oldschool.co.nz

presenting the "banana" - my 1985 Series 3 Savanna RX-7 turbo in Mazda Dover White

But wait a minute, it's not yellow, so why call it a banana? The name is a throwback to a remark I made about a tiny photo of a canary yellow Series 1 in an old issue of some random performance car magazine I had lying around. at a glance the shape and the trademark black bumper caps made it resemble a banana, and because the photo was so small you really had to look closely to realize it was actually a car

here are a couple photos of it back in 2008, waiting to be loaded on the slow boat to NZ.

Yes 2008, kinda hard to believe i've had it sitting around for nearly TWO years now





Top tip: Always read the auction grade sheet carefully. Sometimes there will be a tiny R next to the grade which 99.9% of people will miss. in this case, the grade was 3.5, but it had been in a crash and repaired for insurance purposes and thus the appearance of the R. This information was not disclosed to me until the car had arrived in NZ and undergone entry certification... however the first suspicion I had that anything was amiss was when it got loaded on the transporter at the auction yard in Japan to be taken to the wharf, and the tow truck guys ratcheted it down via the front right steering/control arm by mistake.

When the car arrived in NZ the entry certifiers immediately noticed something was up with the front right suspension and so the car was required to undergo a further inspection by a repair certifier

at the time, we assumed the damage they'd found was related to the earlier 'transporter malfunction', but as it turned out, things were slightly more serious than that...

So anyway. Three weeks on the car carrier saw the RX-7 being dropped off at my mate's car yard in early september 2008. it'd been at the yard barely half a day and someone attempted to steal the MAZDA badge off the front valance. They failed miserably, but ended up breaking it so that it only read "IAZDA" - see photos below

it was reasonably tidy in the metal but had some minor niggling/broken things here and there (mostly to do with the interior) - apart from that it showed all the signs of being an authentic 88,000km vehicle (mint headlining, gearstick knob, pedals etc).

I guess at that stage it still hadn't fully sunk in that i'd actually bought one after years and years of lusting after the damn things











first thing I did was to fix the non-functional dash backlighting, eventually traced this back to a faulty dimmer switch. Amusingly enough, the previous Japanese owner's solution to the problem was to fit a couple of funny blue spotlights to light up the dash...





and that ugly faux wood handbrake surround got thrown in the bin pretty much straightaway. I've since spent the last 2 years hunting for a factory charcoal grey replacement



Have plans to wrap and store the front seats to preserve their condition. A pair of Recaro LXs are waiting to go in, just need the corresponding rails from Japan.



12A churbo EGI engine, a veritable nightmare of vacuum hoses, solenoids, and things that fail after 25 years

now that I had a banana in my possession the next step was to get it all road-legal and stuff so i could go out and score rota hoes.

Or something. But I actually spent the last few months of 2008 werking on the TX3 restoration build, so the RX-7 chilled under a cover for a while

my importer had a mate who ran a reputable compliance centre in Kingsland and this was where I'd taken squid to be complied back in late 2006. They did an awesome job with less than a fortnight's turnaround so I figured why not use them again. So I booked the banana in and dropped it off for the initial inspection in January 2009. at the time we all thought it would be as straightforward as squid had been, but little did anyone know that i'd just opened up a very messy can of worms

As mentioned earlier, the car already had a warning flag in the system due to the entry certifiers noticing a fault with the front right suspension, and so the repair certifier was called in while the car was at compliance to have a look at this. The driver's door, front guards, and clip had to be removed and the space in the driver's footwell to be cleared for a proper chassis rail inspection.

So the week before the repair certifier arrived i spent a couple of late nights removing and clearing everything that I needed to, then a few hours taking the driver's side front wheel off and scraping away the underseal/paint to get to the welds underneath.

Then it was D-day, and that was when the shit really hit the fan. Repair certifier came in and did all his tests, it turns out the weirdly bent front suspension was the symptom of a rather nasty knock to the front right of the car which resulted in a crabbed chassis.

Here's that photo of the car up on the hoist again... see that kink in the seam, just rearward of the front wheel? Yeah.



further digging uncovered the auction documents with the little R noted in the comments. Ah, fuck.

(wall of text update)

The chassis damage was serious enough for the car to require a certain amount of intimacy with the car-o-liner, so I talked to my panelbeater Tony about fitting it into his already hectic schedule... no dice, he was booked solid for the next nine months repairing other pieces of junk and his chassis machine would be in use almost non-stop So it was out of there and into deep storage down in Hamilton while I plotted my next move.

And then I kinda ended up putting a Link in my TX3 and finishing off the restoration on that, so the RX-7 sat in storage for the better part of a year. oops

Meanwhile the manager of the compliance shop (whom I deal with personally) kept ringing me every few months asking if I'd found a panelbeater willing to fix the car, and if not, he knew a couple of places I could take it for quick turnaround. It wasn't until February this year that I decided to take him up on his offer, after talking to some other panel shops and getting quoted hideous amounts for what was actually supposed to be a very straightforward repair

so the RX-7 entered the panelshop in March for six weeks of intensive tugging - initial measurements found the FR corner was 11mm forward of where it was meant to be and the RL corner to be 8mm rearward, resulting in the chassis taking on an interesting 'trapezoidal' shape The foreman of the shop was very helpful in walking me through all the repairs that had taken place in Japan, his verdict was that while they'd been completed to an incredibly high standard, the Japs simply hadn't bothered straightening the chassis as it wasn't a "compulsory" requirement of re-inspection over there.

the scary thing is a LOT of cars end up that way in Japan, especially the collectable ones - I'm lucky I never had any serious problems with my Skylines...

I got the call that the car was ready and the repairs signed off in early May, so make the arrangements to have it delivered to the compliance shop. However, as some of you may remember, a lowly employee decided to make everyone's day turn to custard when he abruptly sent the transporter with the RX-7 on it back across town to the panelbeaters TWICE due to not knowing it was supposed to be booked back in (everything had been arranged between the managers of the respective companies). Cue a lot of cursing and swearing on my part, playing phone tag and talking with oblivious drones trying to get the car re-delivered.

anyway it finally got dropped off to begin re-compliance BUT partway through the process the guy who does the seatbelts decided to have some sort of crisis and not turn up to werk for a week.

The shop got another seatbelt guy in to finish the job, but this second guy was a bit of a harsh bugger, and immediately failed the car due to an insane theory that it required REAR BELTS, even though it was originally vinned as a TWO-SEATER. It was about this time that the shop manager decided to go back to the Philippines on holiday and left the place in the hands of one of his assistants.

as a result, nothing ended up getting done on the RX-7 until the end of June, during which time the car went through two vin rechecks by two different inspectors and they both found different faults on the car. The manager of the shop returned from holiday and promptly blew a brain valve when he saw the car was still there, called me up and apologized profusely. As he explained, his assistant didn't know what to do about the seatbelt mess and decided to leave it until he returned. uhh... good one

We ended up getting cletus (our resident OS LVV certifier) to have a look (thanks heaps man!), and he reported that since the car had been vinned as a legitimate two-seater, the only thing that needed to be done was to replace the front belts, remove the rear seats and cover ALL the bolt holes and mounting points in the back. This was confirmed by Gareth, one of the VTNZ inspectors from Henderson who ended up doing the final inspection on the car.

So after doing all that plus the werk required to rectify the faults found in the two inspection rechecks, here we are today with the car FINALLY road legal.

There's still a bit of pissing around left to be done though, so stay tuned for MOAR TALES OF INTEREST

time to take some photos. problem with Auckland is that there aren't very many picturesque spots you can go to without some nosey bugger coming up to you and asking pointed questions about what you're doing and/or your car (and not just the security guard types either). In that regard, Wellington was a lot better. I tried a few places and made unabashed exits from all of them due to strangers invading my privacy, so had to make do with these impromptu shots on the Onehunga foreshore

the jury is still out on the guard gap question... do I stick to the mantra of keeping it completely stock in the height department or give in and buy some lowering springs?

some of you may already have noticed that the RX-7 is rolling on different rims than when it first arrived in NZ. The BBS mesh copies it came with had always been earmarked for the dustbin, as they plain don't float my boat at all. (Anyone want to buy them?)

the original plan was to hunt down some 15" SSR Mark-IIIs but after weeks of fruitless searching on YAJ I more or less gave up (there simply wasn't anything within budget and in the correct diameter/offset). However I chanced across these brand new old stock WedsSport Professor Fins in 15x6.5 +20 offset, and even though I wasn't really sure how they'd look on the banana I decided to stick a bid on and managed to snap them up for a very sharp price.

how sharp, you may ask?



the RX-7 is no exception to the uncanny rule that every single car I own has to accumulate multiple sets of wheels over its lifetime; thus in addition to a set of standard Series 3 rims I also possess this set of flat-faced 1980s turbofan style 14x6.0 +35s, I think they're WindMuhle copies but can't be sure. They're in dire need of a blast and repaint, but if I ever feel the urge to toss the Profs for any reason these will be the replacements of choice

The dish is indeed a bit much, no?



anyway, getting back to the original topic... namely, "how does the RX-7 look on the Professors?"

The answer is "bloody nice" actually. Bring a finned wheel some people don't like them all that much, and they may not have gigantic amounts of dish, but I personally reckon they suit the period-spec 'old man with a touch of class' nature of the car down to a tee. And besides, what other wheels are there which haven't already been done to death on a RX-7?

the weather was so mint today, I couldn't resist snapping a few moar photagonals of the savanna banana.







Next update: the beginnings of an audio install?

over the weekend I fitted my spare CD headunit to the banana in anticipation of the roadtrip to Taupo/Palmy early next month. I thought about installing my spare amp and sub also, but decided it wasn't worth doing as I'll just be ripping it all out again later on down the track.

by some stroke of luck the vehicle happened to come with vintage Pioneer speakers already installed. Which suits me fine as I'm a bit of a Pioneer nutter Plus it made the next step of the planned audio install even more relevant.



note the tweeter angle adjustment ("Tilt Axial Two-Way"), these puppies are the epitome of 80s tech. Now 10W nominal power is nothing compared to the speakers of today, but it doesn't matter because I have a cunning plan.



with the help of Ewan @ hayatonka I picked up some early 80s Pioneer Lonesome Car-boy audio gear off Yahoo.

first up, a couple of cassette decks, an EQ, and a spare GM-4 amp. The decks have broken motors but are fine otherwise.



And a third cassette deck that was ridiculously cheap, the seller had no idea if it went or not. Bonus if it does!



Rounding it off with a GM-D8 bad boy main amp. This was top of the line back in the early 80s, with a hearty 30W+30W of continuous power (40W MAX).



The aim is to open one of the non-functional decks (in the first photo) and somehow figure out a way of tapping a standard auxiliary cable into the pre-amp channels; this way I can attach an external music player and still have treble/bass, volume and fader controls.

here's hoping this isn't too ambitious a task

Moar problems. I've noticed that if you drive the car after a while the clutch goes extremely hard and gearchanges also become more difficult. The clutch will 'soften' up overnight and/or after periods of sitting of more than a few hours.

there are a few theories as to why this could be happening, ranging from air in the lines to a faulty throwout bearing. However following the advice of Unclejake I tested the operation of the clutch with the car sitting in the garage and the engine off. After about ten minutes the pedal did not go hard; likewise after repeating the process with the engine running the same outcome was observed. It seems that it only happens as the car is moving.

not sure what this indicates, but either way I need to get it sorted. The fact that I'm taking it on a roadtrip to Taupo this weekend kinda worries me a bit

may as well start by replacing and bleeding the hydraulic system.