Mazda 929

Mazda 929

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Okay, now this is my "toy car". It is a 1986 model HBES Mazda 929 Hardtop. It was originally my grand father's car and came with a 2 litre, EFI, naturally aspirated 4 cylinder engine. You can see it is a beautiful creamy colour and has (had) a brown interior (seats/carpet/dash/roof).

Being a young hoon, I couldn't think straight, and rather than sell the 929, my "Male Intuition" told me that this would be an Uber cool car to give "Lots of Fasts!" What follows, is a glorified story of it's transformation:

On november 16 2000 I bought a series 5 rx7 13b turbo Rotary engine with matching gearbox. The engine came with it's intercooler, Intake manifold, some dodgy old spark plugs, an extremely heavy, 3 puck, solid centred brass button clutch(more on that later) and a series5 rx7 5 speed manual gearbox. Looking very similar to the one you see to the left here. We were super excited, having never owned a rotary engine before, we also had no idea how much we had to do to get it running (my plan was for a 3 week engine conversion). Luckily I had been talked into doing this project by many friends as Damon would say "It's easy mate."

Damon was a regular visitor into the Subway restaurant, next door to the Ice Cream shop that I worked in and regularly was a little bit of a hoon in his rx2 or rx7 rotary powered vehicle he owned at the time. I loved it and its lumpy engine note! So I started talking to him (pestering him) and he told me how his brother had done the same conversion on his HB Cosmo a couple of years beforehand. (Tony had a green Cosmo that originally came out with a 12a turbo)

For a mechanical gumby like me, I had no idea what I was in for! It didn't help that I expected it to jump together and run all by itself.

Well Mr Gemini (Dean, a great friend and he owns two Holden Gemini's(hence his nickname), and now a Holden Commodore Wagon too) came over, and he, my brother and I proceeded to remove anything from the 929 that looked like it wasn't needed on the same saturday afternoon that I had returned home with my new engine.

We had the engine out by the next morning, I had borrowed the Engine Crane from a friend of mine, Kerry Chambers (he has some very special fords of the XR (eg. 1968 to 1972 variety I think) variety). The gearbox on the standard 4 cylinder must have weighed as much as the Freekin engine! It was damned heavy! So being the performance car guru that I already was (because I had removed an engine from a car!) I knew I was onto a good thing by removing said weighty thing. We also felt we had accomplished so much, we sat and stared at the new 13b turbo for a little longer and acheived little else after.

Now as I am writing this up on the 10/8/05 (the day I picked up my brakes) and I started the engine conversion about 5 years ago and I haven't kept any sort of journal, I may miss a few things that had happened along the way during the engine conversion.

Being that this car was going to be a 'Leet Sled (fast car) it had to have gauges! So I bought some, the very next weekend from Dave at Cheapa auto spares. A Tacho with shift light, oil pressure gauge (what a pain in the butt it is to get the oil line for this to join to the motor in some way or another), water temp gauge and a boost gauge) I was now well won the way to having a car that would win AutoSalon like the other 'leet Civics on the gold coast at the time. I also had a go at grinding off the old engine mounts from the standard cross member, to make way for the extremely complex engine mounts we had planned for the new engine.

Now if you read up a couple of paragraphs, I told you I was a mechanical Gumby, well here is my first instance of proving it. I started by angle grinding the engine mounts off (with a 4 inch grinder) and was not having too much trouble, it was fairly tight in the engine bay and I was sick of leaning over it. So I sat down on the floor between the cross member and the nose of the car. The little bits of angled engine mount were hard to get at so I turned the grinder around so it would now go towards me if I was to some how loose grip of it in my Uber strong Tradesman strength hands. Well, it gripped, shot out of my hands, landed in my lap and screwed up in my shirt and stopped once it had locked up on enough material. Aha! I was lucky you say! Yes, but I am stupid too, I proceeded to do it again , only this time it gripped, went straight at my face over my lip, across the bridge of my nose and left 3 inches of scratch marks on the safety glasses I was wearing.

I came out fine, just a little blood lip that was slightly swollen, a little graze across the nose and a bit of a sting from the cuts. Definitely glas I was wearing the safety glasses

Now, the complex engine mounts I mentioned. Well we jsut got some 6mm plate mild steel and cut it into 6 pieces (it was about 25cms long and 8cms wide). two peices were about 8cm long each, and the other 4 were about 3 cms long each (maybe 4cms). So now, when you put two smaller pieces on each end of one of the bigger pieces, you have sort of a bridge shape when the shorter pieces are standing on their side. So we welded them up like that and my brother and Dean has a go at Arc welding them to the cross member. Now there is more weld than engine mount. The engine is going nowhere...

Since that was done, we lowered the engine down to where we thought it should sit, marked some holes and then pulled it back out and drilled the mounts to suit the mounts on the engine. The rx7 rubber mounts are quite large, so now the engine sat very high in the engine bay with an awesome angle on it. Damon sorts this out later.

So this is about where we came to for my 3 week engine conversion. Well planned huh?

So now the car is sitting still for quite a while. I was making enquiries about which computer to run, who to tune it, which place to make the exhaust system, what else do I need to get it running, do I need bigger injectors and of course find out how fast it will be from anyone that was interested in talking to me about it! The car sat in the garage for a while longer. I made up a template for a dash to hold the cd player and the gauges. I think at this stage I even mounted the new tachometer on the steering column. Christmas was a couple of weeks later again and I was lucky enough to get a steering wheel.

Removal of Steering wheel: Now this was a new one for us. I had a go at it for a while, my brother had a go, dad had a go, Mr Gemini had a turn too. We had no luck. Apparently there is a trick to it. Damon was coming past that night so he dropped in to give us a hand. He sat in the drivers seat, screwed the locking nut for the steering wheel so it was covering the first few threads of the spline, hit the spline with a hammer, gripped the steering wheel with his other hand and it almost fell off! Bastard, 30 seconds and he had done it! So our few hours of swearing, grunting, head scratching and groaning would have been averted if we knew to HIT THE FRICKEN THING WITH A HAMMER!!! (which would have felt fantastic too). A steering wheel puller could have done the job but we are 'leet car modifiers now, we don't need that stuff!

Now we ar probably about March/April 2001 and we are going to move house soon and the 929 has held space in the garage for about 5 months now. It also hasn't progressed much further as you can probably imagine. During all this time I had unrivalled plans to make this car a 1/4 mile steamer (12 seconds, here I come) and a sports sedan killer! It was going to do everything........FAST! Of course, there is no way any other car out there was going to be better than my 929! Because being street drivable, being able to run stupidly fast 1/4 mile times and cut laps at the local race track faster than a supercar, is in the repertoir of every Luxury Barge model car when it comes from the factory. So the conversion was going a little slower and the money was getting a little thinner than expected (this conversion was never going to be more than $6000, no way!!!), it certainly didn't stop me from planning to take over the world with it.

So instead of moving the car to the new house, we got it towed to Damon's. Within a week or two, his brother Ivan had made up a cross member for the gearbox and had that mounted. The crossmember is basically of thick walled 1 inch box section with some mounts bolted to it and it lined up then with the old automatic gearbox's mounting holes in the chassis, and there we go, it's in. Damon found some Mazda b2000 (I think) engine mounts and put them in, in place of the rx7 mounts, now the engine sat down at a normal height and the bonnet would comfortably close, even with the intercooler on top. His brother had his old Microtech digi one pro (i think that is what it was) and I bought that, with it's loom and coil packs. They got excited while I was busy with work and had it running for me quick smart, Amazing!

Now there is a little story behind this. Damon called me at work one day and said, "I have some good news for you, your engine runs!" I almost fell over, I was ecstatic! Then he throws the curve ball, "It seems to be making a sort of scraping sound though, when it is going you know, sort of like a busted seal." I was very calm and collected about it and finished the conversation with planning to go to his house after work. In the mean time, I was sick in the stomach, thinking that the 3 month warranty on the motor was well and truly up, it has carked it, I don't want to spend money on another one, but it finally runs! So I turn up there, his brother Anthony was also there and they said "Here, we will show you what it does." Tony got in the car, turned the engine over, after a couple of kicks! Woila! brrrrrmmmm, brap, brap and a little more, I was thinking, I can't hear any scraping noises. I also can't hear much else since the turbocharger had no exahust joined to it. They rev it once or twice a little, then switch it off, then just start grinning at me. They can't hold it in any longer, as I had this stupid look on my face. There was nothing wrong with the motor what so ever! It has done more than 8000kms to this day, in it standard state and still runs fine! So they had thier laugh at my expense and I may have sworn at them a little and called them a few choice names at the time but in all, I was still excited.

So around this time I was thinking the 929 needed to look a little better, as you can see it is no stunner. So I started looking around for some alloy wheels for it, I came across some 17 inch ones that were multispoke, problem was, the tyres on them scrubbed on the springs (the rims were second hand so not a perfect fit) so I left it for a while. Not long after this though, I also got excited and measured up the tailshaft, using the yoke from the s5 gearbox, and the flanges that are on the old tailshaft, Gibbs truck parts put together a new on for me. It was slightly longer than previous as the old automatic was quite long and the new manual was a shorter gearbox. My brother dropped it off and picked it up around his work hours and it was a resonable price of about $300 from memory. Also, Damon installed a 929 pedal box, and slave cylinder, so now the car had that important 3rd pedal.

The came home not long afterwards and sat in the garage for a little while longer and we started it on the odd occasion (for only brief periods as there was no radiator hooked up yet) and enjoyed it running, although it wasn't going anywhere. Not sure how much the neighbours enjoyed the sound of a Rotary engine with no exhaust being started whenever a friend came over to our house for a visit, they didn't complain at least...

After asking many people where to get an exhaust made, I eventually chose Carline Mufflers at Miami. A friend had an early model rx7 with one of their exhaust set ups and was making good power (running mid 11 second passes at this time) as well as the car being very quiet (compared to the normaly explosion of sound associated with rotary engined cars). So I got a 3 inch double dump (you may call it something else, but it just means that there is a separate pipe from the wastegate to the exhaust system from the pipe coming out of the back of the turbo), the eastegate pipe is about 45 cms long. Then there is the catalytic converter, resonator and large stainless steel muffler. The muffler itself is roughly 75cms long, 20cms in diameter, with a 3 inch pipe running through the centre and out the back. The whole exhaust is based on 3 inch pipe, except the first pipe out of the turbo which is 2 1/2 inches in diameter.

Digga, helped me pick the car up from the exhaust shop, we hired a trailer, and towed the 929 back to his place. It was a little struggle, but his manual 4 cylinder pintara seemed to be up to the job (somehow). We screamed along the main highway at a Citroen killing 80kmh in the 110kmh zone. We got there unscathed and stared at the engine bay of the 929 for a while and tried to figure out why it wouldn't start.

At that time digga worked in PWR (Paul Weel Racing) making radiators and intercoolers to order. So you can probably now tell why I wanted him to handle the 929 for a while, I wanted both an intercooler and a radiator. He also offered to make a few more tid bits as well. So now in the nose of the engine bay, above the cross beam that joins the chassis rails, is a Intercooler roughly 450mm long, 220mm tall and 75mm deep with 2 1/2 inch alloy piping throughout. Behing that is a large radiator about 560mm long, 450mm tall, and 56mm deep with two el falcon electronic fans controlled by a davies craig temperature switch. The picture on the left also shows the radiator overflow tank in the bottom right, the alloy plate holding the coil packs just above that and the radiator down the front, the electric fans and the intercooler pipe work also the power steering pump bracket for the rx7 steering pump. A person with a mobile hose fitting service came by and made up new hoses the for the oil cooler and power steering. The oil cooler is still the standard rx7 item, it is just mounted under the radiator. If you also look at the photo of the steering wheel, you see the centre console is alloy as well, this also is one of diggas creations. He was even good enough to polish a lot of the pieces as well.

In the mean time, I took some initiative and decided to paint up a couple of the parts on the motor, mainly being the front pulleys for the power steering, water pump and alternator. I just painted them black and left them to dry and a week or so later I returned to Digga's place to find them installed on the motor and the car ready to start, but still, it wouldn't start. I bought some new spark plugs for it (bur9eq & bur7eq), we replaced the leads and spent much time cranking it over, adjusting the crank angle sensor, spraying "start ya bastard" straight into the throttle body. On the very rare occasion it would kick and run very briefly only to die again without any reason. We even towed it with another car dropping the clutch in gear hoping it kick start the engine, it sounded like it wanted to go, it just wouldn't. So we gave up and towed it back home.

14/08/2005
Okay, for those interested in the brake conversion, I have skipped a few chapters and here it is: The brake conversion came about through a summation of circumstances, I wanted one in the future anyway, it just ended up happening sooner than later.

	To the left is the new alloy caliper bracket made up to mount the series 4/5 rx7 4 spot front caliper. It is on the standard 929 upright and the caliper is on the "front" of the upright as you will see in below photos. The 929 upright has had the face shaved down slightly as well to help slide the rx7 hub further down the stub axle. Also, the stub axle has had a new hole drilled through the top for a split pin to go through to hold the whole lot in place.
This alloy hub is off a s4/5 mazda rx7 as well. For those familiar with one of these hubs, there have been layers shaved away from the edges which give it a stepped look. This was to give clearance to the caliper bracket bolts. ALso inserted in the the hub is longer wheelstuds as the 929 needed wider clearance for the tyre to not hit the coil spring. We even put the smallest diameter coilovers on this car to help clear the tyre and it didn't work.
	This is the spacer which now sits on the front of the hub and slides over the new studs. The face of the hub has been machined back slightly to remove some of the casting marks to allow a more flush fit of the spacer to the hub. Some may recall that the 929 normally has a 4 * 114.3 stud pattern.
On the right is the Front wheel sitting on the new set up. They may look familiar, they are just a standard r32 skyline 6.5 inch wide, 16 inch tall 5 spoke rim. You can see the long wheel studs here standing out as well. The 205 wide Falken Azeni tyre doesn't touch the guard yet, we haven't drivent he car around to see if it does scrub the guard. We need to make some brake lines and get a new ball joint pressed into the front control arm (I think it is called the control arm) before we do anything silly in the car (like test it's handling and stopping!)
	Here you can see the standard rear upright/suspension arm (whatchamacallit that holds the wheel bit to the axle). I haven't taken photos of the bits separately sorry but will try and exlplain it as best as possible. The rear is made up of a s4/5 rx7 front brake disc, a s4/5 rx7 rear brake caliper and the 929 hub. The hub has had it's old caliper mounting arms machined off and two bolt holes put in place to hold an alloy caliper bracket, that isn't too extravagant.
The face was also shaved down slightly to handle an alloy sandwich plate that now holds the 5 wheel studs that were taken from the front hubs and pressed in to fit, as well as going through the old hub face. For those 929 afficionados out there they will not that the 929 face doesn't really alloy for a 5 stud pattern, hence the alloy plate has been made thicker to allow it to become a solid point for the wheel studs to mount off, as well as going through the old steel hub face plate. We also have to yet make a bracket to brace the handbrake cable off.
	The rear wheel is the same as the front wheel. It also seems to clear the guard (just) we just now need to find out how much it will clear by testing it out some day soon. In the rear suspension arm photo above, if you look at the (left side of the suspension arm) you can see that there is a little overhang of metal there. this was machined away with an angle grinder (don't worry, it wasn't me doing the grinding) to alloy the new caliper bracket to sit in far enough to mount it.
The weird photo you see on the right is a 929 wheel nut, and a non affiliated bolt. We weren't sure if the 929 wheels nuts would go down far enough on the rear rx7 wheel studs so we thought to take off the wheel nut caps. This also helped to make the front and rear wheel nuts more "uniform," as the front's have no caps, being the long wheel studs. Here you can see our first attempt at punching out the wheel cap. We figured it out later but we thought it quite amusing that we put a perfect circular hole in the cap.

And this is the 929 sitting on it's new wheel, brake & suspension combination. Thanks so much to the patience and knowledge of Adrian brook who figured out how this brake package would all go together and the machining he did. Also to Paul Waller for introducing me to Adrian and throwing some thoughts around and also my brother, Ben, he helped assemble it all and put up with my stupid questions and "Why doesn't this go here comments."

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