FD-less

Okay, before someone jumps on my *** for using ATF, it was two capfuls and I don't know how else to start it. I needed to drive the car down to the garage where we get all the tools and a heated lift area for free, but I had to drive her there in the snow. Twice in the last two days she just won't start without ATF. At what point do you guys pull the choke and what might I be doing wrong?

MosesX605

On cold days, like today -30 Centigrade, I pull the choke all the way out, give the car three pumps of the pedal and hit the key. It usually starts right away and rises to ~2500 rpm if I let it. I adjust the choke before it gets that high to ~1500 rpm and babysit for a minute to make sure it will stay running. When it's really cold it usually takes about 3 tries before the car stays running. Then I scrape the windows and get the snow off the car. By the time I'm done, the car is usually at the bottom-most temp line, so I slowly get going, never revving above 3k until the choke pops off.

If the car runs properly when warmed up, maybe the carb is iceing up. Is your sub-zero starting resevoir hooked up and stocked with 90/10 antifreeze? The faces of the rotor can also ice up under extreme conditions.

FD-less

Well, I wasn't doing any of that. I was so worried about flooding it that I barely touch the gas when cranking. Just enough to engage the choke and then crank away. Three pumps and it doesn't flood?

MosesX605

Well, I think that we've discovered the problem then. You need to pump the gas on any carburated vehicle when it's cold. It's only when the car is at operating temp, or recently shut off when you don't have to give any gas. You won't flood the car with three pumps, just don't go nuts and pump the hell out of the thing.

Do check on the sub-zero resevoir though, you wouldn't think it, but the thing actually makes the car easier to start.

FD-less

You see, this is what happens when you get a tired 12a, no manual, and are just a little too nervous about flooding. Thanks.

coldy13

When it's cold, I pump the gas to the floor twice, hold the gas in just a little bit and crank, it fires right up, then pull choke out 1/2 way. My car will die if it's held at the same rpm right away when it's as cold as it is now(10-25deg)so I keep tapping the throttle until it gets a little warmer, then I choke it to 2000rpm and it's fine, can either drive away then if I'm in a big hurry, or let it warm up more while I get out and scrape all the snow/ice off my car.

cletus

Crit, here is how you start it in the cold. I started it fine when it was like under 30 degrees out. Turn it over once without doing anything. Then 2 pumps of the gas and turn it over. Should fire fine. If it doesn't then, repeat the 2 pumps of the gas (all the way to the floor mind you). No choke until it is actually running. Worked great for me on that car.

jeremy

iTrader: (1)

ok, if you notice there are differing pumping opinions and what not. moral of the story is, you gotta learn how to work your lady. we can give you advice but your experimentation and know how will be what pleases her and gets her going. be smooth brotha.

- isaac hayes

Wankelguy

I NEVER have to pump the gas when I start up in the morning. I just pull the choke 3/4 of the way out and blip the starter once. Fires right up every time. Maybe the ATF is compensating for low compression?

RX71982

is it bad to rev it up when its cold????? will that damage the seals or something ?? i pull my choke all the way out, give it gas when i start it and never have a problem.

cletus

Yes it is bad to rev the engine high when it is cold. This is true on piston engines as well.

FD-less

Yeah, just don't wind it out for a few minutes. You know how fast it warms up once you're moving. Just be patient and give it a few miles. Your seals will thank you.

Sterling

My two cents on ice-cold starting-

True that your car is a lady with specific quirks and needs and desires ( thanks, "Chef" Jeremy! ). But you should really understand what's going on mechanically inside her, and all will be amazingly clear.

First off, absolutely never rev the engine when you first start it. This should'nt even be done when it's just been running and it's still warm!
You think that the eccentric shaft and the rotors are the three main moving components of your engine, but in fact another very important one is the oil. It could be concidered a compomemet in itself as ideally the other moving parts are never really supposed to actually touch each other, as the oil forms an ever flowing flim between these parts.

If it's cold, your oil is like thin molasses and it's trying to be pumped through oil journals that are very small. It needs to warm up in order to get to all the places it needs to be. Kinda like hitting a heart attack victim with the paddles, and expecting his blood oxygen level in his finger to be instantly perfect!

The other part about reving the engine is that you want all the parts of the engine to heat up equally and slowly; Equally because aluminum and steel expand at different rates (and there's several kinds of steel used in different components thoughout the engine), And slowly because you don't want just the contact parts of the components getting super hot while the rest stays cold.

Ever heat up a solid piece of metal? Imagine heating up a big bolt to 300*. Know think about the mass of metal that needs to be heated up in your engine...evenly.

Repeated overheated starts may or may not at the very least cause unnecesarry tweaking (micrometricly {is that a word?!}) and perhaps disturb the giant seals in the engine. I really don't know. At worse, you could be super heating your oil-starved side seals as they scrape across the dry side housings. Since ideally they are the only things to really make contact, they could get pretty hot pretty quick. That heat has to go some where, and the closest thing that can easily absorb the heat are the fine hairpin springs underneath them. Then the springs start to loose their temper (heh heh- I should talk! ) and your engine starts to blow oil.
Sound reasonable? I don't really know for sure. I've never rebuilt an engine. But logic and my occupation as a metalsmith tells me this is probably an accurate account.

I don't go over 3K at warm up. Lower if she'll stay. It's hard because I live in NY, and though not nearly as cold as the temperatures I read about some folks enduring, I also don't have a choke on my modded carb.

M'Kay. The choke works by cutting off air to the carb. Severely! This richins the mixture outrageously, but is what's needed for your ice cold car to power over. Starting an ice cold car is like trying to start it in gear- if there was a gear that was say 1/6th what first gear is. IE, you are really trying to start it under load. And you know just from normal driving up a hill, you need more fuel to richen the mixture for a heavy load condition.

Conversly, ATF, MMO, and the like dilute and trap the fuel in the puddle that is at the bottom of your flooded rotary, effectively leaning the mixture.

Pumping the snot out of the engine in desperation to "keep her going" is another way of richening the mixture. It works because even though you're opening the butterflies and letting in alot of air, you're also shooting an outrageous amount of fuel in there with the accelerator pump- Once again effectively richening the mixture to what she needs to spin her **** through molasses!

Keep in mind that "stoich" is a ratio for fine running at temperature. You get your A/F mixture to stoich for the best cruising. You tune your accelerator pump for the best transitional opening of the throttle. You can be SOOO close to that perfect ratio, but there's really only one perfect ratio for the given circumstances (70*, flat road no load, 87 octane, ect). The ratio would need to be very different (very rich, but well defined) for a cold start. And there's one perfect ratio for the circumstances. If it was five or ten degrees different outside, that ratio would have to be different, too.

When you are trying to start and seem to be experiencing this hit or miss thing, it's most likely because you keep randomly nailing the perfect A/F ratio for your given circumstances.

The carb (tuned properly) along with the choke (which should be concidered a whole different animal than the carb, yet interactive) and I think even some of the emission equipment all work together to automatically provide these ratios.

You should not have to partially push in the choke, ect. It should do it all on its own if everything is set up right.
Chances are, (my guess) 85% of the first gens out there are not] set up perfectly, and so these things work fairly well in cool temperatures, but the percentage that work probably drops exponentially as the temperature decreases.

Tune the carb when it's warm. Tune it well, and always have a clean filter. Winter means dust! When tuning the carb, raise the idle to 850 or 900. set the mixture till it sounds perfect, and then richen it by an 8th to a quarter turn.
Then look at the linkages on the choke system. Chances are they are cruddy. Clean them! Avoid spraying cleaner or lubericant like WD40 into the coil thermostat unit that controls the choke flap. This thing is vitally import, BTW! and so is the easy movement of that choke shaft. Afterall, it's just a bimetal spring that's trying to move it.
make certain your choke cable is properly adjusted. Cables stretch! The choke should be closed when you pull out the ****. That's how it works!

Run the appropriate oil in her, and don't let negative three hundred degree temperatures keep you from changing it if it needs it! (If you're feeling guilty right now, plan for it this weekend! ) thinner oil will still be effective, way easier to start, but there's a trade-off; Don't expect to be able to run the snot out of her when she's warmed up when you've got 20 wt. in her. She will heat up! (Often the gauge goes down significantly when I turn the heat all the way up. I do it even if I gotta crack the window.)

I don't know about what solenoid do what and if any of them are related to the choke. But I do know this much- either the system (emissions control, I mean) works, or it does not work! Fix it? Good luck.
Someone wiser than I needs to research this more, and I believe that theneeds of the poor folks that have to have this crap on their engines and in working order are not well met on these boards.

It's cold. It sucks. Your poor engine's been outside all night!
Be easy on her- she's delighted to see you, but is worried that she'll let you down!

M'Kay. I'm done!

jeremy

iTrader: (1)

sterling, the master, lol. love the sig and good write up.

i was also thinking, due to the oil running down and being the "thin molasses", isn't it possible that he just isn't getting the oil into the chambers on startup to get compression? perhaps the oil pump isn't moving enough and the atf is giving him the seal he needs for enough compression to fire. if you covered this and i missed it forgive me, its still too early and my add took over about 1/3 of the way through.

what oil weight are you running?

FD-less

Oh, no it's just that I didn't know to pump it and pop the choke. The car starts fine now. I was worried since this is my first carbureted rotary that I might flood it, but she's fine now. And Sterling, love the part about the engine being in the cold all night and is delighted to see me. If she had a tail, she'd wag.

FD-less

Sorry, repost

Sterling

When I slim down my sig, can I use that in it? It's perfect!

Jeremy, I dunno what the scoop on the ATF/MMO deal is- Whether it's making for better sealing, or diluting a flooded condition, or a combo of both. Obviously it works for some people.

I'm not anti-ATF/MMO. I just never liked the idea of people not being REAL specific with their instructions to first timers, that's all. You never know what's running through the frustrated brain of someone in love with their new private land jet that won't start. Some people take things to mean the wrong thing, and if it did'nt start the first time, maybe they should throw summore in there...and so on till the whole quart's gone! NOW they got a real problem!

I'm all for band-aid fixes to get you by. Kinda like Mar3 turning tricks to make rent- He's gotta do what he's gotta do.
But when the opportunity is there, they should know that they should attack the root of the problem.

FD-less, do you not have a manual?

I think it's about time someone scanned the manual that came with the cars. I have a few. I only need one. I won't sell them for more than postage it takes to mail them. (what the **** am I gonna do with five manuals?!)

But I'll only give away three, and only to persons HELL BENT on keeping their Rx-7s! (Gotta prove it to me by writing a poem and posting it! )

Turbo12A

You mentioned you dont have a choke on your carb. I also dont have a choke on my modded Nikki. Whats youre trick to starting your car without a choke??

T.J.

Sterling

I just pump it twice, and she fires up, but won't keep going unless I keep juicing the pedal. This is around 2.5-3K. That last for about 45 seconds, and then I can keep it running steady at 2K, pedal down. After about 90-120 seconds, I let off the clutch, and give the tranny some movement.
This is usually not ever happening mucxh below around 15 degrees on the worst days (F).

You have a whole different animal (turbo). I have no idea what it should be like for you. I'm imagining it should be the same order, but should take less time because of the heated air entering the carb. Even at low charger revolutions, the exhaust is nearby enough to the intake that it must make a difference- even if only a little at such low RPMs.
Like I said, I'm not sure.

Ask specifically a Canada turbo guy- a California turbo guy is'nt gonna know!

FD-less

As far as the manual goes, I have a Haynes but it doesn't cover startup, just how to recussitate once it's past your engine's time. Sometimes it's just the basic stuff, you know? Anyway, if anyone has a manual pertinent to an 85 (84, maybe) I'd love to get my hands on a scan or original if possible.