NY_Subietech

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Hello, everyone. Greetings from one of the worst days in recent memory. I purchased my 88 FC a few weeks ago and found it had a nasty vacuum leak under the upper intake manifold around the injector area. Today I finally had all of my parts together so I pulled the intake apart at the mid manifold joint. Then I spent about 4 hours cleaning the old gasket off. I resealed all of the injectors and replaced all of the vacuum hoses under there. I re-assembled everything and the found that the car will crank all day but not run. I have fuel pressure to the injector rails. In desperation and after checking that everything was indeed hooked up, I fogged some ether into the intake. That did the trick, it fired up and ran great. So I thought I had the problem licked.. flooded or something and now it's ok. Not so. every time I shut the car off, hot or cold, I can't get it restarted without the ether. I tried to drive it but I think there's an air bubble in it from when I disconnected the coolant lines to the upper manifold because it tried to get hot on me. That's new too. I'm at a loss. Once it is running it runs great. It always started in a couple of revolutions, even when it was running poorly. Am I missing something or is there something anyone out there can think of that I should have done? All I have to show for today is a horrid sunburn and a complete breakdown of my faith in my mechanical abilities. Thanks in advance, folks.

satch

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How did you go about checking the fuel pressure to the rails? Did you jumper the fuel check connector and w/key to on you checked it or did you check it w/key to start?

NY_Subietech

iTrader: (1)

I had someone crank the car with a line disconnected and it shot fuel out. I know the check connector is located on the passenger side but don't know what it looks like or how to use it to check the pressure.

satch

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After the car is shut off and allowed to cool down what is the longest amount of time you have allowed it to cool down before trying to start it again?

NY_Subietech

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About an hour and a half. I've given up on it for the night. I'm going to give it another go in the morning.

satch

iTrader: (1)

That's a good idea. You'll also want to check the water thermosensor connection and see if it's connected properly.

NY_Subietech

iTrader: (1)

Ok. That's coming off the back of the water pump housing, correct?

satch

iTrader: (1)

Yes. And you might want to check the condition of the spark plugs to see if they are wet or not.

NY_Subietech

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Thanks for your responses. I really appreciate it. I've had the front plugs out and other than someone using leading plugs in all 4 holes ( which I plan to correct as soon as possible ) they weren't wet or discolored. They also didn't smell of fuel. I'm going to check the thermosensor and make sure I didn't inadvertently damage it or unplug it.

NY_Subietech

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So I checked the thermo sensor and plug and don't see any damage. I can't for the life of me figure out what I messed up...

satch

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So, this morning it would not start up when stone cold. W/respect to the thermo sensor sometimes the wire could be pulled back within the plug and you really can only tell by taking the reading from the ECU. Also, I wonder if the primary injector plugs were accidentally unseated although I could see how you might not have been in the area for that to happen. Additionally, if you use starter fluid to get the car running you might want to check for a vacuum leak.

NY_Subietech

iTrader: (1)

Thank you. I plan to bring my booster pack home tomorrow and get it fired up. The battery was a bit weak by the end of the evening. I'll check for vacuum leaks again. I'm sure that almost 30 year old seals have to be failing all over that poor engine. I'll remove the rotted boot from the back of the thermo sensor and check the pins. It's so frustrating because it was running better than it ever has once I got it started last night. But thanks again for your help. I ordered a service manual which I expect here any day now.

satch

iTrader: (1)

If you had been relying on the battery to start the car perhaps it was too weak to do the trick, but was enough when ether was used. Not sure if this is plausible, but i thought i would throw that out.

these are all the manuals you need.

http://foxed.ca/index.php?page=rx7manual

NY_Subietech

iTrader: (1)

That's a wealth of information! Now I feel dumb for springing for the Haynes manual. Thanks for the link! I bookmarked it. Still having the same problem despite the use of a booster pack. I'm going to take the time to properly test the thermo sensor this weekend. I used the rest of my can of ether (once I had the car running) and discovered a vacuum leak from the area of the EGR valve. Which sucks because I was just in there. Off comes the manifold again. I think I'm just going to install a block off plate. I drove the car to the parts store and bought two new cans of it. It ran great and had plenty of power but needed a sniff to get started once I left the parts store. Weird. Thanks for your help!

satch

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At least you didn't spring for the factory version because it's over $100 and I feared that's what you ordered.

NY_Subietech

iTrader: (1)

So I wanted to update this thread. I fixed the starting problem! While I was doing my resealing I had leaned on a little white ground plug that fastened to the passenger side firewall. I noticed the spade housing was melted but was so involved in scraping gasket I quickly forgot it. Fast forward to me trying to troubleshoot my starting issue and I found that I was only charging at 12v. So I had started to diagnose the charging issue as best as I could. I happened to remember that ground and went to look at it. Unplugging and plugging it in created quite the spark. Then it got super hot! It turns out that the Negative battery cable was no good at the trans mount end and that tiny wire was doing most of the grounding for the car! I replaced the ground wire from one from a 2014 legacy my coworker replaced today ( talk about a coincidence ) and BOOM! Cranks like it never has before and fires up every single time. Plus I got a plethora of idiot lights in the information center that do self checks now when I start the car. That never happened before. It's amazing what a good ground can do! Thank you so much for your help!

satch

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Good to hear you got it figured out.