This is article number six in a series about the professionals who specialize in providing RX-7 owners with engineering, parts, and service.

A few updates are in order:

Donnie Peters of Sun Auto (guaranteed used parts, and service for 1st and 2nd gens) is going strong. His daughter and son-in-law are now part of the business, and I understand he has increased his staff. He has added the Eclipse/Talon cars to his inventory, but RX- 7s are still the vast majority of his business. Shop rates have gone up since the article was written.

Precision Import Products (to the best of my knowledge) is no longer in business. I have not heard from Mark Schroeder for quite awhile.

Dave Lemon of Mazdatrix (broad range of parts and services) continues to explore the rotary. Anyone who has not visited the web site recently and followed his exploits with the 3-rotor, nitrous, 1st gen drag car is missing quite a saga.

I have not had personal contact with Tri-Point Engineering, but they always seem to be in the thick of things. If anyone wants to find post the latest scoop, it would be appreciated.

Brian Richards at Mostly Mazda "fronted" the J&S group buy for us this year, and is now the manufacturer of Kevin Wyum's intercooler design.

It is not often we hear of a new shop opening which caters to rotary cars, so recent reports on the net of a new business in Allentown, Pennsylvania were encouraging. Further reports of reasonable prices and a talented person named Dave Barninger made me curious, so I emailed him with a question about upgrades for my car. After several exchanges and discussions (and after learning that the shop was booked for over a month in advance) we set up a day for me to drive there from Baltimore.

Dave was going to install an MSD ignition for me--not usually such a complicated thing except that it needed to work with a J&S knock sensor. I also wanted the unit set up with two coils for the leading plugs, operating in "direct fire, wasted spark" mode as described by Paul Yaw on his "Yawpower" web site. A final problem was finding a location for the MSD unit. My engine compartment is very crowded with an aftermarket turbo and a bunch of other gizmos.

The story of KD. Rotary is, as you would expect, Dave Barninger's story. Dave has been a successful mechanic for quite awhile, but being a mechanic and running a business is not the same thing. His first attempt was successful from a customer standpoint, but (as he describes it) youthful exuberance caused him to expand a bit faster than prudent. The complexity of the situation dramatically increased one day, after he moved a partially repaired car across someone else's property. The car was leaking lubricant, and left a small trail. The property owner decided this constituted an "oil spill," and called the authorities. Dave ended up having to pay to have the ground water tested for contamination. He also had to pay the cost of having the soiled surface dug up and replaced. As a final indication that the business was not meant to be, a drum Dave was using to collect used oil turned out to be larger than allowed, technically putting the business in the category of a disposal site for hazardous waste. Obviously the business was not set up along those lines, so when the inspectors evaluated this "hazardous waste disposal site" for compliance with regulations, there were enough violations to force closure.

This was not a good time for Dave. He bumped around for awhile-- mostly working on rotaries. He worked for dealers and built race engines in his spare time. He was a shop manager for awhile. Eventually Mazda asked him if he would teach in their regional school for mechanics. Dave instructed there for a total of five years in the early 90s. I bet he was a great teacher. He is one of those guys who can work and carry on a conversation at the same time-- good at explaining what is going on, and enthusiastic as can be.

In my longing to understand why the heck so many Mazda dealers have mechanics that can't work on 3rd gens, I asked Dave whether or not he thought the training was adequate. He said that as a trainer, he taught from (and was pretty much limited to) Mazda- supplied materials. I don't remember his exact words, but the impression I got was that much of what Mazda mechanics are taught has little if anything to do with the kinds of problems most often seen in customers' cars. He said that everything he has learned about fixing 3rd gens came from his own experience, and not from the training. I said that surely SOMEBODY must understand these cars. His reply was that maybe they did in Japan, but by the time everything was translated and presented in training sessions, it was as if no one at Mazda North America had a clue as to what was going on--at least not in the earlier years of 3rd gen production.

This information, combined with what I learned last year from Brian at Mostly Mazda (who was a Mazda service manager for awhile), completes the picture of why the general level of service available for 3rd gens at dealers can be so dismal.

Dave was working for Mazda when Ford came into the picture. Mazda has always had good product, and now they are again in the black, but not without some difficult decisions. The plan was to cut personnel where Dave was working from over 70 people to under 20. Dave saw the handwriting on the wall, left of his own accord, and ended up working for a Mazda dealer in Allentown. He continued to build engines on the side, as well as to work on cars in his spare time. This was with the blessing of the dealer who appreciated the parts orders. Sounds like nice people.

One of Dave's outside customers saw an opportunity to become more involved in Dave's career and offered to set him up with a garage so he would not have to work in people's driveways. A facility was found, and a Mustang expert (very nice, soft spoken fellow named Mark) was also engaged. The combined Mazda/Mustang business is under the name of Blackstone Performance, and the web site is:

www.blackstoneperformance.com

After relying on others with mixed results in the past, Dave is understandably reluctant to put all his eggs in one basket, so he is working to establish the KD Rotary business identity, and has recently built a new web site at:

www.kdrotary.com

The web site contains a query form for advice on troubleshooting, and another one for price quotes--promising a response within 48 hours. I have no doubt that Dave will do that since he has been very prompt in our email conversations. And, speaking of price quotes, KD Rotary shop rates range from $45.00 to $60.00 an hour, depending on the work. A 3rd gen tie-wrap job for instance is $300 complete.

At the moment, Dave and Mark have not yet "given up their day jobs," so KD Rotary/Blackstone Performance is open evenings and weekends. My understanding is that it will become a full-time endeavor in October, which coincides with Dave getting married to Kim Donia. Kim is the "K" in KD Rotary. She has ten years experience as a parts person at a dealership, but always wanted to get her fingernails a bit dirty. In fact, she says that in high school, when her friends had pictures of boys on their walls, she had pictures of cars. Having an expert engine builder and service trainer for a hubby will be just what the doctor ordered for Kim, who will eventually take over the engine building side of the operation. The fact that Kim got top billing in the company name says something.

Kim and Dave's rotary shop is a family operation.

You see, Dave just loves rotaries, and anything having to do with them. He loves RX-7s. I asked him what he would most like to do with the business, and he answered that he would like to buy cars, fix them up, modify them, and sell them. He grinned, looked at my car, and said he wanted to create cars like mine. (Blush)

Dave quickly got to work installing the MSD unit. I had no idea where he was going to put it, but after a couple of unsuccessful trial fittings, we settled on a vertical mounting point in the nose of the car (driver's side, adjacent to the intercooler). Dave grabbed a piece of aluminum sheet and fabricated a mounting plate. He fashioned some studs to hold the plate to the car (easier to remove nuts from studs for later service) and mounted the MSD unit on to the plate-- taking care that any adjustments were accessible. While he was doing this, we were chatting. Occasionally, he would work something out in his head, try it, and mutter "Awesome!" or "Sweet!" This guy is fun to be with. Even though he has done a lot of major jobs in his time, he seemed to be having a lot of fun diddling with the ignition system on my car--something that might be assigned to the least experienced mechanic in a more upscale place. "I love this stuff," he said. Amazing enthusiasm for a guy working on a July 5 (Monday) holiday in a shop with the thermostat pegged at 90F, and the weather forecast for 104F.

A fellow list member from Connecticut stopped by to see how his T- II was doing. It was in for an engine rebuild, and some serious modifications. Always the teacher, Dave had the disassembled engine arranged on the work bench, and went through the failure with the customer, showing him what had happened, and using the parts to illustrate some of the options for the rebuild. While he was doing this, I had an opportunity to snoop around the shop a bit.

There is a make-shift quality to the place, but it has enough square footage to house all of the customer's cars inside--necessary since there is no fenced in area outside to protect them from theft. One of the cars had a "Maine" tag on it, and I know that list members have driven up from Pittsburgh. Although the place would never be mistaken for a bio-engineering lab, it was obvious that care had been taken to protect the cars themselves from the usual dangers of (for instance) having a bunch of engine ancillaries stored inside. When we test drove my car, Dave flipped the floor mat over to protect the carpet.

KD Rotary is obviously a work in progress. Tri-Point, Pettit, and Mostly Mazda started off this way, with an enthusiastic, talented person, wanting to create a business doing what he loves. Dave speaks highly of those shops, and the people who run them--saying they have been of great help. Our small rotary community sticks together.

Dave's method of upgrading an RX-7 is wide open. He does not push any particular approach, and is happy to install anything you bring him. So, for instance, if you want an M2 or Pettit set-up on your car, but don't feel qualified to do the work yourself (and live in the wrong part of the country for easy access to Mostly Mazda or Pettit) you can have the work done at KD Rotary. It is more practical than driving the car to San Francisco or Florida. The best news for a 1st gen owner like me is that Dave is just as enthusiastic about putting a customer-supplied MSD unit into an overcrowded engine compartment as he is about taking a T-II engine to the edge, rebuilding a transmission, or doing a tie-wrap job on a 3rd gen.

Most shops reflect the experiences of their owners, and KD Rotary is no exception. Dave has race track experience, but freely says he is not such a hot race-car driver. Thus, while racing of one sort of another is in the blood of many of Dave's customers, this is not a shop built as an adjunct to the owner's racing activities. Its sole mission and purpose is to keep rotary owners happy with their cars. Dave knows that the best way to do this is one customer at a time. And the most important part of working with each customer is to have a full understanding of what the customer wants his car to do-- how it will be used, and what compromises (if any) the customer is willing to make. As he did with the gentleman who had the T-II, he takes the time to discuss options, costs, and benefits--and then lets the owner make the choices. Working with Dave is a collaborative experience, as opposed to taking the car to a guru.

Allentown is about three hours from Baltimore on an average day, but my visit to KD Rotary was well worth the trip. Besides, I found a nice "home town" type diner a few blocks from the shop. Those two things--a good diner, and a good place to take my car are really all I need to make the day worthwhile. At the moment, KD Rotary doesn't "feel" like a small business. It is more like "Kim and Dave's place." I have a hunch it will grow (hopefully in a measured, healthy way) to take its place among the top RX-7 shops in the country.

David Lane
dlane@peabody.jhu.edu
'85 GSL-SE (Cartech Turbo)
Info on the car at:
http://www.wankel.net/DavidLane/