This is the story of the worlds youngest rotary engine builder Liam Maddox! Now for those who are not really into build threads, here is a TLDR version of this thread with liams favorite band he has seen in concert playing his favorite song live to the assembly of the motor and its first start:

Liam Maddox started building cars with me several years ago. Around 2015 he was no longer just hanging out in the shop handing me tools and learning how to build things, he was interested in taking on his own project. Now being a bit young at the time (11) I figured the best thing for him to start on was one of the rx7's I had lying around. Here is the story of his restoration of this 1988 Mazda rx7 and how he ended up becoming the worlds youngest rotary engine builder!





Where to start... I think the best way to start is by talking about the car he took over and how I got it. During the late 90's I got into driving and building rotary cars. After owning hundreds of rotary cars and running a rotary shop (Reclaimer Auto), By 2010 I thought I had bought almost all of the rx7s within my area. However there was one that got away. I drove by this rx7 on the way to my shop everyday for over five years. Here is the car when I first saw it:




It was 2010 and I had seen the car sitting there for years, I started the rotary shop and had started dropping my cards on it. the Nissan 240z behind it was obviously drawing attention as well. I had serviced the vert that is pictured in the bay behind it when it was for sale at Al hutchinson's in corvallis but I was not sure who the owner of it was once it left their hands. My cards never brought me contact with the owner of the car... Attempted follow ups showed that the cards were removed so there was activity but there was still no contact. The years passed and I watched the sun fade everything and wondered why it was parked. Mid 2010 I noticed there was a fresh chord of wood delivered and there seemed to be life in the house.



Sadly time passed, the wood ended up rotting and there was never any movement to anything around the property. Day after day the drive by just showed the cars passing away. The fields plowed next to it as the seasons passed on and the cars rotted away. All those parts or potential wasted.



Now during that time I ended up working with Pineapple racing, FD3S Engineering, Rotards and several other shops in the NW that were rotary specific. After each one shut down, and when pineapple started outsourcing to fd3s engineering I decided to move more to rotary cars than classic restoration. Where I had spent the previous ten years focused on 60's restorations I had built several rotary cars and had grabbed the guys attention finally. These were some of the projects that year at Reclaimer Auto Restorations shop:












I was also getting a reputation around town for building these things and doing stupid things like this with Liam:
As it turns out he had just blown the motor in that vert and it was back in the rear bay at that property where the coupe was and he stopped by looking to get an engine rebuilt for it. It seems that the whole time he had been working across the street at the mill where I lived and had the shop as I drove past his place on my way to town each day. We had been looking at each others cars for years but never ran into each other.




The person was a little weird to say the least. He wanted to rebuild the motor for the vert and was talking about possibly paying for it with the coupe. I was not terribly interested in the idea as the cars worth around 2012-14 was about 400 bucks and the cheapest rebuild I offered was a reseal with a good core at 1500. So we were working on how I might help him get this rx7 of his back on the road. The guy called one morning around 5am and was wanting to pick up the core motor he had dropped off and was looking to sell his cars he said. I set the stuff out for him as I was not at the shop and did not hear from him again. I was not really sure what he ever did with the vert. The mill closed that year, the house and the shop were overrun by new houses around it and we ended up closing shop and moving to another three bay shop on an acre outside of town in the santiam pass instead of the Willamette pass. While we changed places I watched his property change and the car left. He had obviously sold it and moved on.








So imagine my surprise when I noticed it was gone... Then when I was in Albany awaiting the closure of the new house to finish up I found the car just down the road from me! The guy worked with the person at the mill and he had been talking with him for years about getting the car from him. I remembered a vert working at the mill and driving by occasionally, but I lived on Hwy 20 to the coast after OSU and its really busy, so it never crossed my mind until then it was the same guy. So there it was. I lived a block a way and decided to pull over one evening to ask him about it while driving by. I asked if he wanted to sell it, he only had a bill of sale, not filled out correctly, and the story about his friend at the mill with the vert. He assured me that it ran because the guy said it did, he said his vert died, but this was a good runner when parked... I was skeptical. But I asked him how much he wanted, to name his price because I want it out of principles at this point. He said 1k. That was fair for 2016 prices and I was willing to to deal with the project knowing it did not run. So here is the place we were at and where the restoration started... The apartment complex was not ok with the car being outside, especially considering that is our giant while Lincoln in the picture there. So we got a garage there. It was going to be a month before we had the new shop.

 

Here are the very first pictures of the rx7 when Liam and I first saw it in Albany:







Once we got it home it became Liams future project. He had been talking with me about it for a few days and remembered it from when we would drive by it. For many years liam had been there for the builds and was always interested. He was looking forward to having his own project and he immediately got started on it! We made him a thread and he started in on the first stage of cleaning it after it sat for so long!




Liam first talked of wanting to build his own red and black motor when he helped me with this one:





Liam with Marcs kid riding around while I move FD3S Engineering from beaverton to Marcs dads home in canby.

He was almost always with me on my adventures and was surrounded in the rx7 community

He was quickly interested in helping me around the shop

Even little things like the nuts and bolts of a job can seem to go by faster with a second pair of hands.

Couplers and external bolts he became accustom to

While he may not have understood at the time he was working on some of the rarest rotary cars and parts, he sure became a rotary guy. Here he is working on a 3/78 RHD Savanna with a 13bre cosmo single turbo swap in it.

His mother had a turbo II daily driver he became a fan of.

To those who knock the rear seats of a rotary car, Liam is a prime example as to why they are all worth having them and why you should install some in yours to drive your kid around in!

Watching him become a fan of the cars and grow makes this 6 and 12 picture priceless!


So that is pretty much how I got this car and why liam wanted to take it on as his first engine build!

 

Sounds really interesting. Would love to hear the full story of the build.

 

Alright! So the first thing we did was pull it into the garage at the albany apartments. They had a no working on cars and no dead cars policy being a luxury apt, but we figured that anyone who noticed after five would not care and we were moving into the new shop, so if we were clean than no harm, no foul. Once the car was in he took out the seats and we started cleaning it up. The car was terrible. There was several rats nests and a couple mice actually still lived in it. I thought about the field that was next to the car all those years and that I knew where they came from.





The car was nasty

After a little cleaning it was possible to get into it... lol

The evidence of the animals that were living in it were strong to say the least!

After removing god knows what under the sides and the weird things stuck in the pockets of places it was almost clean enough to clean!

While the car only had a 120k miles on it, they were some hard sitting miles!

The good news is that the engine was complete although highly probable that the coolant seals had failed from it sitting with coolant inside it.

The first thing he did was clean the carpet. He went to town on it. The car was stained but clean for the first time in who knows how many years!

With a good cleaning of the plastics and a few replaced the interior was looking like it might clean up well!



Now that we have fully evaluated the situation we decided that we will go ahead and get the engine pulled first and see what the condition of it is on the inside. If it only needs some fresh seals that would be awesome.

 

With only a few weeks until we moved into the new shop we decided to get another garage so we had enough space to take the engine out without anyone seeing it done lol.









Liam took almost every single bolt off the car, however when it came to the removal of it I had to step in and lend a hand to assure safety. However he broke his way through every locked and rusted bolt, got all lines off without cutting them and ended up pulling the motor very smooth!






Here is one of the coolest videos I have gotten to put together and it was just luck how it worked out. I never needed to edit it, he just requested his choice of tunes and we got to it!

 

Well we got the motor out. Liam had spent days tinkering on the little nuts and bolts and finally we got to pull it out! He wanted to get started on taking the motor apart a cleaning it up so we prepped for that!



The engine was filthy as well was the transmission but that would not tell us the condition, so we started tearing it down!

The engine bay on the other hand was a time capsule. The sun had never seen it and after the grease ball was removed the bay showed great potential! Few cut wires, a horrible stereo system that the original owner put in and probably caused its death in the first place. But a solid bay in the end.



The motor tear down was simple as always, we found exactly what was expected from a car that sat that long. The coolant seal in the front iron was dead. The middle one was so corroded that it would not have been worth using either. The rotors were in pretty bad shape as well. The housings however were in great shape and showed the 100k miles the car had. The motor must have been original and just got tired. Which lead me to think it was either that stereo system that fried the body harness.

Took in the housing and cleaned them up a bit

Not the worst to use. but we needed a spare engine for everything else.

I ended up getting another engine from a person who said that we was pulling it for a LS conversion and it was a running motor from a car with less than 100k miles on it.

I was not sure if I believed it but I bought it to see if there was some good irons and rotors.

The motor was in great condition! The housings had some bad side seal wear and the chrome flake was intense. However the irons and the rotors were in mint condition. There as still lapping marks from the factory on the faces and the rotors had no carbon on them. we now had everything we needed for the build!

Liam learned how to spec and fully examine the rotors. He learned why the weight codes and various wear signs mean.

He learned the coolant passages and the O-rings in great detail and how the motors weak spot is the thin walls.

 

While Liam was a little intimidated about taking this motor build on himself, I told him that I would be there to assist all the way. We had already done so much through reclaimer auto he was able to realize that he kinda already knew how to do this from watching so many times. It was just his turn to do the technical!



Dozens of rotary engine builds through reclaimer auto restorations started like this.

Turbo 13b rotary engines for many happy customers.

While there was lots of people who came to help us around the shop I had always been the one who assembled the motors.

Sometimes there would be several motors going out at once



Most rebuilds required installing them in the car, not many wanted it shipped out.



However it was a common thing for people across the country to order motors

However most were just getting a blown coolant seal or apex seal replaced and back on the road!





Sometimes there as customers builds and sometimes there were employee builds that liam would watch come together.

My RHD was a fun experience for him however he was a little young to remember all the technicals. He is constantly asking if we can make another one for him though.

Liam wants to eventually have an engine bay like this.

Finally the reason why I feel liam will be able to take on this project... This is not my first rodeo. I restored this exact car already and it is still out there driving around to this day!

Liam helped me tinker on this customers car a few years back. The car was dead when we brought it in, there was a blown apex seal and the motor needed rebuilt. We dropped a new engine I built in it and buttoned it up.

Liam got many rides in this car and is one of the reasons he took on this current project.

Here is the car almost ten years after we got it back on the road!

 

We finally moved to the new place! The shop was a little smaller, which was nice as I did not like heating the other one 9 moths out of the year and it was not right on that horrible highway anymore. While I had to wait to get the driveway fixed the car was able to be outside and worked on without the worry of rules of renting. While it was a short experience, it is just not for someone who likes to tinker on cars. So now with the new shop liam can get started on his project and that is exactly what he did!





Finally the car is outside and able to get a good cleaning! Liam went over it inside and out. Well we did not pull the carpet or dash, but we gave everything a good scrubbing and it showed it! Now it was a car we could get into and start fixing plastics!

Liam got the new side vent plastics in. The dash had a few pimples in it but no cracks after all those years in the sun.

Shocking that the seats as well did not have any real damage to them. Mostly the real damage was the stereo system and the chewing that the mice did to the carpets.


Well... We got distracted and started getting parts cars. We noticed that there was really bad wiring and started looking for a parts car. This was the first one we came on... However it was in a flood and was only really good for the louvers and some random plastics.

Liam was really excited though. He had the finishline arm rest and now the louvers. He started cleaning up the car and then parting it out! He really got turning a wrench down!

I found this 91 GXL for really cheap. I got the shell without the motor and brought it back to the shop

Once I got it home I realized it was cheap for a reason. It also was a flood salvage. One warm day in the sun and you could just smell the river that took it for a spin. The dings to the shell and the major damage to the rear showed its trip in water as well. So it was a parts car.

This was a free parts car... A total loss, but a great non sunroof arctic silver. Liam started tossing around the idea of making it a turbo rhd swap like I had once. We said we could talk about it lol

This was another free rx7 that the rotary power northwest crew ended up passing out. One of their people got scammed by pineapple racing on a motor and just gave the car away and left the scene. The motor is a trip and a story for another time! Was a chop job, no way it was going to be harness donor lol

Seriously... This was the type of things I was finding in these engine bays.

I got myself a toy while getting liams parts cars. There was a really rare GTUs I found and saved from the scrap yard. I have a build thread up, google that. It is another story.

Got the GXL home and in the bay. Liam instantly started working on parting it down as well!

first he cleaned it in and out hoping that it might have good electricals.

But sadly nothing worked and he started talking again about doing a rhd clone to the hardtop fc.

We pulled the motor from the GXL and the GTU and found a couple other motors locally and started parting them down.

There was not much left of the parts. Few housings, almost no rotors or irons. The pickings are getting slim these days. I was used to pick up free motors all day and they were in good condition and now the ones I pay for are garbage. Times are changing lol



Beware of Pineapple Racing motors!

 

These were all fun tear downs and are for other future projects that liam is taking on after this one!

Liam learned where everything is from the first flood car and so this one he just powered through the tear down. It was impressive. The videos are a great watch!









I rarely had to give a hand, he did not even break and plastics or lose any hardware.

It was cool just helping with lifting the big things and just watching his builds come together. He was starting to talk about transplanting over the black interior to his. Or if we could find a black rhd dash he could start that project. I said we can tinker on the silver one and see.








Well... This was tinkering on the rhd project he wanted to take on. I will talk more about this side project he wanted later! it is officially a rhd car now...





And he got a black rhd dash... It was on. he was building a rhd fc as well.


Meanwhile...


He got everything off of the parts cars and some really insane scrappers showed up and some how got these cars stacked like that with a couple ropes and chains. That was the end of the parts cars and we decided it was time to get back to the main project!

 

Knightsports is one of our favorite companies and it was awesome for Liam to snag up a really rare front sway bar! A bit of sanding and then some paint and it was like knew again!

The engine paint turned out amazing. Color selection was to match the cars engine bay color and wiring.

Liam went to town cleaning up the engine bay! It really did end up looking like new after he was done! There was tons of bad wires that were chewed up and cut up but we started weeding through them hoping to get all the issues figured out. The person who let it sit either ripped out his stereo stuff carelessly or was robbed and they just tore it all out. It was a mess to say the least.

Very few engine bays look this clean with their factory paint. I was very surprised at how well liam brought the paint back!

Wiring fixed up, the lights finally working and the engine bay all waxed up with the new strut bar in... Time for the motor!!!

At this point Liams mom becky maddox started getting excited and started remembering her old turbo car and why liam was so excited to have one as well. She started giving a hand where and when she could as well!




Beckys old turbo II was a blast. Some hated the kit, some loved it.

I loved that she loved it and liam loved it!

I was a bit tired of having red FC's at that point hahaha Anyways...

Liam started on the brakes and suspension while taking down the GXL parts car. We got it up in the air and I showed him how to take each part off and he dove right in! I think having the parts car to take down while building this one really helped him get a feel for the car and how to get ready for reassembly.


He took off these nasty of single piston calipers and the four lug brakes and upgraded them to the four piston five lug set up with vented rotors.