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Although i'm technically not building a wing from scratch, i am sort of making my own custom wing by taking parts from both the RE雨宮 GT2 and GT3 wings and creating the GT2.5 wing. Basically i want the look of the GT2 wing with the GT3 stands and mounts. To do this, i had to solve two problems, 1. Create a mounting plate on the wing to allow me to attach it to the GT3 stands while allowing me to adjust the angle. 2. Find a way to mount the GT3 wing stands to the car since the bottom is not threaded like the GT2 stands.

I started by using a piece of cardboard to shape the mounting plate for the wing.



This allowed me to visualize roughly how tall i can make the wing over the standard mounts that came with the GT2 wing. In order to mount the plates to the wing, i had to cut off most of the existing mounts so i had more space to work with in terms of drilling mounting holes for various angles.



Once that was done, i was able to make a few different mounting plates to test different sizes and angles so i could get the widest range of angles without compromising the look of the wing. To do this, i used 1/4 inch wood boards from Home Depot. I wanted to make sure i had a production ready sample before i started cutting up my carbon fiber 1/4 inch plate which i was saving for the final design.



After finalizing the mounting plate design with the wood samples, i cut two plates out of the carbon fiber plate. I didn't realize how much more work it would be to make the carbon plates than it was for the wood plates. Despite being only a 1/4 inch thick, the carbon plate is actually really sturdy, but i guess that's what makes it suitable for this purpose.

Here's a close up of the final carbon plate mounted to the wing and stand:



And here's what it looks like from a little further away:





The second piece of the puzzle is mounting plate for the trunk. This time i used a 1x1 inch aluminum L-shaped bracket to cut some different plates to test.



Here's a shot of the wing with the Prototype 2 mounting plate:



I'm not 100% satisfied with the design yet, so i'll most likely make a third prototype before i finalize it, but i think i'm close. The main reason i'm looking to go for a custom bracket as opposed to the L-shaped plates i was using before was because the GT3 stand has an extra hole in the rear that allows you to raise the wing higher from the back, and i wanted to retain that feature without a space showing through the bottom of the stand after raising the rear. This picture illustrates what i'm referring to:



Although i'm not quite done yet, i'm pretty happy with the way it's turned out so far. It beats paying $700 to buy the GT2 wing stands which is what i was quoted by RE雨宮. And actually, the GT3 wing stands look a little sharper than the GT2 stands, which are more boxy.

Since setting up the Quickjack, working on rebuilding my car has been so much more pleasant than the past when i used jack stands. This past weekend, i had some extra time to work on the car so i made the most it by really tearing into the engine bay and removing all the parts i needed to in preparation to pull the engine. Since i'm planning to repaint the engine bay, i pretty much removed whatever i had easy access to along the way. After the first day, i had the fenders, headlights, airbox, battery, and radiator all removed.





Next up was the exhaust which i was a little worried about removing especially since the car had +130k miles and still had the stock exhaust. I was afraid the nuts and bolts would impossible to remove. Luckily, with a little PB Blaster and some breaker bars, i managed to remove the cat and the muffler without breaking anything.



From there i removed the ABS unit from the engine bay and pulled the engine harness through the firewall.



At that point, i took a break from the teardown and turned my attention toward something that had been on my mind for a long time, figuring out how to mount the RE雨宮 GT2 wing with the GT3 wing stands. After weeks of searching, i finally found a bracket i thought might be suitable for mounting the GT3 wing stands to the rear hatch.



To make it work, i had to drill out the ball joint so i could use a bolt to secure the stand to the mount.



After i finished modding the brackets, i finally got a chance to see what it would look like mounted to the car without having to hold the wing in place.







I gotta say, it looks pretty decent. It's even a little taller than i imagined, but still, my plan is to make a custom mounting plate for the wing so it sits a little higher and has more angle adjustments. The other thing i need to do is slot the holes on the bracket where it mounts to the stand so i can position the stands closer to the hatch so there's no gap like in the pictures above.

I finally got a chance to put together the Quickjack BL-5000 this past weekend and got some pictures and a video of it in action as well so i figured i'd post it up.

Assembled and ready to be put into action


This is the lift fully extended. There's a lock mechanism as well so in the event the hydraulic pump fails the unit won't collapse completely


A shot from behind. As you can see there's tons of room underneath the car now, plus there's added security that the car is held up securely and won't tip over.


Here's a quick video of the car being lifted and lowered. I confess, the video is sped up 2x. It takes a little over a minute for the lift to reach it's maximum height and a little over half of that to lower the car completely. Despite the slightly slow lift time, it's going to be awesome to be able to lift all four corners in one shot, whether it's for a tire rotation, suspension work, or any work that requires being underneath the car.


Besides the putting together the new jack, i also started working on tearing down the car. I began with the interior. Dirty does not even begin to describe what the inside of the car looked like. Here's the driver's side with the seat removed. Who knows how long this stuff has just been sitting and decaying in the car...nasty!


And here's the trunk...gross!


Luckily with a little bit of vacuuming i was able to clean it up a bit, but i think i'm still going to have to shampoo or steam clean the carpet at some point.


I also finally got around to playing around with the GT2 wing that i picked up. I thought about just buying the GT2 High Mount wing stands, but after finding out it would cost me $750 not including shipping for just the stands, i decided to try to find a way to make use of my GT3 wing stands instead. I did some mock fittings just to see what it would look like. I think i'm going to make some custom plates to make the wing sit a little bit higher than it does with the original wing mounts. I also need to find a way to secure the stands to the trunk since the GT3 stands aren't threaded underneath.

I finally got my last package from Japan to complete my full RE雨宮 build. This package included the CF fender diffuser for the AD-GT kit and also the Super Door Mirrors. Unfortunately, i found out that to use the CF fender diffuser together with the side steps, i would have to cut parts of the side step closest to the front fender, which means i'll never be able to go back to just using the side step without the diffuser. So i think for now, i'll just swap the two on and off depending on which look i want to go for. I'm sure i'll eventually just mod the side step, but for now, they're safe.





When i first saw the mirrors, i was a little confused because the wiring harness looked like it was off a used car. For a second i thought maybe they sent me a set of used mirrors, but clearly the mirrors were never painted so it's unlikely they had ever been used before. I later on found out from a friend that the way they make these mirrors is they source used OEM mirrors, then mod them into the shape of the super door mirror. That explains why the fitment/harness is OEM as well as the really long lead time to get them. I decided to take some comparison pictures of the super door mirrors vs. the OEM ones so anyone who might be interested in these mirrors can have something to reference.







Luckily, this time around paint matching wasn't too big of a deal because it was plain old white plastidip. Since i had run out of the dip i used to paint the car, i bought some aersol cans from Home Depot to get the job done.

Here's a comparison photo between the new door mirror vs. the OEM one installed:



And here's a closeup shot of the new mirror:



I think the mirrors look great and complement the rest of the RE雨宮 kit nicely. Unfortunately, the mirrors are designed for RHD cars, so the adjustment of the driver's side mirror (LHD) is limited. I can't push the mirror as far out as i would like and i end up seeing a lot more of the car than i normally would. At first i thought this would cause some usability issues, but after taking the car out for a test spin in the highway, i found that the mirrors still work quite well even with the limited adjustment. By the time a car disappears from the mirror, i can begin to see the car appear in my peripheral vision, so by my standards, that's good enough. I turn my head most of the time when i'm changing lanes, so it's not really an issue for me anyway.

And here's one last shot with both mirrors installed:

After taking the plunge and ordering 1 gallon of gunmetal grey and 2 gallons of white plastidip, i began prepping the car to paint...again, except this time i was painting the whole car and not just some body parts. Even though i really like my RX-7 in red, I've always wanted a white one as well, so i figured why not try it out since it's temporary anyway. Plus i always thought red wheels go best with a white car.

Even though plastidip doesn't require it, i masked off all the parts i didn't want to get dip on, and since there's a lot of areas that need to be painted behind the wheels, i jacked the car up and removed all four wheels.



Since the white plastidip goes on very thin, i was advised to spray the whole car with a gunmetal grey basecoat to ensure i got good coverage with the white. Here's what the car looked like with 2 coats of the grey. Turns out 1 gallon of dip was only enough to spray two coats.



After i began spraying the white, i began panicking, because i started to see what they meant by the white going on very thin, and after the first full coat, i had nearly used up my first gallon. I thought for sure i was going to run out of paint before getting full coverage of the white, but i pressed on, knowing that worst comes to worst, i could just order another gallon of white, but the downside is i'd have to pay extra shipping costs and wait another week before i could finish the car. Here's the car after one coat of white:



And here's two coats:



In the end, i just barely had enough paint to cover the whole car. Luckily i didn't have to paint the hood or i definitely would not have been able to get full coverage. As i mentioned earlier, the main benefit of plastidip is that it's a temporary covering and it can be peeled off any time after it dries. I never bothered to tape the front turn signals because i knew i would be spraying enough dip on it to be able to peel it off once it dried, and sure enough, it peeled off like a charm:



Although the plastidip didn't come out perfect and there's a ton of imperfections, i'm just glad that i'm done and the whole car is a uniform color. I do plan to try to repair some of the imperfections at a later time, but for now, i'm just going to breathe a sigh of relief and sit back and enjoy being able to drive the car again. So without further adieu, here's the finished product:











And here's one last pic i took with my iphone and edited it through the iphoto app on the phone that came out pretty cool



So in the end, even though the car didn't come out perfect, it was definitely a huge learning experience for me. Painting cars is definitely not something to be taken lightly, and i don't want to have to paint for a long time. I think the car looks good in pictures, but definitely not good enough to win any car shows. It's unfortunate that i couldn't do RE雨宮 justice with my build. Hopefully when i get the car professionally resprayed, i'll be able to better represent RE雨宮 here in the US. Now i need to go make amends with my wife and kids for having neglected them for the past month and a half!! じゃあまたね