When Buying a $40,000 FD RX7 - Things You Need to Know

[Music] me [Music] [Music] [Music] what is up rad potential youtube welcome to today's video we are here to talk about the fdr x7 so as an aspiring kid you see fast and furious right fast and furious one not fast and furious tokyo drift fast and furious one the red rx-7fd has always been one of the most iconic cars and arguably which i will argue is my favorite fast and furious car next to like not next to anything but you know the fd from fast and furious one and then you have the monte carlo from tokyo drift prove me wrong those are the two cars the most underrated car anyways not the reason we're here so the fdr x7 right always a dream car of mine always growing up wanting to own one wanting to be around them unfortunately i bought a first in rx7 my rotary single one rotary car up there turned into let's see one two three four five six seven eight i don't know 10 of them i've probably had 20 of them over the course of the past whatever but never have i owned an fd and this is the video and we're kind of going to talk about this car we're going to talk about the pros and cons of this car and we're going to talk about maybe why i haven't owned one yet this car right here we have in front of us is a 1992 rx7 came from japan imported by a military man at some point brought across my buddy bought the car from him the car is in pretty good shape it's pretty much complete has just about everything you need it is a two plus two from japan model so it's got a back seat and stuff and let me tell you the back seat doesn't exactly help you with your interior storage options okay now we'll pop the hood show you what's up fast and furious style pop the hood unfortunately we don't have a 2jz in this one but we do have a 13b rew with a nice single turbo on there okay this motor well and the reason this car is here is that this car just got the stock port motor taken out no did not need rebuilt don't hate on the rotary reliability it ran perfectly fine and we put a half bridge port motor in so the short end of that is a half bridge port is much like putting a bigger cam and a piston engine um gives you a little more overlap a little bit more valve duration a little bit like bigger valve right comparing it to a piston engine but this car half bridge port it's got the brass we'll fire it up here in a second for you time warp we're gonna fire this car up because i got on a tangent talking about the car and we didn't start it yet so half bridge port still definitely not entirely tuned the best but it does consistently start and this thing has the braps all right so i'll give you the quick run around to the back so you can hear this awesome engine note and then we'll cut back the video listen to that all the wraps i can't really rev it up too much because we're still breaking the motor in so back to where i was at so other than that it's mostly stock so you're not going to see a ton of boost out of this one you're not going to see you know it doesn't have crazy coils it's on an apex c power fc it's got bigger injectors excessive manifold i'll put the video the playlist up here of all the videos for this car you can go check it out so the fd as a whole right we already have the engine bay open let's talk about rotary reliability okay in the course of me being around rotary cars we get to play with fds and i've worked on probably five or six of them pulled motors and probably four to five of those put new motors in whether they were just needed rebuilt whether they needed like this one just got an upgraded motor whether we pulled the motor to do whatever generally speaking these cars can be made really reliably or can be made to run really reliably okay the underlying caveat to all of that okay is that the fdr x7 despite its modern sexiness and how awesome they look and like the fact that you could go park this next to a brand new corvette maybe not the c8 but five years ago a brand new corvette and it still looks like it's time is that an fdr x7 generally the ones in the united states are all 25 years old the wiring has been cooked in the sun and cooked by the engine the interior pieces have been cooked in the sun so if you have one of these that gets put together with all new parts right so you can buy new wiring harnesses you can buy new engines free or brand new engines from mazda still you can get new injectors etc right you put one of these back together with 100 new stuff you get it set up right it's going to be a reliable car okay i've been daily driving this particular one for the past week it hasn't left me stranded anywhere it hasn't left me stuck at a gas station with a hot start issue whatever right if you have a well taken care of car that's 25 years old it should be okay but like i was alluding to earlier these cars are going to have project car problems meaning you're going to have crunchy wiring you're going to have oil leaks you're going to have stuff like that that's going to come up you're going to have a throw out bearing that was perfectly fine when the original owner parked his car 10 years ago and then you bought it from having its have it having sat for a while expecting to have this perfectly um perfectly manicured well-maintained car you're gonna take it out and drive it for a little while and things are gonna start to break and that's just the part of owning an old car okay don't attribute it to the rotary engine trust me rotary engines themselves the actual engine right the core of the engine is usually not the most common or i guess is say the rotary engine is usually not the part that fails that kills the engine it's generally something around it that's going to fail and then that's going to cause the engine to break much like if you break a valve spring much like you break a retainer like my corvette drop a valve toasted the motor right so don't hate on the rotary i love the rotary it's sick okay but i will say this well my thinking if you have any engine in your rx-7 and the car is running and on the road sick doesn't matter i don't care ls swap it 2j swap it rb swap it put whatever you want in these cars any car that runs that's that's my view on things i'm not gonna just say the rotary whatever so moving around the side of the car okay we're gonna talk about arguably the top reason in my opinion to own an fdr x7 okay it's the looks the fdr x7 is a timeless piece of japanese history they are completely just astounding to look at i mean the body lines are crazy for a 90s car the this car's got like 99 spec style circle tail lights but even the stock 93 spec bricks even the stock 93 front end which a lot of you guys go oh no 99 spec swap it so quick little infomercial 99 spec has the more aggressive looking turn signals so this is a 99 spec here and here i'll overlay a picture of a 93 spec they have a more rounded style and it's just more 90s ish right the 99 spec ran all the way to 2002 as that body style in japan and uh they just look prime so getting back to the original statement here in my opinion the best reason the biggest reason to own an fdr x7 other than the fact that it was your childhood dream car and they're awesome is the fact that they look sick okay you can take this to any car show you can drive this down the road you can go to gas stations you're going to get people that are going to say what the heck is that is that a c5 corvette what kind of engine does that thing have it sounds like a bunch of bumblebees in a coffee can right and that is huge in the car scene a lot of people now don't so much build cars for any crazy like performance thing anymore right you build a car because it's like art you want a car that reflects and is something cool that you've created or had a shop build for you that fulfills that vision of right of your collector card that you want to own and for a lot of people this is one of the best canvases to start with so sick it's awesome they're beautiful you can't beat it so past the looks of the car right which is a huge positive for the fdr x7 i mean timeless we're going to talk about driving experience okay and starting with driving experience we'll start with just user interface okay so this car's right hand drive i'm gonna get in the passenger side of the car for you okay now to put it into perspective i'm six foot four 180 pounds i ride mountain bikes fairly fit dude okay now when i get in this car you're gonna see i'm gonna have to sit down i have to swing my legs in not kill the dash with my knees right and now i am in the car okay so you can see knees barely fit my hand between my knee and the dash featuring my dog letty and as far as headroom i got none if i had a helmet i'd be sitting like this because that's just how it is and i come from racing first generation rx7s like this blue one right here like the ones up there with roll cages and stuff so i'm used to having to mount my seat to the floor get myself real low still have some head clearance issues you know that's that in the other and these fds are really really tight and they have the whole modernist car stuff going on where or the start of the modern car stuff where the dash now hangs really low to accommodate air bags to accommodate all sorts of heater ducting to make sure all that stuff's more efficient right and it just really for me it takes away from the driving experience because i don't have a comfortable grip on the car right so not so much like stepping away from what we're talking about here in the interior but being comfortable in the car is very important if you want to drive your car in anger or aggressively and i just personally don't feel very comfortable sitting in one of these so i've never been too keen on the driving experience of these cars anyways the cockpit the reason that i didn't sit over there is because i wanted to be able to show you guys this stuff without me in the way so this car's got a steering wheel that brings it closer to you imagine a bulky ugly stock steering wheel right here that sits really far back my knees you can see barely clear over here they definitely don't clear over there worth the crap so um the cockpit and stuff very reminiscent or or vice versa the supra mark 4 supra looks very similar to this you've got driver oriented gauges radio all that stuff the hvac controls all face the driver and then center mounted attack drop a comment below if you can name the rotary powered cars that don't have a center mounted tachometer i'll give you a hint the rotary truck is not one of them the rotary truck has a center mounted tack drop a comment below if you know that some rotary car history so i'm gonna go ahead and jump out one thing too like i said 90s cars interior parts are baked you're going to see things like this little cracks in the dash you're going to see some stuff like this in fdr x7 it's just kind of normal unless you have like a museum kept quality piece right it's just you know it's normal for this stuff to not entirely be the best especially if people don't know what they have with an fd and they just kind of leave them outside and they they get dilapidated and stuff and and fd parts and interior parts i think one of the last times that uh that i heard a number thrown out there is like a complete nice say a a minus condition black fd interior the total thing you could part out for like four thousand dollars so somebody could correct me from rowing but i know these door panels are expensive i know they really like to break and you can hear just like the creakiness in them and if you buy one of these cars let me tell you first things first you need to put a warning label right here on your passenger door that says points an arrow to this handle and says do not pull on this handle you want to close the door from here or close the door from the window frame because this handle will rip off even if you buy a new one they're just not very strong cheap 90s plastic so now we're going to talk about the part that i was kind of foreshadowing a little bit earlier right the driving experience as you drive this car down the road so outside of looking like a total gangster rolling in a super sexy car these cars drive really nice in the spectrum of of all cars right and i'm going to compare this car the fd to other cars i've driven to kind of give you a rating or whatever writer or my thoughts okay so i have a c6 z06 corvette i've driven rx8 very hard i've driven first gen rx 7s very hard i've driven every generation of corvette driven a lot of different had a mark iii supra and fcr x7 right so i've been in the rear wheel drive kind of realm of cars and i used to race rally okay off-road rally i've got my other rally cars in here so i'm used to rear steer used to steering with the tires and whatever right used to being slung back in the car these cars are notoriously and in my opinion they are a handful to drive at the limit and i say that because having driven miatas and rx-8s which are very confidence inspiring cars right low horsepower i'm going to say that with i've driven stock rx7s like stock stock power right so this one's probably make like 400 you know a stock twins very nicely set up stock twins car is gonna make 280 300 wheel and that much power in one of these little cars it can get a little dicey on the back roads if you're trying to push the limits the seating position is not the greatest you're kind of far back the suspension is it's still you know it's good for its time but it's not crazy the best these cars are definitely not numb but they are more numb than the likes of like a first gen rx-7 or a 240z right and it's as to be expected they're more modern you know better power steering better rack and pinion you know all that stuff um but i've just never been entirely impressed with the driving carry characteristics of the fd all right so i want to pause the video and interject here i think the most important thing for me thoughts on the fd driving is that i don't fit in the car so i'm not very comfortable behind the wheel which just kind of makes the whole driving experience a little bit sketchy for me i definitely think you know a smaller guy smaller whoever is going to fit better in this car i'm going to be able to drive it a little bit more comfortably and and have a lot more fun behind the wheel whereas i'm worried about you know breaking the door panels with my knees and my knees hitting the steering wheel etc etc so back to the live action like i mentioned earlier the biggest thing in my mind and why i would want to own one of these is to own one of these keep it 100 stock like 100 93 spec stock maybe just put wheels on it and lower it a little bit and that would be it and i would probably not drive it because when you drive these things break and when things break on an fd it's expensive so that kind of sums up my whole opinions and thoughts and in my little car review of the fdr x7 i wouldn't say that i am at all crazy biased for or against the fd in all honesty i'm probably more biased against them because i've been around them a lot so i don't have that kind of naiveness right you know i've been in probably five or six different ones ridden in ones ranging from 500 horsepower down to stock you know so i've kind of felt the chassis out but i will not take away anything from this chassis i mean this is one of the most beautiful cars out there this is definitely one of the coolest cars you can get you know definitely if you have a goal and you want to buy an fd and you want to get one you know set a goal work hard get the money get it together get a car buy a project fix it up do what you got to do you know the fds are sick they're totally worth whatever you've got to do to get one you know if you aspire to have that and you know performance wise performance value-wise here's here's the end-all be-all for me right if i buy one of these for 25 grand i'm gonna have to put five or six grand in it to make it mildly track ready right just update stuff like you know cooling system refresh new tires right little things like that you're just going to budget all that in say you're 30 grand in right to be able to have a car like this an fd that you can take out and abuse it it's reliable and you're just you know it's sorted now i'm not going to say you can't buy one that's already perfectly sorted but 30 grand okay i bought a c606 for 29 000 and that was like kind of my substitute for what i would want out of a car that you spend this much money on right now like i said earlier it doesn't take away from the fact that the fd is crazy and epic it just kind of these cars are getting a little older they're getting a little harder to maintain they're getting a little harder to find parts for so it makes more sense if you're if you're really wanting a driver's car get something a little bit newer it'll be more comfortable the interior won't be as creaky and and whatever but uh that's just my opinion and uh you know hopefully the video brought some value to you i think that uh you get a lot of what i would call shallow reviews of cars on youtube where guys will borrow somebody's car for a day they'll drive it around they'll tell you what they think about it tell you how it drives you know this that and the other and that's their review and uh it takes time obviously to build the credibility and be around these cars for a long time um to know them to in my opinion be able to give you you know a good handle on what they are and how they do so hopefully that brought some value to you i've enjoyed having this car around doing the motor swap breaking the engine in you know that sort of thing and you know i would say do i want one more after driving it you know kinda but it also has made me really um appreciate the level of comfort and space from my corvette so with that drop a comment below if you disagreed if you agreed whatever you want to burn me at the stake for talking about fds go for it bring it on i will catch you guys in the next video we do at the rad potential youtube channel the whole deal i do the rotary side the whole big kind of vision for the company whatever all that stuff and and whether you're seeing this we have 3 000 subscribers or hopefully a bunch more i hope you enjoy the content we put out here i hope you stick around for the growth and and uh getting into r d new parts we're gonna get the plasma table going here in a little bit we're gonna start some production stuff we're gonna start some patent stuff so get in on that stuff and uh like i said we'll see you guys in the next video peace out keep it red what are you doing what are you doing what are you doing what are you doing hey ready do you guys see that the stick is over there the dog is over there and i thought she was smart

Channel: RAD Potential

Views: 29,149

Keywords: rx7, rad, potential, ranch, rad ranch, rad potential, shreditbro, shred, driving, force, bmw, rotary, fd, fdrx7, hype, jdm, 1993, 1999, spec, 99 spec, single, turbo, twins, rew, 13b-rew, mazda, 13b, 12a, boost, reliable, daily, driver, driven

Id: 5WkbDrpyXJE

Length: 23min 23sec (1403 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 30 2021