Izzy's Custom Cages

Day 1 (3 hours):

The fuel cells aluminum bulkhead (required per IT rules) was removed for access to the cell itself. The bulkhead will be modified to allow the cell to be relocated rearward if the cell interferes with the panhard bar location. The cell was drained and removed. Mark needs a better fuel pump as the cell drained faster using gravity than when I had the pump turned on! The previous cell installation left a little to be desired, which is usually the case when you buy a prebuilt racecar as Mark did. Jagged cuts and edges are everywhere (probably due to a chisel being used to cut the spare tire well out). This will be addressed and cleaned up after the suspension installation.

With the cell out of the way, the rear housing is next on the list. Removal is fairly straight-forward, if not easy. On most IT RX7's with the stock suspension, the control arm bolts and especially the watts link bolts are intentionally left loose to help ease the binding situation. Even though the upper control arms function is being replaced by the third link in the center of the axle housing, the control arms must remain on the car due to the Improved Touring ruleset. However, per the rules, bushings are free. Upon removal of the upper control arms, the rubber bushings were impregnated with air via a series of holes drilled in the rubber. This allows the UCA's to be retained, but they no longer have any influence on the suspension. An alternative to the drilled bushing is to insert roll bar padding. This works well, but sometimes allows the control arm to rattle.

After a call to Charlie Clark at KC Raceware, the proper alignment of the third link mounting brackets was determined and prep work began on the rear housing for welding.

Day 2 (2 hours):

The housing bracket was located in the correct position on the top of the housing (left of center, about 3/4“ away from the vent tube). Once the bracket was tacked into position, a heat soaking paste was applied to the area around the bracket so that the heat would not effect the 3rd member, the gasket or the housing itself. The paste is a must have when doing this type of work.

After attaching the housing bracket, it was the body mounts turn. Since the suspension will ultimately be swapped over to the new chassis after the season, we adapted the mount to a bolt on configuration with 8 grade 8 bolts. The body mount is designed to sit inside a cutout in the tranny tunnel and then welded solid, but for the time being will be bolted to the tranny tunnel from underneith. The bracket mounts in a structural area where several sections of sheet metal overlap reinforcing the area.

For pictues, click here.