you made in between autocrossing the Rx7 and rallying it?

All I do between surfaces is connect/disconnect the rear bar and adjust tire pressures. I think I have quite a lot more front bar than I need for rallycross but the car is extremely well balanced for autocross. I'm trying to spend a lot of time driving and learning about this RWD stuff before I spend time and money changing things.

mazdeuce wrote: All I do between surfaces is connect/disconnect the rear bar and adjust tire pressures. I think I have quite a lot more front bar than I need for rallycross but the car is extremely well balanced for autocross. I'm trying to spend a lot of time driving and learning about this RWD stuff before I spend time and money changing things.

Do you think you'll play around with ride height in the future? Seems like I saw you put some spacers in for RallyX, will you leave those in for AutoX?

I love this build, I'm incredibly jealous and love that IMSA aero you got originally

The whole suspension is up for debate in the future. It would help the car a lot if I pulled the spacers for AX as camber is a huge issue. I have plans to pull a LOT of weight off the car. Mostly metal parts becoming non-metal parts and glass becoming not glass. I'm not going to chase the perfect suspension until I get the weight close.
I have an internal debate about that front aero piece. On one hand, I don't need it and it should go live weigh someone who does. On the other, I have a very strong interest in vintage racing and if I decided to do an RX7 that one piece would be the most important. That and the guy who has the super secret Mazda factory skunkwork porting guides from back in the day.

mazdeuce wrote: The whole suspension is up for debate in the future. It would help the car a lot if I pulled the spacers for AX as camber is a huge issue. I have plans to pull a LOT of weight off the car. Mostly metal parts becoming non-metal parts and glass becoming not glass. I'm not going to chase the perfect suspension until I get the weight close. I have an internal debate about that front aero piece. On one hand, I don't need it and it should go live weigh someone who does. On the other, I have a very strong interest in vintage racing and if I decided to do an RX7 that one piece would be the most important. That and the guy who has the super secret Mazda factory skunkwork porting guides from back in the day.

What's the best way to get into Grassroots rallying?

In reply to Cool_Hand_Luke:

Buy a cheap car and sign up. Seriously.

All rally in the US is grassroots. Do you want to do full stage rally or just play with cars? If you want to play with cars and have more fun than should be legal, find yourself a rallycross. If you want to get into stage rally, rallycross is still good, but you need to attend some actual stage rally events. Get a feel for what goes into a rally weekend, the work, the time, the money. Attend a rally school. "But holy crap that's expensive!" you say. Not compared to the cost of stage rally it's not.
Having said all of that, I personally got to the attend a rally part, bought a car, and was overwhelmed by life before I could get on stage. I got back into it with rallycross which is more manageable to my life and am currently the chief safety steward in our region. The best information on the web is at the specialstasge.com forums or the rally anarchy forums.

mazdeuce wrote: All rally in the US is grassroots. Do you want to do full stage rally or just play with cars? If you want to play with cars and have more fun than should be legal, find yourself a rallycross. If you want to get into stage rally, rallycross is still good, but you need to attend some actual stage rally events. Get a feel for what goes into a rally weekend, the work, the time, the money. Attend a rally school. "But holy crap that's expensive!" you say. Not compared to the cost of stage rally it's not. Having said all of that, I personally got to the attend a rally part, bought a car, and was overwhelmed by life before I could get on stage. I got back into it with rallycross which is more manageable to my life and am currently the chief safety steward in our region. The best information on the web is at the specialstasge.com forums or the rally anarchy forums.

That's what I find so hard about trying to get into professional motorsport, the cost. I'm young, but it just seems incredibly difficult to achieve financially growing up in a middle class household and paying for most of my expenses myself.

Mazduece, if you decide that I could use the front aero more then you, I'd be more than happy to work out a deal for it...

I picked up this Spec-7 in Virginia a couple weekends ago, and will be converting it to ITA.

PM sent.

Graf - if you check back in here, I got a message saying your email thought the PM was spam. Drop me a line.

mazdeuce wrote: Quick question. If the headlights go up just fine, but need to be manually cranked down, is there usually a reason for this? Something easy to check and fix perhaps?

Just getting caught up. An 83 was my first car. I had exactly this problem. The dashboard switch that manually operated the popup mechanism was bad. If memory serves, if the switch has failed in thru right way or is unplugged, you get auto open, but no auto close.

In reply to Mike:

I wondered if it was something like that. The switch itself was long gone by the time I got the car. I did manage to track down the wiring for it and figure out how to jump it to get the lights to go down with power. That wire is labeled for future use.

mazdeuce wrote: Graf - if you check back in here, I got a message saying your email thought the PM was spam. Drop me a line.

Yeah, I have my filter set pretty aggressively to keep people like Aussie from stalking me...

Replied.

Hmm, I'm only 85 miles from Maxwell. Looks like I need to get a car...

Your threads always inspire me to fix the little stuff on my cars. And to open something up and tinker with it a bit. Then go racing soon after. I like it. And I'm very jealous that you got that many practice runs. I run glen Helen in Southern California and with the amount of people we have attending that would be impossible in one day.

And to anyone thinking about rallycross.. Don't think. Just do it. You can thank us later

I'm glad people like these threads. I have a laundry list of things to do on the car but I haven't even unloaded it from the trailer since the last autocross. I did do a handshake deal to sell the good wheels left over from the Mazda2 which will add $400 to the budget whenever I get around to figuring it out again.

Glad to see this beast is still doing well, I was just bragging about your 100 rally cross runs the other day. lol

Two weekends ago was the first Rallycross National Challenge of the year held right here in Texas. MR consisted of myself, my co-driver, a super nice couple from Okalhoma in a staged prepped FC RX7 and another local guy in a NC Miata on RS3's. My co-driver requested that I hook back up the rear sway bar on full soft. Something about loose is fast and on the edge (Days of Thunder?) and since he's faster than me, that's what we did.
Day one saw us running pretty close. Five runs in the morning and things were too close to call. In the afternoon my co-driver and I drove well, but he was driving better. We had 1-2 pretty well locked up until he spun the car and missed a gate on the last run. That put me into first, and dropped him to fourth.

Day 2 traded dry conditions for intermittent rain. The clay surface would get nice and tacky and then a shower would come through and we'd have instant ice like conditions. Tires were a HUGE factor. We went from 2 seconds a lap faster than the FC to 5-9 seconds slower. All seasons were not the ticket. At one point, a rain shower caused the course to slick up so badly that our times were 18-25 seconds slower than the previous run. We persevered though and mostly kept it together. Last run of the day saw me in second and my co-driver in third. That's when I fell apart. I spun and stalled and threw it all away. On top of that, I lost count of runs. We thought we had finished our six runs and loaded the car on the trailer. Once we finished we walked over only to find out that we had each only run five and they were picking up the course. Because MR is the coolest class ever, the other competitors voted to scratch their last run and score the whole group on five runs. They did this not knowing how that would affect their position, but just because they thought it was the right thing to do. Great guys, the lot of them.
In the end, my spin dropped me from second to fourth and that put my co-driver into second and Mazda contingency money. He paid my entry so I think in the end we all ended up happy. The car was better with the rear bar at full soft when we had grip, but it was undriveable when it was slippery. We need tires. Proper tires.
This brings me to the budget. Last budget was $292 but that was six weeks ago. I'm up to $892 now, which sounds like a lot but I've got wheels on the way and at least one set of them is going to need tires because we're about done with this all seasons in the dirt nonsense. It looks like the plan is to run the RX7 at nationals this year. My co-drivers AE86 is a bit faster, but he's worried that it's on it's last legs as far as RX goes. When you drive it, you get the feeling that it's barely holding together and he's been struggling with mechanical things on it for a while. He has another shell that he's in the process of seam welding right now, but that isn't likely to be done and sorted by October. All of that means that my slow progress prepping the car will have to pick up once I get a roof on the garage. I need to pull the glass, the bumper supports, the headlights and most of the wiring. I'd like to get a lighter hood but I probably have to make one and I'm not sure I'll have the time. The seat has to move forward about three inches for my co-driver to be comfortable. I don't think we have what it takes to really compete with Evan, but if things go well, we won't embarrass ourselves either.

You have time to make a super lightweight hood. Coroplast.

cghstang wrote: You have time to make a super lightweight hood. Coroplast.

That....... that might happen. At this point, adding lightness is the best strategy for the car. As long as the engine runs as well as it does, I don't want to mess with it. Any links to people making coroplast hoods, or am I on my own with that sort of silliness?

http://www.sr20forum.com/autocross-rally-racing/260757-b13-rallycross-prep-budget-4.html

Is it self-lightening when the engine heat melts a hole in it?

In reply to cghstang:

Muchas gracias.