Add another car to my tally. After a relatively brief ownership, the M3 is now en route to its new home in Boston, Massachusetts. I like cars that are clean and lower miles, but holding firm to those standards can become a virtue and a vice. I alternated daily driving the M3 every couple of […]

The M3 came with section 1 Rogue Engineering Rasp Pipes and a section 3 exhaust. I filled the gap with a section 2 X-pipe from Status Gruppe. The days of laying on my back on cold cement floors are over… My standards have elevated and I no longer want to bother with jack stands if […]

I’ve been sitting on these pictures for far too long, time to get them out there in one go. Installing the new Alcantara steering wheel with ti-stitching. I had this made with thickened padding so the girth of the wheel matches that of the 1M. Matching Alcantara shift and e-brake boots in black stitching. Being […]

With the new shade of grey chosen, all of the existing pieces were resprayed. Toby finished the gauge fascia by mounting the dash with brackets and installing the momentary buttons. The pictures below were taken in his white balanced photo booth again. The change of color can be compared to this, previously. Up close of […]

My immediate impression was that the chosen grey color was on the lighter side. In order to match well with the otherwise black interior, the trim pieces needed to be quite dark, but still distinguishably grey. Jumping on any doubt, I referred back to the SEM color chart and picked out 2 more shades that […]

It may be noteworthy to share that I moved places to San Jose at the beginning of the year. I’ve been spending much of my attention towards settling in and bringing my condo up to speed, on top of everything else around me getting busier. The paralleling decline in cadence with the RX-7 really puts […]

The oil pressure sensor was leftover as unfinished business after I picked up the car from Marcus back in June. The factory Mazda oil pressure sensor was removed and we thought we could plug in the OEM GM sensor instead, but the ECU’s harness lacked such a connection. The next alternative was to run an […]

With the stereo surround and shifter console pieces filled in and prepped, attention was turned back to the gauge fascia. This is where the money making happens. Picking up from before, more sanding and smoothing… and scribing: Cutout made: More filler and smoothing: Wrinkle finish applied: Painted grey with the new AiM MXG dash mocked […]

More finishing work continues on the trim pieces. Ultra-thin coat of pinhole filler: Blocked down with 180-Grit: A texture coating and then blocked down again for referencing: One more time to get it perfectly straight: Final texture coat, waiting on the color topcoat now: It is nice to witness all of the shavings and fillings […]

At long last, I’m back with an update. Over the past couple of years, I’ve been able to maintain a high cadence in terms of modifications and progress. Things are now culminating to a finale by way of brute productivity and will. I no longer have the time nor the facilities these days to continue […]

I dropped the RX-7 back to Marcus Fry Racing Enterprises to tackle the aforementioned adjustments and bug fixes, and get the running condition to be perfect. In a twist of irony, you can start to feel complacent after undertaking a large project like the LS3 swap… the initial motivation starts to wane. However, all the […]

To keep the cadence high, I scheduled an alignment with Trackspec Autosports in Fremont the day after returning home with the car. The main agenda was to actually raise the front coilovers higher to level out the car with the rear. With the BBSs, the fronts were slightly tucking and too low for my tastes. […]