Project Cars
2nd July 2009
I don’t normally do personal blogs on this site, mainly because I fancy myself as being some sort of small-time motoring journalist than just a petrolhead with a blog. But I thought i’d talk about this to see if I can’t encourage like-minded petrolheads to do what i’ve just done.
I’m 21 years old and I love cars. LOVE them. But I don’t work on them. I don’t have a shed, and my mechanical knowledge only stretches to as far as knowing how to do basic maintenance and service on cars. I’ve always had an interest in how cars work though, but never had the opportunity to learn until now.
I’ve just bought myself a very rare, classic car. A dusky blue 1987 Mazda RX-7 FC. Absolutely gorgeous little beauty. It was designed to compete with Porsche’s 924-S in the ’80s, and whilst it was ‘only’ equal to it in the performance stakes, it was sexier, being longer, lower, and wider. Anyway, mine came with an aftermarket twin sports exhaust, which sounds aggressive and chavvy, but there are times when you just fall in love with it. Especially when a chav in a kitted-up Saxo pulls up next to you and revs up the kitchen blender he calls an engine. Anyway, 0-60mph in under 8 seconds, top speed around 140mph, and despite the engine only being a 1.3L, it’s a rotary engine, which produces the same sort of power you’d get from a 2.4L piston engine. The fact that it’s a 1.3L and has no cylinders or pistons, and is mounted right back in the chassis just in front of the dashboard, means it’s also a very light car. It’s bloody quick and corners like a mosquito.
All for £1000 including tax and MOT. Not bad for something in immaculate condition AND is as rare as it is. There’s not many left in the UK.
My point is this: after getting the car and using it for every day use, it’s 22 years of age has caught up with it. The passenger side window won’t open, for example. So i’ve bought myself a Haynes manual. These are fully comprehensive manuals that you can buy for almost any car nowadays, and they teach you how to maintain, repair, or even tune up pretty much anything and everything in your car. All the manuals are based on a complete strip-down and rebuild of the car. It even teaches you how to repair things that most mechanics wouldn’t even consider ‘repairing’, such as a dodgy gearbox. So I’ve been reading through that and just doing that has given me a fair amount of mechanical knowledge. All I need is a decent tool kit. And given the one or two niggly faults occuring in the car at the moment, it’ll help me repair things that would otherwise be an expensive trip to the local mechanic.
That, and I found out I can up the power from 150bhp to a massive 300bhp just by poking around in the engine, and there’s much, much more to be had out of it than that if I was willing to add a turbo kit and strengthen the gearbox. No wonder RX-7s are seen as Gods in the tuning world.
It’s a big deal for me because i’m not one of those guys that lives in a shed. I’m not one to get my hands dirty. And yet armed with this book and a decent toolkit I can repair pretty much anything in the car if (or rather, when) it goes wrong. And you don’t need lots of prior mechanical knowledge, or be able to understand long, complicated words. The manual is very easy to follow and everything is indexed. All you need is the confidence to get your hands dirty and to not be scared of taking your car apart.
I’d encourage others to do the same to be honest, because it made me realise that anyone can fix stuff in their car if they had some guidance (i.e. a Haynes manual) and the guts to take their car apart. You can learn so much from just one book, and ultimately you’ll begin to love your car more than you already do, because it’ll become very much ‘yours’, not just some car you drove off a forecourt.
Although i’ve got the added bonus of having a rare, desirable classic. You probably won’t get the same satisfaction with an old Peugeot!
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