tempusfugitive

hey all
i just started it for the first time in about 4-5 months, the neighbors must hate me, lol, filled the street with smoke. anyways during that time span, i rebuild the carb (removed shutter valve, dashpot(which was broken), replaced all vacuum tubes, replaced the tall rad with a new short 3 row, replaced heater core switch, themostat, rad cap, and all coolant lines. well thats the background,

first thing i noticed when i turned the fuel pump on (engine off), was that gas was coming out of the primary jets, it took a couple of trys to start it, i haven't tuned the carb yet, so it's idleing at 2500 for the time being. i checked it again after i shut it down and it had stopped leaking, so i'm hoping that was just temporary.

second thing is it took a lot less coolant to fill it ( about 7.5 Us qts ) then my manual said (10 US qts), does the short rad hold less coolant then the tall one, or do i have air pockets? i made sure the heater valve was on, and lastly steam appears to be coming out from under the rad cap, its a new cap, new rad. is it normal to have a little bit of leakage in the beginning?, or should i put the old cap off of the tall rad on it?

thanks in advance
steve

btw, i had forgotten how much loved the sound of the exhaust, damn snow i wanna go driving.

7aull

iTrader: (2)

Hi Steve
My 80 Service manual sez 10 US quarts, too, so if you only got 7.5 in you might need to burp the system to get the air out. I usually just run the car without the rad cap on, occassionally rocking the car to work the air out. Seems to work. Cap should not leak as far as I know... rad caps are interchangeable so you might re-try your old one.
4 or 5 months parked? you prep it at all for that? fuel stabilizer? run the engine w/o the pump on to drain the carb? oil in the block and spin it to keep things lubed up inside? If there was no oil added to the engine via the carb, then the Big Smoke you got might have been caused by coolant slowly leaking back into the block (combustion chambers) - this results in a lot of whitish smoke that has the distinct sweet smell of coolant. A lot of water/coolant collecting at the tail pipe too? Also means you might have some terminal engine problems...
cheers
Stu Aull
'80 GS Alaska

tempusfugitive

hey stu
i completely prepped it before it parked it, 2 stroke oil in the engine via plugs and spun it a couple of times, ran it with fuel pump off till it died, fuel stab, its definetly not coolant smoke (it smells like snowmobile exhaust, coincidentally so does my entire house now, lol). i'll have to try rocking the car while its running hopefully that'll get rid of the air pockets, if that doesn't work is there a method of sucking the air pockets out? also the cars on a slight incline, think that would matter?
thanks
steve

trochoid

iTrader: (6)

Unless you drained the block also, the motor will hold a bit of coolant. Keep burping.
A new cap should not leak or steam. Make sure the thermostat is opening.

tempusfugitive

alrighty update time
i've located the source of my high idle, the primary throttle shaft is sticking at the bottom of its rotation, so it's not allowing rpm's below 3000, if i turn it by hand, i can lower it to 1500rpm, so i guess that means i have to pull the carb off and figure out why it's sticking or try to unstick it with liquid wrench, which should be fun either way.

i tried burping it and it didn't lower the coolant level, i feel really stupid asking this now, but is there a coolant drain plug on the block? i think i assumed that by removing all coolant hoses, i had effectively drained it, which in retrospect is probably very wrong, which brings me to the second question, what happens if i mix the red coolant with the normal green stuff? when i bought the thing in the summer i had mazda flush the coolant, and they filled it back up with the red stuff (dexcool or something to that effect), which means that there are now 2 qts of red coolant mixed with 8 qts of green.

later
steve

Myc1972

Here it tells you were the coolent plug is on the Block:

https://www.rx7club.com/showthread.p...t=coolent+plug



And here is excellent advise on removing coolent airpockets:

https://www.rx7club.com/showthread.p...nt+air+pockets

tempusfugitive

thanks man