Without a moment’s hesitation, I started taking the RX-7 out for spins practically the minute after I buttoned up the Miracle Cross Bar. It’s helpful, too, that Mike and his Porsche are just down the street from me. He just got his car, I am eager to start driving my car, and another buddy just […]

With my sights set firmly on replacing the roll bar and continually falling short of my needs, I realized I was being too singular in my direction and took a step back. My main goal was obviously to fix the rust that appeared on the old roll bar and obtain a replacement – but it […]

Figuring out the solution to the roll bar has undoubtedly been the trickiest and least straightforward. Initially, Samberg agreed to cover a new replacement if I return my old one, given the amount of additional work I had invested in the finish. It was a generous proposition and a best case scenario. After I removed […]

In my troubleshooting to resolve the intermittent failure to start issue, I’ve replaced the ignition switch and bypassed Mazda’s security relay. Neither proved to be the solution, but still worth the try and good things to do regardless. The next logical step is to look deeper at the circuitry and determine the weak link at […]

Since the beginning, I have purposely hung the license plate without a bracket, due to my original shyness of branding. As time went on, I eventually opened up and became more accepting of having logos on the car. In a selective manner, of course. After coming across an OEM part number for a Mazdaspeed license […]

I would consider this an impulse buy, but I reasoned that it would be worthwhile to have a spare or backup shift knob. Plus, relatively speaking, the Moddiction Anvil 2 shift knob is cheap. I picked this one up at $67 shipped. It has the correct brass fitting to match my MGW short shifter’s unique […]

I pushed hard to keep the momentum high. The To-Do list was daunting, especially in the short time frame I mandated, or at least desired. The most difficult aspect to manage is the variability of the outsourced work. For example, I dropped off the bumper over a month and a half ago and had to […]

I initially chose to reupholster the Spirit-R Recaros in red and stay true to their original colors and to add contrast to the overall color scheme. That was over 2 years ago. Being reminded of this leaves me baffled at how fast time flew by. 2 years was long enough for me to change my […]

A buddy of mine commented that I should remove the rear bumper for added swag points. I thought it was a cool idea to give the truck a bit of a “shakotan” style and would sophisticatedly accentuate the jankness. I decided to go through with it when I realized the inside of the rear bumper […]

Oh, the irony of intending to take the easiest route possible, but instead only adding complication. The first objective I wanted to take care of after buying the Tacoma was overhaul the suspension with new shocks, springs, leaf packs, bushings, and shackles. I wanted to do it as quickly and effortlessly as possible, so I […]

As if finding out that the roll bar was rusting underneath the clear coat and that the front bumper was the wrong shade of color was not enough bad news, I shorted out and killed the light relays. It was certainly difficult to stomach the list of failures that piled on all at once, but […]

The Greek mythology of Sisyphus is starting to play a disheartening relevance with this build. With the To-Do list provided in the previous post, it is evident to see that the front bumper needs to be removed and repainted for the 4th time, a 3rd roll bar needs to be installed, and the seats needs […]