Nikki Cleaning, All Stock 12A Including Rat's Nest
 

Hi Folks,

I know this is super basic and I've searched for carb cleaning here and also seen the excellent rebuild threads. I am intimidated by the idea of removing the Nikki - and more important - putting it back together properly.

So I am looking at just cleaning the carb and seeing what that yields. Not looking for HP increase at all, just stock smooth idle/normal use.

A couple of questions...

- Is Sea Foam the right thing to use to clean the carb? What do you recommend?
- Would I really need to remove the Nikki or is spraying from the top with a little soak an okay way?

Thanks!

A conservative approach would be to remove the air cleaner and soak it while running with
possibly needing to rev it to keep the carb cleaner from killing the engine from running too rich.
Any good aerosol carb cleaner will work well.

Another thing to try is to put a can of seafaom in the 1/4 tank and run that through the system
for a while before filling up. Also change the fuel filters before and after this as the seafaom may
cause a lot of crud to free up.

You can also pull the fuel hose off and spray carb cleaner in there and let it sit as well. Then
fire it back up and burn it out. This may get to areas the first step didn't get.

If none of this works, you will need to at least remove the top being careful to not lose any
parts down the intake (screws etc). Then you can hose it down again with carb cleaner as
well.

The next step is to completely remove the carb, disassemble, clean every orifice and part and
then reassemble. You should get a rebuild kit for sure but don't replace the original needles or
seats and don't touch the floats.

If the car runs and drives sort of ok now, running seafoam in the gas tank will do the trick.


If you want it to work good removing the carb and giving it a good cleaning is the best option. But spraying it from the top won't do much of anything except clean the outside of the carb which isn't gonna help how it runs.

Another thing you might want to consider is getting a bunch of vacuum line and replacing the old vacuum line from the rats nest on top of the engine. There are half a dozen places for a vacuum leak to happen in that maul of vacuum line; so a re-fresher is a good idea. Just replace one line at a time and work your way through it.

Thanks t_g_farrell and Qingdao, that all seems like stuff I can do.

Hey folks.

I cleaned and seafoamed using the conservative approaches you guys recommended. It does seem to start easier and drives just fine.

But the idle is not as smooth as when I drove my old 83 FB 12A back in the day (1986, Flock of Seagulls era :) ) at least as far as my memory can be trusted. So here's the question, should it be rock solid smooth at 800? Right now it's rough enough to shake the outside mirrors and the shift knob.

Since the carb seems clean (enough) is there another obvious next thing to look at?

Thanks so much!

Tom

Motor and/or transmission mounts may be bad. These can cause the shaking.

Also make sure the ignition is timed right and firing on both rotors consistently, this will also
cause it to shake or shimmy.

Thanks! Off to get the timing light out of the blister pack.

Found this thread, seems pretty straight forward.

https://www.rx7club.com/1st-generati...timing-666321/

Sweet!
 

Well, that was https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.rx7...2a9cba55bb.jpg.

Timed it and I cleaned the cap and rotor electrodes.

The leading timing was about a degree off (not sure whether it was advanced or retarded but from the drivers side looking at the pin, the yellow dot was toward the passenger side). Trailing was off a bit the other direction (probably from rotating the distributor?).

Anyway it idles really smoothly now at ~500 rpm acc'd to the dash tach.

It's like it's 1983 in there.

Thanks for the guidance you guys.

Nice, The idle should be set to about 750 now that you have it timed right. Otherwsie you may
experience stalling when loads come on and off the engine or on deacceleration.

Great to hear it was just simple crud that needed to be cleaned out. We demand pictures now!

Higher idle also raises the oil pressure. Factory spec should be observed. ;)

Thanks for all of the help. Simple stuff I guess but this forum has been so helpful. I'm amazed how much better driving is with a smooth idle/proper timing. Definitely quieter at a stop and more "resilient" decelerating in gear.

So this composition recently became popular in the forum ;) .

https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.rx7...c599824897.jpg

It's an '83 GSL with about 33K now. I bought it from a great guy in Ohio who had kept it in a garage on an island in Lake Erie. He'd had it for 20 years having bought it from his friend after 7 years. So I'm the 3rd owner. It's all stock and the paint has to be original. There is one mod: moving the seat back another inch or two on rails. Still it's tough to get into.

Here are a couple more:

https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.rx7...f60a619451.jpg


https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.rx7...489222abee.jpg


https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.rx7...915666abdf.jpg

Good tip, just looked it up, 12.8 to 38.4 psi at the recommended 750 rpm. I'll check it next time I'm out.

You have to be spraying water in that first pic, you are doing wrong. LOL

Clean looking car.

That's how memes are started.