My GSL-SE

This document last modified May 16, 2001.

9/20/99:

Pictured below are my white '84, which I've owned for about three years, and the silver '85 that I just picked up for six hundred dollars!

         

You can probably see one of the two significant body problems on the silver '85 -- there's a nasty gash on the front above the bumper. There's no rust on it, so a body shop can probably fix it with the same part and some touch up paint. The other problem is a soft dent in the right side, behind the door. I'll bet I can pull it out with a plunger.

Other problems: the spoiler has a repairable crack on the left side, but I don't care for the spoiler, so it will be coming off fairly soon and sold off. (It's already gone, do don't ask.) Also, the rear bumper is peeling. Most other issues with the body and paint on this car can be touched up without going to the pro's. Amazingly, the doors have zero rust on them, and the inside rear fender wells are perfect, except for one tiny little spot in the left side. I have a friend who will probably repair that for free. The mileage is fairly low for a fifteen year old car, too:

But the reason that I picked up this car for such a bargain price:

    

That's right, that's a Holley carburetor that the previous owner had installed on this car. He had just finished having the engine replaced with a Mazda factory rebuild -- at this writing, it has under 7000 miles on it -- but the shop that did the work for him (Chamber's Auto Service in Trenton, NJ) apparently had some trouble getting the fuel injection system to work properly, so they talked him into doing a Holley carb conversion. I'm told that this is a popular modification for drag racers, but I have my doubts about this implementation. The previous owner told me that the car ran like a rocket when he first got it back from the shop, but then "something happened," and it started running really poorly. I have a pretty good idea of what the mechanical problems are, but I won't know for sure until I start digging into things, so I won't go into it here. Ultimately, this engine will be returned to it's stock configuration. Everything else about the engine is stock: it's not ported, it has the stock exhaust system (including the manifold), and the stock ignition system. It's obvious that this was not a performance upgrade, but a work-around for something that the mechanic couldn't fix. Note the disconnected oil metering rod to the right of the carb picture above.

I have most of the fuel injection system parts, which the shop was good enough to return to the previous owner, in a cardboard box:

Missing are a few odds and ends which I have yet to catalog. Notably absent are the evaporative canister and especially the two GSL-SE fuel injectors, which are very desirable, high flow injectors that are commonly fitted to 2nd generation RX-7 engines as a performance upgrade. Nice shop. Again, that's Chamber's Auto Service in Trenton, NJ.

So I have my work cut out for me to get this engine back to spec. But after removing and reinstalling the engine in my '84 last year, I'm sure that I'll be able handle this one. The big question now is "which car to keep?" Stay tuned....



10/16/99: I found out a few things about the carburetor. It's a version of the Holley 4160 four barrel. The specific model is the 1848-1, which is a 465 CFM carb with vacuum activated secondaries. I've been digging into this because one of the problems that the previous owner had was that, after the cats clogged and the engine started running like heck, he went back to the shop in Trenton and they were good enough to totally screw up the carburetor tuning. (that's Chamber's Auto Service in Trenton, NJ, who couldn't recognize a clogged cat)

I'm going to try to get this carb tuned up again before I convert the engine back to EFI, just to see if I can do it. But eventually, it will be for sale. (Too late -- I sold it and the manifold in April of 2000 for $250.)



10/20/99: I played with the carb settings a little bit, and it ran much better. It's still not right, though. Idle is somewhat rough, but not as bad as would be caused by, say, blown apex seals. Power is way down compared to what it should be, but it has enough power to drive it on the street.

I'm now convinced that the engine is mechanically sound, but the carb is just way out of tune. Taking a look at the fuel pump, it appears to be the stock GSL-SE fuel pump, or a really good clone. That would explain why this carb is so out of tune. (You're not supposed to pump 60 or 70 psi into a carb that requires 4 or 5 psi.) I'm going to fool with this carb just a little bit more before I throw in the towel and put the fuel injection back on.



1/25/2000: I've been collecting parts during the past few weeks, and started the back-to-stock conversion last weekend. Sun Auto Parts in Pennsylvania had the auxiliary port sleeves and split air pipe that I needed. And I was able to trade a wheel center cap with someone for a pair of GSL-SE fuel injectors. I picked up some gaskets, o-rings and two oil injector lines, and I'm just about ready to go. Needless to say, the more I dig into this project, the more stuff that I find that Chambers didn't give back to the previous owner. I can't complain, though, because the parts expenditure to date has been about $150. We'll see what I can do this weekend....


1/29/2000: I found out about this Jay-Tech intake manifold. Jay-Tech is a company in Vineland, NJ that makes a variety of drag racing intakes for Mazda rotaries and Toyotas. They get $275 for this intake manifold. Add a Holley carb for another $250, and a few little items like the injector hole plugs and gaskets, and it seems that Chamber's actually charged the previous owner a very reasonable $590 for the intake system. Then they screwed him with their lack of expertise!

For what it's worth, the Jay-Tech product looks like a fine one. It's not their fault that some of the folks they sell to are total bone-heads.



2/13/2000: After a few weekends worth of spare time -- probably about 15 man hours so far, including some help from my friends Steve and Tosh -- I finally got the stock intake back on. The last time I did this task, when I reassembled the engine in my '84, this part of the job took about 3 or 4 hours. The difference is that this time, instead of me being the one to have taken everything off and having laid it out nicely, in order, in the back of the car, I was working with the box full of parts that the bonehead shop returned to the previous owner. To add to that, they only gave the guy about 85% of the parts they removed, so after every few hours of work, I had to stop everything until I could order yet another part that wasn't present. Very tedious... and very aggravating.

After getting everything back together, and charging the battery really well, I turned the key and... it didn't start. I cranked again and.... it didn't start. I cranked it and cranked it and cranked it and cranked it some more, and even with about a half can of starting fluid, it still wouldn't start. A little more investigation showed that I had flooded the engine pretty badly. Another hour or two of engine de-flooding efforts didn't get me moving, and it was time to call it quits. Overall a good weekend, but with a bit of a cliff-hanger ending. To be continued....



2/16/2000: Wednesday night after work: more deflooding efforts. Spare plugs, another can of starting fluid and only a little more patience. No luck, unless you count a couple of instances of enormous exhaust system explosions -- not actually backfires, but gasoline in the exhaust system igniting and exploding out the tailpipe and scaring the living daylights out of everyone present at the auto shop that night. <snicker!> At least the ignition system still works. BTW, when I pushed the car out of the bay that night, I saw that I managed to make a little puddle of gasoline underneath the car. Apparently I dumped so much gas into that engine that it leaked out of the exhaust system gaskets. Hmmm. Something to think about.


2/19/2000: After mulling this over for the last few days, I realized that I needed to disconnect the fuel pump power coupling underneath the storage bins and crank this car for a while. Also, the shop that installed the carburetor had spliced the fuel pump test jumper at the air flow meter, so it was time to remove that splice. A little extra voltage for the starter and ignition system might help too, which my friend Tosh was good enough to provide with his pick up truck and some jumper cables. After such efforts to clear out the fuel, we added starting fluid to the formula.

Bingo! It fired up, cleared it's lungs pretty quickly, and then revved right up to about 4k rpm. This was probably the first time that engine saw 4k rpm in about a year. It surged quite a bit, as I've seen before from throttle position sensors being out of adjustment, but I knew how to handle that. After about 7 or 8 minutes of revving like this, the engine reached normal operating temperature and... it died. We couldn't get it re-started, and I had plans for the weekend, so we called it quits. I'm pretty sure that this inability to run off the fast idle cam is because of a missing clamp at the air funnel and air flow meter connection. There's probably enough of a vacuum leak that the engine can't run without a rich (cold start) mixture. Easy to fix: call Donnie at Sun Auto Parts. The next task will be a relatively minor tune-up, which I expect to go pretty smoothly. We're almost there!



3/??/2000: OK, I've been slacking. No -- I didn't take a month off from this car, but I did skip a couple of installments in this story. So....

Rather than buy the aforementioned air flow meter to hose clamp, I decided to try a little more economical method -- tie wraps. Now I'm absolutely sure that I managed to seal off that little vacuum leak, but it did no good whatsoever toward fixing my vacuum induced, fast, surging idle. So I started doing a little research and found that the replacement fuel injectors that I swapped parts for didn't have insulators mounted on them. These are basically rubber grommets that go between the injector and the "block," in part responsible for sealing air leaks around the injectors. So I ordered them from Mazda Competition Parts, and installed them the following weekend. Installing them would mean removing the throttle body and upper intake manifold as an assembly -- not something that I really wanted to do again, but there's no way around it.

What I found when I went to remove the throttle body was that someone -- ummm, me? -- never torqued down the upper intake manifold to the lower manifold. All of the nuts were only hand-tight. Vacuum leak found! (duh!) I continued on and installed the injector insulators, bolted everything back together, and fired it up. A few minutes of smooth fast idle, and then it settled down into the most perfectly smooth 600 rpm idle that I've ever heard. Ooooooo baby!!!

Interestingly, the idle speed and mixture screws do absolutely nothing to raise the idle speed to the factory spec'd 800 rpm. Perhaps a little driving around will help, but that has to wait for the next step: obtain a catalytic converter and install the air pump and split air pipe. For those unfamiliar with the GSL-SE: without these items, the exhaust-pressure driven auxiliary intake ports won't open. That's good for another 20 or 30 horses, so I don't want to put this off. Also, these emissions control items are the only thing that's keeping this car off the road. (Emissions testing is required in here in New Jersey.)



4/8/2000: I fired the car up a few times during the past few weeks, and it started right up every time. Well, after I charged the battery for about a half an hour each time.

Today, I installed the air pump, but have yet to install a functional catalytic converter and the split air pipe. One pleasant surprise was that the idle improved to about 1100 rpm just by installing the air pump, and the idle adjustment screws actually do something now, too. My only guess is that the O2 sensor was seeing too rich of a mixture without the air pump (and air control valve) putting supplemental air into the exhaust manifold. Seeing such a rich mixture, the O2 sensor and fuel injection computer couldn't compensate with the fine adjustments that are available through the idle mixture adjustment screw.

A minor tune-up, and this car is now back to a rock-solid, factory specified 800 rpm idle.



4/13/2000: According to Dave Barniger at KD Rotary, "with the airpump attached, you now have added air into the system through port air injection, which is always on at idle. Port air injection is air injected into the exhaust ports which the rotary scoops up like an EGR (exhaust gas recirculation) effect and adds to the next firing mixture. Without it, you were running too rich for the mixture to burn cleanly, therefore your mixture screw would not work and the idle would have been lower. Now with the extra air the car can burn cleaner, the idle goes to the right mixture and now can be adjusted."

Dave makes it sound so damned easy. Thanks Dave.



5/20/2000: Two weekends ago, I fixed my dead battery problems. When the car was sold to me, it didn't have battery caps on the battery. I obtained a couple of caps, but never bothered to check the fluid level in the battery. When it finally dawned on me to check these things, having again not been able to crank the engine after leaving it for only a few days, I found that I couldn't even see any fluid in the cells. I happened to have some distilled water with me, so I decided to top off the battery before trying to charge it up with jumper cables. "Add water, crank engine, drive away." It worked like a charm. :)

Last weekend, I spent about $50 on interior parts from some guy in central NJ who was about to junk his '85 GSL. This weekend, I put them in. New headliner, two visors, a few dash panels and a new console, and the interior is nearly there.

More important than that, I finally swapped the gutted catalytic converter in the '85 with the Mindtrain cat in my '84. Wow -- this engine has torque! Gobs of it!!! And it's very willing to rev right up to redline. Time to go for a ride! :)

The first real road trip for this car in over a year took me right past the Monmouth County Inspection Station. "What the heck?", I thought. Well, as is all too typical, the kid at the emissions station thought that it sounded a little loud. (It has a stock engine, stock manifold and a cat-back, "muffler-shop special" exhaust system.) The old guy that was standing around watching the kid advised him to try to plug the muffler with a couple of leather gloves and listen for an exhaust leak. As they held the gloves against the muffler, everything seemed to go relatively silent. I was convinced -- no leak here. The old guy advised the kid that "you shouldn't even be able to hold the gloves there... there should be more pressure than that." So "Junior" clicked off the FAILED box on the inspection checklist.

As I watched all of this transpire, having just finished installing new gaskets on this exhaust system when I installed the catalytic converter and then having checked thoroughly for leaks while the car was still on the lift, I couldn't help but be reminded of the same idiocy that happened the last time I took my '84 through inspection. (Headers and a Mindtrain exhaust could pretty easily be mistaken by the non-rotary-cognescenti for an exhaust leak.) In that similar situation, I pleaded my case to one of the inspectors at the end of the line, and he gave me a passing sticker, saying that the noise level doesn't matter and that it was obvious that the car was well maintained. (NJ doesn't have a decibel limit for exhaust noise, only an "excessive noise" clause. This car is certainly louder than most, but it's still not nearly as loud as most Harley Davidson motorcycles that you might hear.)

This time, I spoke up while we were still at the emissions station, stating that I wanted them to "FIND ME A LEAK!" Mutt and Jeff agreed to retry the glove test, and this time Junior ended the test pretty quickly, stating that he couldn't hold it and mumbling something under his breath about his partner and the 1400 degree exhaust gases that just scalded his hands. He started a new checklist, checked off PASSED, and sent me on my way. They never even ran the testing equipment. Darn! I wanted to see the look on their faces when it came up with ZERO hydrocarbons the way a well tuned rotary always seems to do.

Anyway, it's road-worthy, legal, and it rocks!!!



5/28/2000: If I hadn't mentioned it before, I've pretty much decided that I'll be keeping the '85. Needless to say, I'll be swapping all of the aftermarket goodies that I have on the '84 over to the '85, and taking the low-mileage, stock parts from the '85 and swapping them onto the '84. At least, that's the long-term plan.

For now, I'll continue working on the interior, mostly cleaning things up and trying to get the power windows to work properly. The problem seems to be that the window tracks are worn -- that felt material that is typically on the border of most car window tracks has worn away to the point that there is nothing but rubber against glass. I sprayed some silicone lubricant into the entire length of the track, and that seems to have almost completely solved the problem, but the driver's side window still seems to bind just a little bit.

I also had a chance to put about 30 miles on the car during this three day weekend, and it was a nice reminder of just how good the stock GSL-SE really is. Plenty of torque, smooth shifting, great handling -- this made for a very satisfying time with my newest toy.



9/6/2000: Summer of 2000 is turning out to be a real bummer. There has been so much rain that I've been reluctant to take the car out on many days. That even includes going to the auto shop to do more work. I guess I'm also realizing that I really don't like these long term projects -- driving these cars is really way more fun than fixing them.

It hasn't been a totally wrench-free summer, though. About a month and a half ago, good friend Tosh Desai and I took care of swapping the suspensions between the two cars. So now, the '84 has a stock suspension, and the '85 has the trick suspension consisting of Tokico Illumina shocks/struts, Eibach Prokit springs, Ground Control 3-position adjustable front sway bar, Suspension Techniques 3-position adjustable rear sway bar, and Energy Suspension Bushings up front. At the same time, we set the front struts for as much negative camber as possible. ("Shame on me" for not doing that earlier, on the '84.)

And then, the following week, I adjusted the '85 steering box to near perfection. It's still no Miata, but it's as tight as any first gen steering box I've ever felt, including the recently installed, brand-new steering box in my '84. (Just because I know the new box's history, that box will be transferred to the '85 when we do the engine. The '85's current box will go back into the '84.) Regardless, this gives me a good idea that the finished product is going to be pretty sweet.

Finally, this past Saturday was spent getting dirty and greasy with another rotorhead friend, Steve Landstra. (Steve is the likely buyer for the '85 engine, depending on some other issues with his own GSL-SE.) We managed to remove and reinstall two gas tanks, two fuel pumps and one fuel filter, all within about 5 hours, including some short breaks. Overall, that job went very smoothly. Three factors helped: the '84 tank and fuel pump are both under two years old, and the '85 car has apparently not seen very much rust-belt driving. Also, Paul Mullen's web site has some excellent "tips" write-ups on it. Notably, one writer advised to remove only the FRONT bolts for the gas tank retaining straps, rather than the rear ones as I've done in the past. That change alone made all the difference in reinstalling these tanks. I'd give the writer more credit, and give you a link to the page, but as of this writing, Paul's site seems to be down. I hope not for long, as it's one of the best rotary sites that I know of.

Anyway, when the gas tank job was done, the '84 fired right up. The '85 was out of gas, although not so much as to keep me from flooding the engine first. :)  Oh well... I sent Steve off to the gas station, gas can in hand, while I charged the battery. One gallon of Mobil's cheap stuff and Steve got to hear what a smooth-idling engine he'll be buying.

There are two more big stages to this project: sealing off a small rear fender-well rust hole, and swapping the engine compartment components. I'll go out on a limb and project that I'll be done within a month.

Or two. :)



12/3/00:  OK, three! :)

Two months ago, I switched interiors between both cars. The 85 now has the nice velour seats that were originally in the 84, and the 84 has the leather seats that don't hold my butt in place when autocrossing. Door panels also got switched, including reinstalling the Infinity speakers into the doors of the 84. The 85 will get four Boston Acoustics 6.5" speakers some time in the near future.

About six weeks ago, I took the '85 to a local body shop and had them fix the rear fender wells. $500 bucks, and this car's water tight. It's also solid enough to take to the autocross course, where I was able to score a second place CSP win among nine competitors. (Could this be the beginning of a new trend?)

But on 11/18-19, and again this past weekend, the biggest stage of this project was started and largely completed. Steve, Tosh and I were able to completely remove and partially reinstall three engines among three cars, all during this one weekend. In fact, that even included swapping two steering boxes. When all was said and done, Steve's car had my 85's stock engine, my 85 had the engine out of my 84, and the 84 had Steve's old engine, which has some issues that I'll detail later. (This might be a good deal for someone who wants an engine core in really good shape.) Steve's car was the only one that we completed that weekend, and it fired up on the first turn of the key. It didn't run very smoothly, though, and Tosh and I were both convinced that it was just a vacuum leak somewhere.

Fast forward to 12/2, when we learned the importance of not rushing through the final hookup of the engine harness. You see, when you plug the air flow meter wiring harness in UPSIDE DOWN, it has a tendency to send bad signals to the fuel injection computer. (Duh!!!) The result was a super rich mixture, similar to what I've seen when an ECU is water damaged, with fuel-rich blueish-grey smoke coming out of the exhaust, and spark plugs that were absolutely jet black from carbon deposits. Once we found that problem, Steve's car was done. It runs like a champ, BTW.

Next in line was my 85, and the big headache of the day was the exhaust system. I wanted to retain the Mindtrain header and exhaust that was on my 84, but the muffler shop special that was on the 85 just didn't want to part company with the car. Rusted bolts and welded pipes conspired to take about four or five hours out of the day, but when all was said and done, the 85 fired right up. The only remaining problem is that the Mindtrain catalytic converter somehow died in the six months that it spent with the old motor. I took a good look at it back in May when I pulled it from the other car, and it looked just fine inside then. I'm at a total loss to explain why it deteriorated so quickly on a well-tuned, stock motor. In any case, I'll order up a new cat, and probably have car number two back on the road and in fine shape next weekend.

In the meantime, I can share the unmuffled, header-equipped open exhaust note of a smooth running rotary with the Fort Monmouth auto shop whenever I move this car around. Actually, I guess I'm sharing that with the entire army base. Sweeeeeeet.  :)



12/4/00: I mentioned that Steve's old engine, now bolted into my '84 but not yet completely assembled, had some issues with it. Apparently, that engine has coolant seal problems, resulting in coolant getting into the combustion chamber. As a result, it takes forever to get it to start, with extensive de-flooding efforts required, and usually a few sets of clean and dry plugs and a can of starting fluid. Once it fires, it clears its throat and runs smooth and strong. In fact, Steve drove it for two hours from Pennsylvania to New Jersey prior to our engine swap project, and said it felt great.

I'm still debating what to do with it. I've thought about parting out the '84, in which case I'd sell the engine as a rebuildable core -- there's a very good chance that the apex seals and rotor housings are in good shape, considering the way that the engine runs once it starts. The intake system is still off of this engine, but I'll get it back together for test driving this weekend.

I've even toyed with the idea of rebuilding this engine myself, and then selling the whole car. We'll see.

If anyone is interested in saving me a couple of hours of effort, cough up $700 and you can haul the car away yourself. I'll probably have it back together before long, so you'll probably even be able to drive it away. (Too late -- I sold it on 2/23/01.)



5/12/01: The remainder of the winter was spent prepping and selling the '84, and working out the logistics of transporting it to the buyer's mechanic. Thanks to my friend Tosh for loaning me his truck and his trailer. Too bad he didn't think to mention that most towns have an ordinance against parking a trailer on the streets overnight. I found out that my town does. :(

Anyway, the last that I had heard, the '84 was to be worked on by Dave Barniger at KD Rotary. Dave determined that the engine, which was originally in my friend Steve's car, did in fact have bad O-rings. An initial compression test came back with really good results, and even a cooling system pressure test showed only a minimal loss of pressure over a two hour period. But the dead giveaway that the O-rings are the problem was when Dave turned the engine over while that pressure tester was still hooked up. The cooling system isn't supposed to spike in pressure like a compression test does. :)

Fortunately, I found a source for a 65k mile, used GSL-SE motor for only $350. All that my buyer has to do is pick it up and deliver it to Dave, as the engine seller is not willing to ship it. Still, that's an awesome deal -- well worth the logistics headaches involved in shuttling car parts around. I'd have done it myself, if I wasn't tired of working on these things. I even gave the guy a spreadsheet detailing all of the parts that he'd probably need to get the car back on the road. I haven't heard anything about the '84 since Dave found out for sure about that engine. But you know what? That's not my problem anymore....

As for my new toy, once winter finally passed -- in April (!) -- the last two months have been spent on minor details like installing speakers, new battery cables, braided stainless steel brake lines and little cleaning and trim details. Other than that, I've finally had a chance to start driving the car. Aaaaahhhh, I'm in love again.

I purchased a few goodies to allow me to (maybe) actually be competitive in autocross this year:

Hawk HP+ brake pads -- I love 'em! Step on the brakes now, and the car feels like it wants to suck your eyeballs out. It's a totally different experience than the garbage that's been on this car since I bought it. Even the parking brake works now!

Diamond Racing Wheels in 13x8 size, wrapped in Hoosier 225/45 autocross tires -- the Diamonds are a bargain, at only $63 each, and the Hoosiers are well known as the tire to use if you really want to out-stick the other guy. At $150 a piece for tires that probably won't last more than three or four thousand miles on the street, these are a racing-only tire and wheel package, so don't expect to see me practicing on the off-ramps with this setup.

Some time this spring, I hope to be able to have some body work and a top quality paint job done on this car. Without question, I'll end up spending twice or more than the car is worth, just on a paint job!

But the biggest news of the past few months is that I found a Cartech Turbocharger Kit on E-bay, and I managed to pick it up for all of $510 plus shipping. (When they were new, they sold for $3500 or more, depending upon the options included with the kit.) It's "mostly complete," meaning that all of the major components are present and in good shape, but I'll have to track down some hoses and minor hardware components before I bolt this thing on. Fortunately, the seller included all of the Cartech documentation, including an inventory list that supplies part numbers and Cartech's suppliers for most of these missing pieces. Getting the inventory together will be a project all in itself, but after the past year-and-a-half (!) getting this car into the shape that it's in now, this should be kid stuff.

Still, I think that the turbocharger project is going to have to wait, maybe until winter. I want to drive this car for a while. Ciao fer now....


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