When you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network.
tldr; I've been DD'ing FDs for about a decade, but the interior always was a let-down compared to the driving dynamics. I had this wild idea to do a saddle leather brown interior like in a classic Ferrari, but I was scared of it turning out like crap and costing a lot. Then I found this! It's a 1997 with a sunroof. Someone had already done it all and it was also the cheapest FD available in Japan ($16,600 @ 50,000km). Only problem, it's an automatic.
These are pics from when I first got it. I immediately got rid of the 19" volk's because I had some new 17" SSR wheels with new PS4 tires on them waiting. Fitment is... an issue. The rear fenders were flared much larger than it seemed in the ad photos. Took 60mm spacers to fix them, but then I had to run 60mm spacers so yeah.
Front brakes are 4 pot GREX aftermarket rotors & calipers. Rears appear to be stock 16" ones.
Some basic stuff I've taken care of: peeled off the fake carbon fiber stickers from the entire panels. The center console cover & storage box is some different form of fake carbon, so I simply ordered replacement parts for that.
Good surprises so far: Spirit-r seats with cheap $300 covers.
Bad surprises so far:
1.) Engine feels underpowered vs a stock manual. Not sure if that's because automatics are just slow, or if it's something else.
2.) Car overheats in summer with the AC on. Solution: run the heater / no AC I've put some ducting on top between the FMIC and the radiator to prevent air for escaping out the top and that seems to have helped a lot. Installing the rx-8 fan mod soon to help with overheating in traffic. The root cause seems to be poor airflow though (the AC core is sandwiched in between the FMIC and the aftermarket radiator and there's no real path for air to the radiator except through both the intercooler and AC core, and there are tons of gaps around the radiator and such so the air is probably not going through very well).
3.) The zeal coilovers seemed to be in good shape, but were super hard. They always didn't do well even on smoother roads that undulated a bit (on my car with Ohlins, the car would hug the uneven surfaces without bouncing, whereas these would dip into the uneven surfaces and then bounce way up and felt floaty).
parking with anything wider than stock is... a challenge.
Although I wanted to prioritize a manual transmission swap above everything else, the suspension was killing me and I was worried it would rattle stuff loose. So I put on some cheap Flex Z's. They're not as good as the ohlins on my older car, but for street driving they're pretty good. For less than $700 they're hard to beat. The Zeals had poly bushings, and I think the rest of the suspension might as well? Although the car still doesn't feel as good as my 2nd FD on stock suspension did, it's much closer. So later on I think I'll need to refresh the bushings.
The rear end is also... interesting. Those two silver circles housed LED back-up lights that had to be removed to pass inspection. I also removed the plastic cups with silver lips, so now there's just two big holes in the rear bumper. Also removed the diffuser so I could fit the car into parking spaces. Aside from the holes, I don't hate the rear, but the fitment is poor on the bumper. They also filled in the gaps on the rear quarterpanels where the stock lights would wrap-around, so undoing this would be a lot of effort. Not sure what I'll do with it, but I think for now I just want to fill in these two hole and maybe fix the bumper fitment (if possible, since it looks like it's slightly too small).
Dropped the car off at the shop yesterday to do the automatic -> manual transmission conversion. It appears they will be re-using the automatic ECU and modifying the wiring harness, so aftermarket ECU support won't be possible (with PowerFCs at least). Maybe if I built a custom harness for a haltech it could be possible? (It appears they only sell plug-n-play manual harnesses).
I only ever did minor tunes with a PowerFC and exhaust + intake + intercooler though, so I'm not too worried about that. Bonus point for starting with an automatic is that I get automatic climate control.
After the manual conversion, I think I want to put a 99+ spec front bumper on as well as reverting the front fenders to stock (about $500 for a set of fenders, plus painting costs). Rear fenders are the real problem though. It's probably going to be a very expensive cut + weld + paint job to get them somewhat back to normal.
Here's how it looked in the ad. I found the shop who did the original build (Autocrafts https://www.auto-craft.net/) and even a photo of my car on their google reviews. It used to have some gauges and stuff in the glove box (they were gone when the car arrived and it's a normal glovebox now). The steering wheel appears to be some cheap chinese wheel with a momo bolt pattern, so I'm replacing that whenever the new nardi arrives. Still not sure what the red light and **** are for on the center console, but it appears to be tied to the second foglight switch. Probably was for the rear lights or something.
Researching the Autocrafts shop, apparently they have/had a thing for modding RX7's to look like RX8's (my car) and RX8's to look like RX7s. Kind of gross.
Bonus pics: Mr. Fujita and his team installing all the spacers in the shop on the rear wheels.
08-19-24, 08:59 AM
I've put some ducting on top between the FMIC and the radiator to prevent air for escaping out the top and that seems to have helped a lot. Installing the rx-8 fan mod soon to help with overheating in traffic. The root cause seems to be poor airflow though (the AC core is sandwiched in between the FMIC and the aftermarket radiator and there's no real path for air to the radiator except through both the intercooler and AC core, and there are tons of gaps around the radiator and such so the air is probably not going through very well). 
