What is known.

13b from GSLSE. Kids car, not mine. Fresh rebuild. New rotor housings. new hard seals, new soft seals. Keg was built and torqued down. spinning the engine by hand had minimal resistance and made nice phooting sounds.

Assembly lube is "Royal Purple Max Tuff..." with some dabs of Petroleum Jelly.

New copper positive and negative cables. New terminals. clean grounds. Chased with tap on chassis.

tried weak sauce battery from my tracker. Rx7 cranked very slowly. Tried Jumping with my Ridgeline. Same slow crank. Directly connected Ridgeline Battery. Slow as ever.

It is 20 degrees outside. Has been for a while, and I honest do not know the condition of the starter.

I'm wondering if there is a perfect storm of a **** starter of unknown integrity and the assembly lube just having cold weather viscosity issues. We are planning on removing the starter and testing it... but that cold weather. are we better to with for spring?

thoughts?

 

Have you confirmed you have good spark and fuel? With everything else you s=describe it should try to start. A new battery would be nice to have.

 

Brand new Mazda OEM pump. That expensive one. Serviced and flow tested injectors. Fuel tank was dropped, cleaned and epoxied with Caswell tank sealer. Of course there is a new filter as well.

thing is there is the cranks and doesn’t fire. I have the barely cranks situation. In fact it’s so slow I doubt the air flow meter even registers enough to kick on the fuel pump.

 

I would charge the battery. If it is not Turing over fast enough is will not start. A charged battery made my 12a start right up in <30 degree weather.

 

i would think it is starter, battery, etc before the engine

 

I agree that you may have an issue with the starter. If the engine rotated well outside of the car then it should have no issues in the car.

You have new cables and you said that you chased the threads on the ground mounts so I wouldn't suspect a cable issue. With this in mind, I would consider testing the starter and likely replacing it.

 

Battery is a two year old interstate being used in a daily driven Ridgeline. It is healthy. It’s just a bear removing the starter on a driveway with a pitch and in freezing temperatures.

As a reminder, this engine is still coated in Royal Purple Maxi Tuff. which may be exasperating the situation.

damn

 

how about a pull start? the starter is 225-250rpm, pull start can be as many as you'd like

 

Block heater ?

 

I would see how easy it is to rotate from the front pulley with a ratchet. This could point to maybe something with the clutch/throwout bearing/flywheel.

 

New exedy clutch kit including pilot bearing.

I pulled the starter so I get that tested out...

more to follow.