Project FD RX-7

[Goodspeed]

She passed her one and only emissions test before becoming a classic this morning, thank Jesus, Allah, Yahweh, any and all of 'em:



I'll continue with my goal here of repping good businesses for all of you to be aware of - this was done at Hogan & Son's in South Riding, VA and they were class acts.  This was the third shop I've visited in as many weeks to get the emissions inspected, and for various reasons they were the only to come through in the end.  Not only did they come through, but the manager asked his staff to be present to hold the car steady on the rollers, or if need be, squish themselves between the car and the various blunt objects of the tight test-bay confines.  They also wrapped the interior in plastic just for this which, mah hart...mah sole.....touched me.



Seriously, this was a huge load off and everyone there was super accommodating and chill about it, and went that little extra distance to make sure I was happy.  They just put the "customer service" back into....customer service....that had been lacking from some recent shop visits, so right on.  Safety inspection is forthcoming, and then I'm free to fiddle on to my heart's content.



Speaking of fiddling, yay for more extremely-not-overnight parts from Japan!  The last bit of intercooler plumbing showed up today, the GReddy throttle-body elbow.  With this last piece of the puzzle (and the only piece of my particular setup still available new), all forced-induction plumbing on the car will now be all-metal.  I had earlier sourced a long-discontinued GReddy SMIC (stock-mount-intercooler), and separately some used GReddy piping to re-build a period-correct and well-regarded offering - GReddy had since gone on to build various FMIC's and currently a pretty rad V-mount IC/Radiator combo, but I'm more than happy to now have a complete setup that will keep some level of "OEM look" to the engine bay.





I put in some elbow grease on the intercooler core, but I plan to drop all the pieces off at a true wizard to have them done properly



Not pictured, but for the hot-side of the plumbing, I picked up a JDM Efini Y-pipe & metal crossover tube, which was a better design from the later-year FD's in Japan.  Smoother flow and ridding of the most troublesome plastic tubing of the OE USDM setup is a win-win.  Here's someone else's pic:



The crossover tube will be polished as well to ultimately tie everything together into one good lookin' whole: