After situating the fuel system, we needed to finalize the EFI wiring. We had figured out all the pins needed and the general layout of the harness. Plan done, execution needed. First, mounting the ECU. We wanted it easily accessible but not exposed to too much heat or potential moisture. Built a small stand for it off the passenger floor and then built an extra grounding strap just to be safe. After that, punched a hole for the factory EFI …

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The car clearly had a good builder once it’s life. A builder who cared about how fuel was going to get delivered to the engine and keeping the car competitive within the ITA rules. This allowed us to inherit a 22 gallon Fuel-Safe fuel cell with custom rear firewall, fuel pumps and filters. Unfortunately, the pumps were of no use for us. A typical carb setup only requires anywhere from 4 to 7psi of fuel pressure and lower consumption than …

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After getting most of the wiring laid down, we needed to address an important part of this engine swap. The cooling. The 13B engine requires a good bit more cooling than the 12A required and unfortunately takes up more real estate in the engine bay than the 12A as well. We knew the fit would be tight with how the previous builder mounted the radiator and oil lines in the car so the plan early on was to mount a …

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I wasn’t really sure the best way to word this section’s title, so we’ re just going to call it “getting it running” because although the swap is not terribly difficult, there are lots of little things that need to happen to get this 13B into running order. First off is the wiring setup. We took the entire engine harness, ecu and misc chassis harness bits from our donor car in order to make the 13B EFI happy in it’s …

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These posts are falling back now a few weeks as we’re spending more time trying to get this car to be ready for the GRM Challenge. With a Nov 1 registration deadline nearing, time is slipping away quickly. The interior cleaning and respray is done finally and most assembly is complete as well. More bits will get locked down as the rest of the build wraps up, but as far as we’re concerned, the interior is as clean as it’s …

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After getting the 13B home to the RX3, it needed a bit of a clean up. Overall the housings, etc looks pretty clean but I just wanted to get the build up from the years of sitting in the woods off it. Once it was sprayed down and degreased, it was rolled into the garage to hang out with the car to get acquainted for a few days before I could circle back and install it. Prior to actually getting …

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If you’ve been following this build at all, you’ll know that over the last several months we were working on getting this RX3 powered by a 12A bridge ported engine. After several dead donor engines and housings, we had to go with ‘plan C’ (plan A was stock port 12A, plan B was bridged 12A). Plan ‘C’ was to go with the “big block” swap and drop a 13B into this classic. There are SEVERAL things you have to overcome …

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We left off with the interior post last time just showing a bit of progress. We continued to paint the interior back to white and fixed a few areas along the way. Some trim, hinges, mounting points, etc needed a bit of touching up on the welding, so that was addressed. We also have since bailed on the fiberglass dash idea as a roll of aluminum sheet used for insulation/duct work was being tossed out at a dumpster and it …

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While we’re working through the engine portion of the build, I have some down time to address the last bit of pink on the car. The interior. It’s amazing how such great fabrication work got covered up by what can only be a Proctor & Gamble ad-execs wet dream, but it’s got to go. The plan with the interior is pretty simple. Not much if any budget is really getting spent here. Wash it up, rattle can it back to …

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So in preparation for the third engine idea for the RX3, which involves the larger 13B engine, we need to make a few changes to the car to accommodate the extra size, roughly 20mm, that the 13B is over the 12A. One part in particular is the exhaust. Now, MC having used 12A housings on one of his earlier projects, we know we can make the RX3s original headers work on our new engine. The problem, they are SHOT. It …

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