Setting up a gear-head's 2 car garage...

[frijolee]

Greetings y'all.

I've been reading garage journal for a few years now off and on (reviews of tool boxes etc). Joined a few months back and figured it's time to start posting.

My wife and I close escrow on our first house August 1 here in southern CA.

The garage is a 20x21 but will mostly get treated as a single car version. I'm a bit of gear head so what I'm shooting for is both workshop and garage/storage.

Some great threads on here. Obviously I've seen the 12-gauge garage, but are there any other recommendations on here for 2 car garages with high attention to detail and usability.

 

[silverstone]

welcome ,congrats on the new house ... but I would love to see more pictures of your car!

 

[1/2 Cup]

Welcome from downunder and thanks for posting.

 

[frijolee]

Pictures of the car are easy: There's a full build thread on a forum dedicated to v8 swapping rx7s.

http://www.norotors.com/index.php?topic=1274.0

A few more of the overall from when I first did the widebody (all body work and paint done by me).

 

[frijolee]

One more: Got to meet another one of my car heroes the other day: Rod Millen (whose former company I now work for).

Some of Rod's earlier race cars were all RX7's and he even had a four wheel drive Pike's Peak car based on this same generation chassis.

 

[silverstone]

thank's for sharing ! I like what you did to the RX7

 

[NewEdgePerf]

Welcome!

I have followed your swap/build thread on the RX7 and am quite impressed by the quality of the work.

I have considered doing a similar swap. What would you recommend and what would you do differently if you did another swap?

Congrats on the new home.

Tony D
New Edge Performance/LS Speed Shop

 

[frijolee]

Thanks,

There's really not much I would have done differently. I've been really happy with the car and it does everything I want it to. I guess I could put "not attempting road racing without an accusump", but that's just hindsight. I have a pretty nice coffee table that come out of that one.

Forgive me for interjecting an advertisement here, but when I first swapped the car 2005 I was never really happy with the off-the-shelf vendor offerings for mount kits. I ended up founding my own company www.roninspeedworks.com in order to make better product. We're small but if you've already found www.norotors.com then you know we seem to be the go to guys for rx7 swap kits.

Personally, I think the Rx7 is one of the best chassis I've ever played with. I'm not an "import guy" per say because it's silly to limit yourself like that. That said, I've never understood why America refuses to compete in the small sports car segment. Muscle cars sure, but an MGB, Miata, s2000, or FR-s killer? Choose your decade and the story is the same: Never seen one. You have to reach out to Europe or Asia.

I've owned both second and third gen Rx7s and both are stiff, light, and well sized. Better yet is the fact that an E-shaft on a rotary comes out of the center of a motor, where-as a crankshaft is typically down low on a piston motor. This makes the transmission tunnel unusually tall on Rx7s and that lets you get a big bellhousing like that of a t56 back against the firewall. My car's still 50/50 weight ratio.

Second gens are dirt cheap and slightly bigger internally, so that makes them the better toy for most folks. Thirds gens have one of the best suspension geoemetry I've ever seen and the looks are to die for. That said, they come with a premium price tag that also makes them better collector cars.

So that's kind of my thoughts on that. Anyone want to help me come up with a clever name for my garage project. Goals and funcationality very similar to the 12-Gauge Garage. With a small space I'm thinking something along the lines of:

-Intentionality
-Think about the Implications (personal slogan of mine)
-Playing off half car/half workshop somehow.
-Just referencing my swap addition and calling it the Heretic's home, or Blasphemy or something of that nature.


Joel

 

[NewEdgePerf]

Joel,

Thanks for the quick response. I will re-visit your website for the mount offerings. (Do you have a wholesale program?)

Have you seen any "reasonably priced" dry sump kits for a short nose crank LS? Going to a LS7 engine would be an expensive alternative, I guess.

How about "Ronin's House of Heresy"?

Tony D

 

[silverstone]

I just read trough the 30 pages of your build , wich I had the time to tackle that kind of project ...

 

[frijolee]

Thanks for the kind words. Escrow closes this week so this weekend it's game on.