Area-77 Drift FC RX7 2011 Build FullRace Chassis Build

[driftfcbuckey]

With the 2010 FormulaDrift season coming to an end in a few weeks, and having a solid spot at the last stop for FD - The FormulaDrift Pro-Am Nationals on October 7th, 8th, and 9th. It's about time we start gearing up for next year whether it be going to the big leagues and throwing down with the best, or traveling across the US with the XDC/D1GP circuit. We need to take our years worth of data, and our knowledge of prior FC RX7 Rotary builds, and make one new car to compete with anything and everything all in-house at AREA-77 RotorWorks.

The EXACT build details will be under wraps for now, however it'll be worth the wait.

Car Specs:

'87 Mazda RX7 TurboII
(replica buckey car. build date is only a few weeks later than my OEM build date. same options minus, the chrome wheels upgrade. Vin# is almost exact.)

what i plan to contribute:



BN-sports Type2 Aero. (if our original idea fails by the time the season opener kicks off.)

Dmax Carbon Fiber hood.

ShineAutoProject WideFenders & hatch wing.

Lexan hatch

JTP's hotline Spindle upgrade + S5 onepiece LCA's

tons of labor, stitch welding everything. full chassis paint, colors TBA, with good reason! ;p

hopefully some experience with fab work (welding/bash bar front/tube'd rear end, maybe cage if i get enough experience by then and the some decent metal working tools)

simplified chassis with only the essentials. simplified chassis harness, standalone, tons of power/angle.

The projected completion date is around 2/1/11, to allow for ample setup time, and tuning//working out the bugs. this is going to be the car to test alignment settings, power, and traction.


Spent a few hours stripping the majority if it down. still need to remove the harness, tranny, driveshaft. i doubt we're going to get crazy and do a rotisserie however, i may try to get nuts and fab one up and test out the welds by putting it on it. depends on time.












^ drilling spot welds where the bumper support was removed. practicing for the rear speaker covers. nowhere near done, so dont think so. lol







This chassis had some fun in the drifting community before, and i hope to keep it going.

Tomorrow is the mental day, stripping wires, and de-tarring. i plan on not cutting corners with this one considering i have a few builds under my belt, and this is the first "full race build" im getting a chance to help out with to gain more knowledge.
I hope to have this car as professional appearing as best i can.

[s13yaobling]

looky looky, looks like your gonna do everything right on this. GL to you in 2010-11

[FULL-TLT]

Sweet... looking forward to the build and seeing what you can do with it! 

[driftfcbuckey]

Chill day #2.
put in a few hours. didnt really have anything else to do.

i stripped the harness from the rear hatch area, and most of the lines/cables.
tomorrow's goal is to pull the rest of the chassis harness (front portion) and strip the tar out.
then get nuts with the fluxcore and do some welding.

since the interior isnt usually photographed in detail, i opted to do this first to figure out the characteristics of the welder/metal. i want the engine bay to be the strong point as always.

made a harborfreight run for some flapdiscs, and a spool of wire. gloves, and a spot weld drill bit, which sucked... lol i had better luck with using 1 big drill bit and drilling the spots welds with it..
i finished removing the messed up bumper support, and smoothed it up.
Pics of the madness



after having shit luck with the spot weld drill bit upfront, i decided to test it out on some random brackets that needed to bone out. before i moved to the speaker covers.





noticed how crammed looking the hatch is with the speaker covers on as opposed to being removed. now the strut towers can be tied together when we throw some tubes in it. not to mention the 3lbs of dead weight just chillennn.


now heres one removed.




and both out...

[driftfcbuckey]

my test dummies for the seam welding to setup the welder.


not the prettiest welds, but thats nothing a flap disc cant fix if i want to redo.



tomorrow is going to be some more practice, maybe bust out the gas, and try to read a book on it to get a better idea.. all in all, its a race car. if people are looking at stitch welds then the car isnt getting driven hard enough. plus its nice to not pay someone to do shit and potentially mess it up.

[driftfcbuckey]

looky looky, looks like your gonna do everything right on this. GL to you in 2010-11

thankss yao, idk about everything right, but hopefully everything. the main goal is to do as much as possible without sending it to someone else to do it... this wont be the last car i/the shop builds, but its just one more chance at getting better for the next one.

same to you man!

[driftfcbuckey]

Sweet... looking forward to the build and seeing what you can do with it! 

thankss!! everyone is building pretty sweet cars lately. vegas is stepping up pretty hard which is good to see. like 2 years ago you could name off the nicely built cars on one hand. now its ridiculous... lol

[F24cS13]

Nice work, good luck with everything! If you ever need a hand with anything, im always willing to learn :-)!