Looking into buying a FB
 

Like the title says I'm looking into buying a FB to add to my Rx-7 collection. The car is a stock '83. 5-speed, sunroof, blue exterior, black exterior. It isn't the prettiest car ever. The paint is oxidized and the interior is fairly crappy but the body is straight and seems to be mostly rust free. It was a southern Kansas/norther Oklahoma car. Has 156k on it. He wants $500 for it.

He works at a muffler shop and started putting a new exhaust on it. It has new pipes starting after the header, new cat, but doesn't have the catback finished. He said it will be $160 to finish the work with a free flowing muffler.

It doesn't start and when it does run it doesn't hold an idle. You have to nurse the gas pedal to keep it running and if it drops below 1k rpms it will die. He currently can't get it started though.

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Here is my theory from what I've heard from him.

There is a soleniod that controls the idle/backfire protection that isn't either clogged or just plain broken. He is getting voltage to all the soleniods but that one might be broken.

The previous owner put a new clutch in not long before this guy bought it a year ago. The connections might not be clean or tight which is causing it to poorly crank. When it doesn't get running it floods as soon as it dies.

The last time he had it running he came up to a stop and couldn't keep it running from trying to play with all the pedals. When it died it flooded pretty badly and he couldn't get it started because he didn't know what the deflooding procedure was and that idle soleniod is broken.

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I'm hoping someone will be able to give me some good advice on things this might be. I'm not looking to rebuild this engine because of lack of time and money. I don't mind fixing and replacing a few things but a rebuild is def outta the budget.

What sorta things can I check for before buying the car to make sure I can get it running and idleing like new (or close enough :p: ). Can someone point me to the 1st gen deflooding and compression check walkthrough?

Thanks!
Mason :)

When I was in Colorado, my FB experienced flooding, but due to my constantly cranking it over while flooring it. What the shop did was take the plugs out and wipe down the contacts in the distributor cap. Started up fine after that. (Been awhile and I don't remember full details). However, $500 for that car, you're definitely getting what you paid for. From the sounds of it, it seems like a lot of work will be involved. Remember this saying "$200 on a $900 car, or $900 on a $200 car". I bought mine for $1500 and ended up investing about an additional $1,400, altho most of it was having the specialty shop do preventative maintenance on it along with a few other repairs. The oil leak costed me about $800.

I'd say look around a bit more for a car in at least running condition. It'll save you some hassle in the long run, since money and time is a concern (hey, who doesn't have that?), and not to mention aggrivation. Hope that helps. :)

if you buy it for $500 i would spend another $500 on an aftermarket, preferably 2 barral carb. no more carb problems or vac leaks plus 25+ more hp.

find one in better condition, seriously, you can easily find a running low mileage gen1 for under 1000 if youre lucky you might even get a decent interior. trust me, its not worth getting one thats got obvious problems because chances are theres hundreds more problems lurking under the surface. but if you love the car and you can find the time money then go for it. but there are better deals out there.

Sounds like a Bad Motor, Give it the finger compression test if it passes then $500 is a fair price.