Hi, new member here and I sure am scratching my head on this. I recently picked up an 81 rx7 that was sitting for a while. After bringing it home I pulled the plugs to clean them and when I turned the key it fired on the first couple cranks. I noticed it wouldn't idle and ran kinda crappy so I figure it would be a good idea to pull the carb to check out the internals and clean it up. While doing that I replaced all the float components except the floats themselves and carefully followed instructions for setting the floats travel distance. Before I put the carb back on I replaced 99% of the vacuum hoses and slapped it back on. After getting everything hooked back up I replaced the fuel filter and flushed all the old gas out since it looked like whiskey, and replaced it with mid grade. After that I went to start it and it ran worse than ever. It popped and sputtered and wouldn't rev past 4000rpm although it runs at an idle. Another thing I noticed was the cat started glowing red so I suspected it of being clogged but after pulling it to check it wasn't clogged. I don't know what to do from here. Any help would be much appreciated!

 

Do some reading next time first. Did you save the old needles and seats? You need to reuse them, the new ones don't work well. Adjusting the floats was a mistake as well. You really don't need to do that unless you see the float levels are off. Also make sure the right number bleeds and such are in the right places in the carb body. Mixing these up can cause issues as well.

I suspect you are running really rich or lean at anything but idle, probably the needles are sticking or the floats are off. Usually this results in flooding but you say it starts and idles fine?

 

Yea I have the old needles and seats around here somewhere, I will locate them and swap them back in. Initially after the rebuild it idled ok, took some pumping. Now it wont idle unless I mess with the choke but that doesn't last very long. Also when I say runs like crap I mean runs like crap, pops sometimes backfires and just flat out lopey and all over the place. When I pulled the internal screws, ball's, weights and such I taped them to an outline which I drew in the shape of the carb so I know I got those in the right locations. I read a bunch about these carbs being a headache but never thought it would be this much of a head scratcher. Thanks for the reply.

 

They are actually not that bad as OEM carbs go. Try dealing with an early Honda CVCC carb, Thats a total mess.

Make sure the float levels are at the middle of the glass for both bowls before you even start the car. Then watch them as you blip the throttle to make sure they aren't sticking. If the floats are too high it causes all kinds of havoc with the emulsifier tubes as they depend on the float level.