How well does your 12A Nikki setup run?
 

Like the title says. Just curious how well a properly tuned nikki is supposed to run. Mine has a slight hesitation when blipping the throttle but otherwise seems to run perfectly. Has good power all through the Rev range, just hesitates a bit when abruptly getting on throttle all at once at idle or in the lower gears. I replaced the Accelerator pump and it seems to be working. So I'm starting to wonder if maybe this is just normal?

Perfect... a little fat, but that's the way I like it, a little rich and safe.


Let the fuel cleaner you put in your tank do its thing. Check for vacuum leaks, vacuum determines a lot of things for carbs at partial throttle.

Are you running your vacuum advancers on your distributer?

Would you recommend changing all of the vacuum lines just to be safe? I was thinking about getting rid of the rats nest at some point. And yes I am running the vacuum advance from the distributor. For the most part the car runs well. Its just at partial throttle or when getting back into the throttle quickly in lower gears.

My FB has/had the same issue. I checked pretty much everything. I have noticed that it is slowly fixing itself, which I attribute to the use of seafoam and regular driving.

The car covered about 1,000km over the past 10 years and although it was stored well, I think it really just needed a proper workout!

So my advice is to drive it, burn through a few tanks of gas plus cleaner and see what happens.

But it never hurts to replace 30+ yr old vac lines, put in a new fuel filter and confirm your fuel flow rate and pressure!

Alrighty well Seafoam, new vac lines, and some weekly thrashing are just what the Rotary doctor ordered I guess. The car has mostly sat for 2-3 years and before that was only driven around 1000 miles per year by the original owner. Could just be that she needs driven more. I have a line on a whole 12a engine, tranny and nikki carb for 100 bucks I might buy and rebuild anyway just for fun. Maybe when I get done with that carb I'll swap it in and see what happens.

This thread makes me want to build a half bridgeport 12A and put a Nikki on it just to "see what happens".

If it was a Sterling nikki it might be alright on a Bridgy... Lol but just to clarify I meant simply clean and rebuild a nikki to put on my current stock port 12a. Having a second carb means i could clean it without taking the car out of commission for a couple weeks or worry about royally messing something up.

Ps if you ever want to follow through with your BP/Nikki joke the same guy I know has three 12a engines in a garage collecting dust...

My hogged out nikki runs great. Just ask my buddy with the Petit ported and built renesis in his RX8. He's not too happy with how well I can keep up with him even in the straights.

Take that second nikki and an extra manifold and start modding it to use when you get rid of the rats
nest. My advice would be remove rats nest leaving the old nikki intact. Do a DFIS ignition upgrade and a RB
SP exhaust setup. Get that all running good, then slap on the new bigger nikki and hang on!

Well enough to still be safely passing CA smog. :nod:

Tuned right, kept clean, and with all attached gear in working order (or properly disabled a'la Jeff20B mode), the Nikki's quite a good carburetor.

They don't like to be neglected, but no carburetor ever made much liked neglect.

no, Sterling Nikkis didn't even run toward the end of his production run (and the ones that did were unable to even idle right). Lots of people are still very angry with him. You're new so I'll just mention he was a very emotionally unstable guy and began to believe his own hype. It's all here on the forum for all to see, but very sad to read.

And what I said isn't a joke. But what does it have to do with that guy you mentioned? Is this a competition or something? See who can build the best Nikki and bridgey? I bet I know who would win.

PS. I Forgot to mention I have 2 12As sitting pulled apart on my shelves in the garage as well. Rotaries
are a kind of sickness that can never be cured.

I bet Jeff would win on that BP build with a nikki. Go do it Jeff!

I have five 12As, but who's counting. Thus I can afford to try a risky setup like a bridge, or even the rare 6 port 12A. Oh and a nice turbo 12A package (74 ported with an S5 turbo). Think I should go for it?

I bet I've given all you sick rotorheads a bit of a chubby right now. But then I've been told I'm a bit of a tease. But then I usually deliver because it's hard to resist to NOT do something once the cat is out of the bag.

I'd join in on the 12A bridge challenge, but I've got peripheral port on the brain next. I don't think a nikki would sit well on that.


OP: yup you gotta use carb engines regularly to keep them moving.

Id go NA BP with a huge Nikki, much safer setup and the engine just might last a while. You turbo a BP
and its just a ticking grenade waiting to happen IMHO.

Hey sorry man I didn't mean to bring up any drama or anything. From looking into past Carb threads I thought Sterling was the go-to guy for Nikkis. I wondered why i couldn't find his website though. But to answer your question no i am not really planning any kind of engine build at the moment. Just want to get my car running well is all. I have a lot of cool aspirations for later on if I sill have the car, and a Bridge port 12a would be pretty sick.

I thought you were being sarcastic about saying you wanted to put a nikki on a bridge port for some reason. Didnt really think the could flow enough for that kind of engine build. Would be very interesting though. Thanks for the reply man.

For the record this seems like a really cool forum so far. Lots of honest answers without much flaming me for being a noob. Honestly the car has already kind of put my patience to the limit compared to past experiences. I've been a miata guy for a while now (owned 2 of them) and anyone who knows miatas knows reliability isn't really an issue. I wanted a rotary so I pulled the trigger. Now I just need to be patient and learn.

I'm just going to buy that second 12A full engine/tranny/carb and tear it all apart this winter I think. Maybe do the carb this summer just to see if a good clean carb is all the car needs to run 100%. I'm excited about getting into rotaries. So far its already been equal parts addicting and frustrating trying to chase down this issue. I just want to get this classic car back to running perfect.

Funny thing is apart from the small hesitation issue I still have other stuff to work out with the car. I need to re-seal the Diff with RTV at some point and do a lot of routine maintenance to the car since its been sitting with old coolant, tranny fluid, and diff fluid for probably 5-10+ years. Wish me luck fellas, I'm sure I'll be on here asking/researching along the way...

We all started off as newbs at some point; thank you in return for asking reasonable questions and replying in a thoughtful and literate manner!

Karate Kid, my oem nikki has been bullet proof. Only adjustment has been the idle. I've even put in a rebuilt engine. Someone suggested using seafoam and letting things correct themselves.

Also these cars are ancient, when you work on them things that normally don't break will just suddenly snap.