Author: Grant

I’ve had the car back for about two weeks now and it’s so good to have wheels once again (even if petrol has sky-rocketed up to AU$1.30 a litre). Fortunately the RX-7 only needs regular unleaded petrol, not super-high-octane stuff – that’s saving me about $0.10 per litre :)

Repairs wound up costing $2.5k, not the $3k+ I was expecting, so that’s even more of a bonus. Plus they replaced the water pump which died during testing – good timing, eh? :)

I’m still taking public transport about one or two days per week, despite living on the worst train line in Melbourne (most delays, cancellations and late-running trains of all the lines – joy!) I’m also still cycling into the balloons in the morning (good for exercise, not just saving the car for “real” runs, etc :)

Lots of entries to catch up on here – been slack, yes I know. Photos to load, stories to tell and major overhaul on the Fly Me Friendly section but no idea when I’ll get around to all this.

Got the news yesterday – the seals are blown on the front rotor of the RX-7. Bugger. Will cost around $3k to fix as it involves pulling the motor apart, fixing what needs to be done inside and putting it all back together again. Similar concept to stuffed rings on a piston in a “normal” engine but much harder to repair.

I have great luck with vehicles, no? :)

A replacement 12A engine will cost about $1,500 plus about $500 to install, so it’s cheaper but then you don’t know when that motor will stuff up. At least if they pull apart the current one and fix it, it’s going to last (yeah, right :)

Greg from Holdies did some calling around and found a turbo charged, fuel injected 12A motor for $1,600 – bit tempting but it’d cost another $800 or so to install it and change the rest of the systems to work with it. Then you’d still wonder how long it’d last (has a 6 month warranty which is a plus).

Decided that I’ll go ahead and get it fixed so I called Brad at Rank Rotaries and he’s going to pull it apart, figure what’s wrong with it and give me a better quote to get it all sorted out.

Could be a couple of very lean months coming up…

Camper English, one of the crazy party club kids from my days back in Boston, has turned his ability to party hard while spending as little as possible into a book called Party Like a Rock Star, Even When You’re as Poor as Dirt. In his words, he’s thrilled to have turned a lifestyle of partying into a lifestyle guide on partying. I can now write off the last 20 years of drinking, dancing, and deviance as “research.”

Go Camper! :)

Still no joy with the car – got more parts (leads, rotor and distributor cap) but they had no effect. Took the air filter off and did what checking I could around the carby but nope – nothing obvious. It’s now well out of my depth, so I’ll just have to wait until I get some money in and can get it towed down to Rank Rotaries.

Damn :(

I went down to Repco and picked up some spark plugs and a fuel filter. Spent a while installing them but still no change. Hopefully it’s the timing or a blocked jet but I’m starting to wonder if it’s not something much much worse :(

Looks like I’ll have to organise towing down to Mentone where Rank Rotaries are (recommended by the guys at AllMaz). Guess we’ll find out soon enough…

My car is not running very well at the moment. It’d been running a bit rough for the past couple of days and I’ve got it booked in for a dyno session on the 31st. Unfortunately, on Friday evening as we left the airport to head for home (I’d been out picking up Kitt’s sister) the engine lost power and we pulled over to the side. It was running terribly and stalling out at idle, so I called up RACV and we waited.

Over an hour later, the guy finally arrived, took a bit of a look and suggested that we head for a late night RACV service center near the next off-ramp. We couldn’t even get past 80km/h and finally limped into the center. There the guys made similar comments and indicated they didn’t have the parts/gear required to service a rotary.

We wound up waiting another hour for a tow truck to arrive and, $70 later, deliver the car and us to home. Hopefully it’s nothing too major and I can get it up and running again soon.

Tonight we had our grading for Tae Kwon Do with both Nykolai and I passing. We’re now yellow belts and can start working on the next pattern. Nykolai surprised the teacher by doing the whole Taeguk 1 pattern (kids his age only have to do the first 9 moves to pass). He got a round of applause from all the people watching. We’d worked pretty hard on it to get him into shape and a couple of our “home practice” sessions had included his mate Nicholas (who went from yellow to yellow+one stripe).

We’re both very happy with it, although I’m sure that now I’ll come under even more pressure to come along to some of the adult classes :)