All that's left to get my car back on the road is rebuilding the NIKKI. I left it for last because I thought it would be the easiest part and I was definitely wrong.... I cant get the damn thing off the manifold. First I removed the 4 slitted bolts thinking they were the base bolts and then i took the part that looks like a miniature oil filter off, The metal fuel lines, and a vacuum housing off the back of the carb then I was able to remove and drop 3 of the nuts. Now I cant get to the bolt closest to the firewall, facing the rats nest. I tried to remove the 2 bolts holding the solenoids but they didn't budge. Then I tried to take the lift eye off but I got the nut off the back, and kept unscrewing the bolt. It came out 90% of the way but it doesn't seem to come out It looks like the throttle cable bracket has to come off to get to it. Am I right? Is it just easier to pull the intake off? I'm at such a loss right now I'm beyond frustrated. Please help me....

 

We've all been there, the first time is the hardest.

You need to remove some strategic parts to make it easier to get to those two rear carb mounting nuts (the front two are relatively easy).

There's a tower coming out of the rat's nest holding a black disc shaped vacuum component right in front of the left (driver's side) rear carb nut. It's held down by two 10 mm bolts, remove it to get better access.

Then take one of your extra 12 mm box end wrenches (or was it 14? don't remember) and put it in a vice, so that you can whack it with a hammer and get a 30-45 degree bend in the middle of the shank. The bent box end wrench will make getting to that left rear nut much easier.

Break the nuts loose with the wrench and then use your finger to back them off (hint: do the rear left nut first before all the others to make spinning this hardest to reach nut easier).

It really helps at this point to have a little magnet on a stick to retrieve the nuts when you drop them.

On the passenger's side there's a dashpot sitting over the right rear carb nut. Two 10 mm bolts hold it down, real easy to remove to get better access there.

If all else fails, post some pictures, we'll get it figured out.

 

Four 12mm nuts are the main fasteners holding the carb on.

Are you the guy with the weird project car that has a complete emissioned 12A in a TR7 or something? If so, no wonder you're struggling. You need us to post pictures of nicely stripped Nikkis so you can see where the hardware is.

To answer your question, pull the manifold. Four 12mm bolts and two nuts. Don't get these confused with the carb nuts.

To answer another question you might not have asked yet, it's ok to de-emission this thing. Those parts didn't come stock in that car, so why keep useless difficult to deal with crap that's 30 years old in there? Carb removals become 100 times easier without a rat's nest in your way. I think you need to strip it all down and put it back together in a simplified rational way. Putting up with all that emissions junk in a project car like that is... irrational.

Edit: Here is a nice very stripped Nikki. Link below.

https://www.rx7club.com/1st-generati...i-pics-419907/

 

In case no one else mentions it, when you pull the intake manifold you'll dump antifreeze, so you might want to drain that first.

 

I finaly got it off. I didnt have any crappy wrenches to bend so I went for plan B and I unbolted the whole rats nest and then unbolted the carb. Now I can do my rebuild.

 

Good for you! You don't need all that anyway. Now you can clean the top of your engine and have things looking much tidier.

 

For the OP, 20Mm freeze plugs will solve the coolant problem in the future.

 

The air control and check valve in the intake manifold is heated by exhaust. The coolant keeps the manifold from getting too hot. When you block off the coolant flow with freeze plugs, your manifold can get very hot. The solution is to fill in the ACV port with quicksteel. I do it all the time and it keeps the manifold cool which lets the engine make more power. A must when emmisions are removed.