[MOC] Mazda RX7 with rotary fake engine and RE:Amemiya bodykit [Instructions now available]

[Gray Gear]

I am proud to finally present you the Project I have been working in these past few months:

This Mazda RX7 FD. It was fitted with an RE:Amemiya bodykit and a lot of other tuning modifications to turn this FD into the ultimate track weapon. Enough talk, here are some Pics:

 

Features:

Working 2 Rotor fake engine I developed just for this car

6speed manual transmission with "Safeshift" system

HoG steering with moving steering wheel (removable HoG)

Independent suspension all around

Opening hood controlled by turning a knob in the cabin

Opening doors with locking mechanism

 

Oh, and I almost forgot: Of course I used the awesome Model Scaler from @Sariel to get all the proportions right. Huge thanks for this amazing tool, I recommend using it to anyone building a scale model: http://scaler.sariel.pl/

 

Specs:

scale: 1:8

length: 56 cm

height:15,5 cm

width: 28 cm

Weight: 3kg

Piece count: estimated 3000-4000

The massive Hood is lifted by two small linear actuators to reveal the deatailledengine bay with single turbo 2 Rotor Engine.

The car is fitted with a fully functional rollcage and sway bars in the front and back. That provides an incredible ammount of structural integrity. You can just grab the roof through the windshield and lift the whole car up, no flex, no worries. Try that with you Porsche or Bugatti 

In the trunk there is a water tank for water injection, and a surge tank for both water and fuel, to guarantee a perfect fuel mixture in every situation.

 

Before people start asking again, yes, some parts of this MOC are obviously not original LEGO pieces. I just loved the white color, so you gotta do what you gotta do.

I also exchanged all the differenly colored Pins on the body, even the black ones. Defiantelly worth it imo.

 

The instructions are now available on rebrickable: https://rebrickable.com/mocs/MOC-46448/Gray_Gear/moc-mazda-rx-7-tuned-by-re-amemiya/?inventory=1#comments

Sadly there will be no orange model, there were just too many pieces missing. But you only need very few non-LEGO pieces for the white version ;)

 

I hope you like this Car as much as I do, leave your thoughts in the comments please. Best regards,

 

Gray Gear

Edited June 29, 2020 by Gray Gear

[technicfan]

As a huge rotary fan, please please please do instructions for it, will happily pay, this thing is sick

Edited May 9, 2020 by technicfan

[TechnicRCRacer]

I can’t see a single flaw with it. Outstanding!

[2GodBDGlory]

Good work on a model of an interesting car! The rotary engine is probably the most interesting part of the model.

[letsbuild]

If instructions for this model were available, I'd build it.

[falconluan]

Looks great!

Although I'm not a fan of non-lego/lego mixing building, I have to admit that the white pins really help make the holes much less visible.

[Ashfall]

What a sleek and beautiful model! Would totally buy this if it was a set!  Are you going to try to motorize it? (Also instructions would be awesome!)

 

 

Edited May 10, 2020 by Ashfall

[Nebulaire]

It looks sick, well done ! Definitely looks like the TJ Hunt one, except for the wing !

[MinusAndy]

Great model. Really well proportioned. 

[grego18f]

Very nice replica of an iconic car 

There are nice details everywhere! Can we have a closer look at the Wankel engine?

As others said, I do not often praise the mix with non-Lego parts. But I am fine in this case, as this color is the one that matches the best in my opinion. And there are not visible blue pins... I tend to think that it is better to use counterfeit parts in the right color than ruining an actual lego part (not that there are not skilled people for painting)... 

[T Lego]

Great to see you have finished this project!  The car's appearance has improved a lot since the last WIP pictures you shared - well done! The composition of panels really capture the lines of the real car. Personally I feel like the back of the car relies too much on system elements. Why didn't you use the curved 3x11 panels for the rear bumper? I also have to mention the four shock absorbers used for the rear axle. In general for a car of this weight, two shocks per wheel is more than enough. Redesigning the suspension geometry could have done the job in a more efficient way. But honestly this is a bit nitpicking.

If you want to do instructions for a moc, I think people should be able to build it without having the need of modify/paint parts. Perhabs it's an idea to redesign some sections so it can be built in orange with 100% original parts. It will probably make it more popular MOC to build too. Anyways, it's your decision.

Thanks for sharing!

[syclone]

Absolutely stunning model, the small deatils like the headlight-mounted turbo intake are cherries on top of the beauty of the car . The wave shape of the splitter look fantastic as well, and the vented hood adds to the sporty feel a lot, probably would look great in a black to mimic carbonfiber tuner-style one. The panelling work is very well done too, doesn't look cluttered or messy and just flows very well showing the shapes of the car (even the Porsche wheelarches are well-integrated). IMO the back looks great with the system parts, technic ones would probably exaggerate/change the shapes too much.

Personally don't mind non-original parts at all as there's no point to limit oneself to whatever colours a company gives us, since those parts exist in "official" inventory. Also makes the model more affordable to build. And well, if there end up being instructions created I'd gladly buy them as this is one of my favourite cars .

[Gray Gear]

Thanks for your nice words @technicfan @TechnicRCRacer @letsbuild 

@2GodBDGlory Definatellly. The rotary engine was the first thing I built, and I didn't even think I would be able to make one small enough to fit in a 1:8 scale model. It had never been done before, so I had to get creative 

 

On 5/10/2020 at 8:59 AM, Nebulaire said:

It looks sick, well done ! Definitely looks like the TJ Hunt one, except for the wing !

It does look pretty similar, especially because of the mathching color sceme, but it is not even the same bodykit. This is the Bodykit I recreated on my model, which is more agressive and less smooth than TJ Hunts RX7. Look at the area behind the front wheels, and the rear wheel achres:

TJ Hunts RX7 for comparison:

But TJ Hunts RX7 was a bit of an inspiration for this color sceme as well 

 

On 5/10/2020 at 7:59 AM, Ashfall said:

What a sleek and beautiful model! Would totally buy this if it was a set!  Are you going to try to motorize it? (Also instructions would be awesome!)

Thank you . I only build manual models, i dont want to deal with RC stuff 

 

On 5/10/2020 at 7:56 AM, falconluan said:

Looks great!

Although I'm not a fan of non-lego/lego mixing building, I have to admit that the white pins really help make the holes much less visible.

On 5/10/2020 at 10:21 AM, grego18f said:

Very nice replica of an iconic car 

There are nice details everywhere! Can we have a closer look at the Wankel engine?

As others said, I do not often praise the mix with non-Lego parts. But I am fine in this case, as this color is the one that matches the best in my opinion. And there are not visible blue pins... I tend to think that it is better to use counterfeit parts in the right color than ruining an actual lego part (not that there are not skilled people for painting)... 

Check out the video to see the engine running

Its scary how much differently colored pieces are visible if you build in a normal fashion. I exchanged all the pieces afterwards, this is about 75% of the pieces I exchanged:

On 5/10/2020 at 9:46 AM, MinusAndy said:

Great model. Really well proportioned. 

Thanks! The Model scaler makes it so easy to get the proportions right, I love this tool 

 

On 5/10/2020 at 10:25 AM, T Lego said:

Great to see you have finished this project!  The car's appearance has improved a lot since the last WIP pictures you shared - well done! The composition of panels really capture the lines of the real car. Personally I feel like the back of the car relies too much on system elements. Why didn't you use the curved 3x11 panels for the rear bumper? I also have to mention the four shock absorbers used for the rear axle. In general for a car of this weight, two shocks per wheel is more than enough. Redesigning the suspension geometry could have done the job in a more efficient way. But honestly this is a bit nitpicking.

If you want to do instructions for a moc, I think people should be able to build it without having the need of modify/paint parts. Perhabs it's an idea to redesign some sections so it can be built in orange with 100% original parts. It will probably make it more popular MOC to build too. Anyways, it's your decision.

Thanks for sharing!

Thank you

While I agree that the back relies a lot on system pieces a lot, but it does not matter to me. I always choose the solution that works best, be it system or technic, I dont really care. I tried to use 3x11 panels in the back, but they did not allow for the cheeseslopes on top, and looked worse on the edges too. 

The rear suspension was a special problemchild of mine. It had to be a stuctural piece of the rollcage of the car, and I wanted the shocks to be visible through the rear window, because I think it looks really awesome. Both these demands meant the shocks had to be mounted further inside than you might normally want them to be.  The shocks are mounted in the middle of the 7L suspension arms, so 4 Shocks per wheel are just perfect. I think it looks really awesome 

If I do instructions, they will definatelly be for an orange version. I dont want to disappoint all the purists again 

 

On 5/10/2020 at 6:19 PM, syclone said:

Absolutely stunning model, the small deatils like the headlight-mounted turbo intake are cherries on top of the beauty of the car . The wave shape of the splitter look fantastic as well, and the vented hood adds to the sporty feel a lot, probably would look great in a black to mimic carbonfiber tuner-style one. The panelling work is very well done too, doesn't look cluttered or messy and just flows very well showing the shapes of the car (even the Porsche wheelarches are well-integrated). IMO the back looks great with the system parts, technic ones would probably exaggerate/change the shapes too much.

Personally don't mind non-original parts at all as there's no point to limit oneself to whatever colours a company gives us, since those parts exist in "official" inventory. Also makes the model more affordable to build. And well, if there end up being instructions created I'd gladly buy them as this is one of my favourite cars .

Thanks my Friend 

I loved the turbo inlet on this car as wellas well, I just had to have it on my model. The whole tubing work in the engine bay was so much fun. I recreated the whole system from air intake to downpipe, and everything in between. Even where you can't really see it   . I used a whopping 30 maccaroni noodle pieces in the engine bay (16 in the engine itself)  I love these pieces, so glad they are back.

I tried using an all black carbon fiber hood, but the color interfered with the frame of the headlights. It just did not feel right to me. I like this solution better.  But if you ever get your own version of this model, I can't stop you 

Rotary is <3

Edited May 11, 2020 by Gray Gear

[CycoPablo]

Awesome build, and I'm with you 100%. Ridiculous TLG don't make every piece available in every colour.

They've been around long enough. There's no technical reason stopping them. There's no excuse.

[CrankyCraig]

Looks pretty great to me. Loving the - not sure the other name will make it past the autocorrect - rotary engine. 

As seems to be the tradition to suggest possible improvements, one thing I'd like to see is a little more curvature to the roof. Perhaps the same 3X11 curved panels T Lego suggested?

1 hour ago, CycoPablo said:

...There's no excuse.

Really, no excuse? Oh, come now.

[Gray Gear]

I did some more checking for color availability, and as it turns out some connectors which I thought would be really common are not available in orange, like Piece 22961, Piece 32126 and Piece 41678. This sucks.

Edited May 13, 2020 by Gray Gear

[technicfan]

41678 is available in orange https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?P=41678&name=Technic, Axle and Pin Connector Perpendicular Double Split&category=[Technic, Connector]#T=S&C=4&O={"color":"4","iconly":0}

Maybe you could do the roof a different color, like a orange car with a black roof that would look pretty cool especially with the black wheels, wing and front lip. Then just put notes in the instructions somewhere saying that certain parts aren't available in orange.

Or do the hard part of redesigning the roof with parts that work in orange.

[Gray Gear]

Building instructions are now available on Rebrickable: https://rebrickable.com/mocs/MOC-46448/Gray_Gear/moc-mazda-rx-7-tuned-by-re-amemiya/?inventory=1#comments

I put a lot of work into these instructions, did everything myself, so please understand they won't be for free 

[LvdH]

Pretty nice model to be honest. Those eight 1x5x0,5 white liftarms (5 pin hole version), where are they located and are they replaceable? I don't mind ordering four arches but not more than that.

[Parazels]

Is it built of the same number of parts as its real prototype?!

Kudos to you! Your moc is brilliant!

[Gray Gear]

15 hours ago, Parazels said:

Is it built of the same number of parts as its real prototype?!

Kudos to you! Your moc is brilliant!

Thank you 

The version in the instructions is basically the same as mine, I just had to swap some colors. The only difference is that I removed the fuel system in the trunk for the instruction version.

16 hours ago, LvdH said:

Pretty nice model to be honest. Those eight 1x5x0,5 white liftarms (5 pin hole version), where are they located and are they replaceable? I don't mind ordering four arches but not more than that.

Oh yes these are quite expensive... But you can get 10pcs on Aliexpress for like 60 cents, shipping included 

4 are located in the rear Bumper. No chance to replace those. 2 are located in the trunk next to the sploiler mounts, these might be replacable with11478 after some minor mods. And 2 are located next to the rear wheels, and can just be swapped for 11478 no problem.

[aniking]

On 7/1/2020 at 8:15 AM, Gray Gear said:

Thank you 

The version in the instructions is basically the same as mine, I just had to swap some colors. The only difference is that I removed the fuel system in the trunk for the instruction version.

Oh yes these are quite expensive... But you can get 10pcs on Aliexpress for like 60 cents, shipping included 

4 are located in the rear Bumper. No chance to replace those. 2 are located in the trunk next to the sploiler mounts, these might be replacable with11478 after some minor mods. And 2 are located next to the rear wheels, and can just be swapped for 11478 no problem.

where can i get the white 3l and 3/4 pins? i have red and black but never find white ones

[Gray Gear]

7 hours ago, aniking said:

where can i get the white 3l and 3/4 pins? i have red and black but never find white ones

I ordered all the white pins from GoBricks. Ordering from GoBricks isn't easy, but PM me and I can try to help you 

[aniking]

On 7/26/2020 at 10:39 AM, Gray Gear said:

I ordered all the white pins from GoBricks. Ordering from GoBricks isn't easy, but PM me and I can try to help you 

thanks i will.

[DD22]

@Gray Gear how much would you charge to build me a red one?