First off, merry late Christmas to everyone, and sorry for the awful phone pictures, it's all I had at the moment.

I pulled the air cleaner off today, and noticed a valve that opens and closes near the end of it. It's connected to a rod, which is connected to something that sits on the inside of the air cleaner.

Does anyone have any idea what it is? I'm curious and don't know why it's there, or how it opens, etc. The best idea my friend or I could think of is that it had something to do with the air pump, but seeing as I got the car without one, I'm not sure.

Any help would be appreciated.

~Devon

 

It's been a while since I've had that on so I'm kinda guessing from memory here. That flapper has a hose leading to it that comes from the stock exhaust manifold heat shield. I believe it's to provide a higher intake temp during warmup, or in cold weather.

 

american cars call this a TAC, or thermosomething air cleaner. its a very simple system, when the car is cold, one way of helping it run better, and warm up quicker is if the engine can suck air off of something hot like the exhaust manifold. but when the engine is warm the engine runs best on cold air

so what they did in the 70's (pretty much every car had this, not just the rx7) was have a small duct going down to the exhaust manifold, and the flap can switch between hot and cold.

at this juncture, you just want to make sure it works, if its not you're sucking hot air, rotary looses power, piston engines used to ping.

 

well, I see where the tube would connect to the air cleaner, but the car came with an aftermarket header, so.......yeah. I'll let it run tomorrow and see if it opens at all. Since it's not hooked up, would it be safe to just try and get the valve out? at the moment it's just pulling cold air through the hole on the bottom anyway, so what's the harm, right?

 

on an 84 you just pop the clip out and slide the rod out, and remove the flapper and put the rod back. i did an earlier one, and the flapper and rod was one piece, and um you need to cut it or something

 

Thanks man, I guess I'll do that after i finish finding that wrench my transmission stole from me..

 

Both 80 and 79 air cleaners I have had were also able to be disassembled - - remove the e-clip from the end, slide out the rod, and the flapper will come out. You can unbolt the bimetal spring at the bottom outside and remove it too, if you want.

 

It came out, after some prodding and bending and such, but it's out. i may take the bimetallic spring out, but it's not really harming anything or in the way or visible, so....maybe later.

 

I would remove anything in the snorkel that may interfere or disturb the air flow, including the rod. The left over holes can be blocked off with aluminum ducting tape.