Am I screwed?
 

I think it's a foregone conclusion, but I thought I'd ask here anyways. My friend and I just rebuilt my carb on an 1982 RX-7.

We got it running just fine and were driving home when I heard a clunk-clunk noise from the hood/engine. I slowed down and my car backfired hard. When I stopped, my car stalled and wouldn't start again. When I cranked it, white smoke poured out of the tail pipes and you could see mists of gas in the carb.

Now, did I:

A: blow a seal
B: somehow mess up my carb

I'm reluctant to take my car to the Mazda dealership, because with rotaries, they charge by the hour, no matter what they're doing, so if my engine is indeed FUBAR then I don't want to pay the dealership hundreds of dollars to tell me so.

So what do you think?

Thanks in advance,

Matthew

Okay white smoke = burning water. Check you coolant level, pull your spark plugs,let it sit, and see if your water level changes over night. When you rebuilt your carb did you remove the intake manifold? If so, did you replace the O-rings around the water passages.

If you some how started taking in water, either a bad internal O-ring or the ones I mentioned above, you could have very easily popped an apex seal. And burning water means less water for the cooling system, means overheating, means new motor. Start there and see what you find

Ryan

It's ALIVE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 

HAAAZAAA!

Out of morbid curiousity, I tried to turn over my engine this morning.

It started.

After a quick trip into my apartment to change my shorts, I tried to warm it up. The white smoke came back but inspection in daylight revealed it to be the regular thick winter exhaust that my car always puts out when choked. When it got close to operating temp, I took it off the choke and it died. I tried to start it and it just cranked really fast.

Fine.

I took off the air cleaner and looked down the bores. The primaries were misty as before. The secondaries, however, were just flooded with gas. Hmmmm.

Soon thereafter, my dad came to pick me up, seeing as how I had no wheels and asked me for the keys, to see if he could get it going.

He did.

After a real shaky idle and warm-up, the car runs. I took her out on the highway and she accelerated just as well, or slightly better than before. However, when I let off the gas to coast, my dad, who was following me, noticed a foot-long gout of flame shoot out from my tailpipe.

Ok, so I've got it running a bit rich.

At any rate, it's alive and not blown. I'm going to swallow my pride and take her in to the Mazda dealership tomorrow and have them set the carb for me.

My only question is:

What the hell was that noise last night? Did I dislodge a large piece of gunk from my engine because of all that carb cleaner? I'm stumped as to why it suddenly died last night, only to live again today.

Maybe my RX was playing a particularly cruel April Fools joke on me.

Anyways, any guesses would be welcome.

Thanks in advance.

Matthew

that noise was you shooting a foot flame, lol.

sounds like the noise mine makes when shooting a flame.
puff pufff brap pop pop pop pop brap puff puff

I would have to agree. I'm always running rich and get backfires all the time....hehehehe. I've had times where it sounded like a shotgun went of inside the cabin. With a free flowing exhaust it's always fun to see a flash of light from behind and people baking off. They shouldn't be that close anyways. :rofl:

Are you sure you set your floats correctly. OR did you replace them? Even if not, you may have trouble with any number of jet passages that are clogged.

I rebuilt a fellow's carb on the furum when I installed it one of the floats was sticking and was not allowing fuel through the needle. Also the accerator pump passages got clogged up. IT was frustrating but easy to fix. Clean every hole with a carb spray with a straw sprayer and go to town with it. Be sure not to lose any carb parts doing this.

After this, it work close to normal and made good power and the accerator pump squrted about the right amount as well.