My gsl-se is my daily driver and only car at the moment. I drive 110 miles round trip per day, and havent had any issues in a while. I went out today to install my msd box setup direct fire with no trailing. I cranked the car to move it (prior to touching anything under the hood) and it cranked, ran kinda sputtery for a second, then died, would not recrank. At this point, i have checked compression (good on both rotors), getting fuel to the rotors, however, it wont crank on starting fluid either, checked that im getting spark to the plugs, i am and its a nice thick blue spark, however its more orangish on the other side of the plugs. the only thing i can think of is that maybe the plugs are bad, i havent changed them since i got the car last september, and it was in rough shape when i got it. I have some plugs coming from oreilly's tomorrow, just thought id post on here to see if there is anything im missing that i should be checking. Car is an 84 gsl-se, s3 injection, no emissions equipment at all.

while im thinking about it, the temp sensor that sits in front of the uim is broken off, the wires are still attached and it has not caused any problems yet, but if i recall correctly the car wont run with it unplugged. how does it disable the car from running (ie, is it fuel or spark that gets pulled). thanks for any help guys.

 

when you first pulled the plugs, how much gas was on them?

 

soaked. like i said, i cleaned them off and sanded the tips. the spark seems a little weak to me so i have high hopes that plugs will fix it, but i wanted to get some input from some more experienced guys. They were soaked when i first pulled them, i pulled them again later to check and they were soaked again. I also turned it over while the plugs were out and its spitting fuel vapor with every pulse out the spark plug hole.

[edit] there is enough fuel going through the motor that after cranking over for a while and trying different things, i had fuel dripping out of the exhaust.

 

ok, remove the plugs, and clean them with some brake cleaner and make sure they're dry..a little heat works well. remove the egi fusible link, put a rag in front of the plug holes and crank the engine with the accelerator fully depressed and get the gas out of the engine. add a little oil to each housing via the lower plug hole. reinstall the plugs, remove the rag and clean any excess fuel in the engine bay from the cranking, install the egi fuse and start the engine (accelerator to floor cuts off fuel to the engine). sounds like it was flooded pretty bad. perhaps your injectors are leaking after shutdown. let us know what happens.

 

ok, which fuse is the egi fuse? ive got the 5 fusible links in the engine bay, and then the fuse box under the dash. also, do i need to clean all 4 plugs, or can i just stick to leading.

 

clean all of the plugs. i'll go snap a pic for you and post regarding the fusible links. be back in a flash

 

awesome, i appreciate it. ive got the laptop out here at the car so that i can watch this thread, im gonna get the plugs out and cleaned in the meantime

 

ok, here is a pic of the uppre fusible link block. remove the lower link that says "inject". i went to the garage and removed it to show clarity. the reason i didnt say the lower or the green one was because i wanted you to know exactly what you are looking at. makes things eaiser for future labors:

 

awesome, thats what i figured you were talking about. thanks. ive got the plugs cleaned. im gonna get the flood cleared and then attempt to start it.

 

ok, keep us posted! dont forget to depress the accelerator for good measure

 

ok, followed the steps listed above twice, and no-go. each time i get a significant ammount of fuel out of rotor #2, and some out of rotor #1. it has not attempted to fire once. I am going to pickup the new plugs in the morning, and try the above steps 1 more time, except installing new plugs.

just out of curiosity, what is the purpose of adding oil after deflooding the engine? wouldnt the oil possible foul the cleaned plugs before they have the opportunity to spark? I should probably note, the check valve spring in the fuel pump outlet broke when i changed pumps, so this car has no check valve, it takes about 2-3 seconds of cranking for fuel PSI to build up enough to fire most of the time. In my mind, i would think that the oil would have time to circulate around and coat the plug causing it not to spark when it needs to, let me know if im thinking wrong about this.

 

the small amoun of oil in the combustion chamber raises teh compression. you need to make sure the oil does not collect on the threads. using a small hose and adding the oil from the top works well. the lower plug holes must be used as the trailing plug holes do not allow complete access to the combustion chamber due to having only a small hole. how much gas did you get out of the engine before reinstalling the plugs. is the battery strong? are you positive you are getting strong spark on both the leading and trailing ignitions? what were the compresasion test numbers? orange spark is weak spark. the spark should be nice and blue.

 

battery is not an issue, ive got a duramax diesel maintenance truck sitting next to the car with gigantic jumper cables, plenty of power. the spark seems about the same on all the plugs. its got a blue spark when checking the wires with a scredriver, but if i put the plug in the wire and ground the threads the spark is orange and weak looking. I would assume this is probably worn plugs. i didnt write down the compression test numbers, but it was over 100 on both rotors.

[edit] the first time i cleared the flood it took a solid 20 seconds of cranking over with all 4 plugs removed before gas stopped coming out of the rear rotor. this was cranking with EGI link removed, and accel pedal to the floor. second time only took about 10 seconds, but i had also only cranked the motor over for about 10 seconds with the plugs reinstalled before trying to clear it again.

 

well, if the spark is weak it can cause flooding.

 

I will get the new plugs installed and and post an update tomorrow. thanks for the help.

 

i'm heading to work until 7am tomorrow morning but i'll check a little later and see if anyone else chimes in and see if you made any more progress.

 

Once I was in a jam and my car was flooded big time, I got a tow rope and tied it to a jeep and I was in the rx7 at 10 mph and key on, clutch down, slip it into second and release the clutch it forced that **** out and the car ran, smoked like hell but it worked.

That is my last case senerio when my car gets badly flooded.

 

Check out RX-7 doctor's thread/post on de-flooding. Last year, I could not get my 7 to start for nothing. I followed the instructions in the thread to a "T" and sure enough, it started. I can tell you that if your battery is a little weak from all the cranking, it will not start. On a flooded engine, it needs to turn over super fast, which is why it is recommended that you jump the battery when cranking.

 

just thought id give yall an update. I picked up the new plugs this morning, performed the deflooding procedure listed above one more time and installed the new plugs. no change. installed the msd coils, no change. new wires, no change. finally decided to try the method of towing the car. got my dads work truck hooked to the tow hook on the front, put the car in second gear, turned ignition on, and had him start pulling. I **** you not, 50 feet with the gas pedal depressed all the way and the damn thing started sputtering. I pumped the gas a few times, got it revved up, held it around 5k rpms. It smoked like a freight train for about 30 seconds, then it pulled like a bat outta hell. went out and gave it a nice spirited 15 minute drive, parked it. went out 30 minutes later, fired right up. Im in total awe at this. I never would have expected that to work. I have to go somewhere in about 4 hours, so that ill be the real test. if it cranks up just fine in another 4 hours, im guessing my problem is solved.

Does anyone have any insight as to what may have caused this? ive never had this problem with this car, and if there is anything i can do to prevent it happening again, id like to, because my dad may not be around in his truck to tow me next time. thanks for all the help guys, i really appreciate it.

 

mine does this exact thing as well. your car will be fine, for a long time, until some kind of condensation creeps up, then it will do this again. this is the only problem i have with my car.

i'm pretty sure its related to weak spark. we put a portable heater under the bonnet and it fired up about an hour later. i was at my uncle's house, an hour away from home. and i had to go to work. most annoying thing to have happen

 

well, if its related to weak spark then i shouldnt have to worry about it very long. the reason i originally went out to work on it was to install an MSD 6AL on the leading ignition. I guess ill just make sure it gets cranked once a day and see if it does it again.

 

one time, the car started, and then died and got flooded. I tried the deflooding technique to no avail. and i left the car for 3 days, and then it started right up. btw i just installed my msd streetfire. hope that cures it too, so far so good

 

how did you go about the installation. Im planning to use 1 msd to run leading, and not using trailling. I have a few questions though. Which wires go to which posts on the distributor for the MSD pickup (im assuming its the plug on the front side that you unhook and tap into to trigger the msd), and also, which wire on the trailing coil needs to be hooked back up for the tach signal/fuel pump when i install the MSD?

 

as far as the flooding, often the EGI RX-7's will flood due to leaky injectors, poor compression, or bad fuel pressure regulator. i would say that since you tested the compression and the numbers were good and being that it runs well, i would say the cause could be leaking injectors. the injectors can leak when the ignition is off and the gas will pool up in the engine. when that happens in combination with the amount of gas injected at startup is enough to drench the plugs in gas and its all down from there. see how it runs for a couple of days and see if the problem was a one time fluke (which happens) or if the problem resurfaces. if you decide to send the injectors out, the best place i have found is www.witchhunter.com

glad you got it started though. the pulling method works well in tough situations.

 

I almost didnt try the pulling method, because like i said above, it just doesnt make sense to me that it would start like that if it wouldnt start after clearing the combustion chambers, but i guess you learn something new every day. Compression is good, and fuel psi is good, ive already had to go a round with the fuel psi regulator, and all that is working properly (verified by an inline fuel PSI gauge). hopefully this was a one time thing. Ill be installing the msd the coming weekend (since i couldnt do it these past couple days while trying to get the car to crank).