Set the adjustment slightly to the right of the middle of the slot and see what it does?

 

it wouldnt even start in that position. I rotated it back to where it was and hooked up the timing light and it fired up with a lot of throttle pumping. At idle neither mark was to be seen no matter where i rotated the dizzy. The further counter clockwise i went, the worse it ran. Ill post the video when its done uploading

 

 

Double-check the leads from the coils to the distributor and from the distributor to the plugs are going to the right place?

 

the trailing coil is the one closest to the front of the car right? If so everything is in order.

 

It really depends on how it's wired, but the standard is for trailing to be the one closest to the front.

The next thing that comes to mind is that maybe the front pulley has been clocked so that TDC is no longer TDC. There is normally a rivet that holds all of the pulleys to a keyed hub on the eccentric shaft. There should be 4 bolt heads and between two of the bolt heads, there should be one end of a rivet you can see.

Some people, myself included, grind away this rivet so they can add more timing marks to the pulley.

Just to let you know, my car ran pretty well with the distributor 180 degrees out with the coil wires swapped around. Even pulled pretty strongly through the revs. Even though your car probably ran. There definitely seems like there's something off with the ignition. This is all to confirm we've got a solid base, so you're not trying to bandaid fix the issue with carb tuning.

 

that's the classic running on one rotor. i'm betting compression loose on rear rotor. disable ignition, pull bottom plug front rotor and turn it on the starter. listen for 3 even bursts of air from the plug hole. replace plug and repeat for rear rotor.

 

^ this is also an easy check

 

what do you mean by disabling ignition?

 

Unplug the wiring that goes to the dizzy

 

I didn't hear an obvious difference in the two, but I could be missing it.

 

Compression sounds fine as far as I can tell from the videos, definitely a lot of fuel and stuff coming out in that first video.

Did you check to see if there was still a rivet in the front pulley drive?

 

i couldnt get a good angle to look in there, but snuck my phone in for a shitty picture.

 

Yeah, there should be four of those bolts, and then another half-round shape if the rivet hasn't been removed. You should be able to feel the half round on that pulley you took a picture of.

A simple double-check you can do to confirm the pulley hasn't been reinstalled wrong.

https://www.rx7club.com/1st-gen-arch...9/#post5489325

Remove the inspection plate just above the exhaust at the back of the engine. Line up the gap in the flywheel like it is in the post I linked. That should line up the leading notch on the pulley with the pointer.

 

compression sounds really good. notice no fuel spray for the rear rotor. maybe no fuel for that rotor getting in. even tho u said timing light flashes with all plug wires, this only show that spark is getting to the plug. not necessarily that it's actually firing. connect the leading plugs into the wires, ground the plug, then crank engine to see spark. this will eliminate any issue with the plugs.

 

Rotary are very sensitive to ignition. One of the best upgrades u can do to your car is swap to a electronic distributor. No more points and alot more spark. Its a night and day difference. U will need to get 2 new coils also. Rockauto has ngk coils pretty cheap. It's a very easy swap. Many wright ups on here u can use as a guide. Make sure u don't install distributor 180° out. It will still start and run 180 out . Not very well.

 

I just watched one of your videos and it sounds like the distributor is a 180 out.

 

All the dizzys 81 and up are electronic, right? Is there any difference between years or trims? And if I'll need to replace coils anyway, would it be worth it to upgrade to a s5 lead? I've seen a couple write ups saying that makes a big difference.

 

Holdfast is recommending upgrading points to electronic and is absolutely correct about all of the advantages. If you have a choice of distributor, some say the 83 distributor is particularly good for the next possible upgrade, direct fire, as it has a strong reluctor signal and a good shape on the signal curve for triggering HEI ignitors.

DFI would be a next logical upgrade from the stock electronic. You get an even stronger spark (helps with flooding too!) and it gets you away from the J109 ignitor which is hard to find. It's where you use the leading dizzy pickup to drive 2 HEI ignitors/coils, and coil 1 output goes directly to rotor 1 leading, skipping the distributor for the leading, similar for coil 2. Trailing stays on stock electronic. Yes, both leading coils fire every time the reluctor signals, but you can do this on the leading (not the trailing!) because when rotor one is sparking, rotor 2 is exhausting, and vice versa. This is called "wasted spark"


Since you would be buying new coils it might be something to think about once you get your present issue sorted. I used the guide by one of the very knowledgeable people here, t_g_farell, here is the thread from his signature link:

https://www.rx7club.com/1st-generati...fidfis-894669/

 

Make sure the butterfly for the thing that closes off the rear intake to prevent backfiring (the name escapes me right now) is open and not seized shut. My car did a very similar thing when I was getting it running and after removing the carb found that the rear primary runner was being blocked full time by the anti-backfire valve. It can be simply removed or wired to be fully open at all times.

 

Im picking up new plugs tomorrow, they had mostly blue spark but sometimes yellow. As for one rotor not getting fuel, the last time i started and warmed up the engine, my dad was standing beside the car and noticed one of the header pipes was red hot. Could this be related?

 

Is that the shutter valve? Those were introduced in 81, right? Definately sounds reasonable though if my issue is no fuel getting in the rear.

 

Wouldnt that mean the gear is misaligned? How would that be the case if the tally marks lined up?

 

Rotary has 270 degrees per “stroke” (or 4 x 270 = 1080 degrees per thermodynamic cycle, this is three crank rotations for one complete rotation of the rotor).
If u do want to change your ignition to direct fire wasted spark. (All rx7 after 85 used this type of ignition) just get one more stock ignighter and one more coil. The stock ignighters work far better than anything else out there. Because there made to work on a rotary. Rotary fires 3x more than piston engine and in wasted spark it's 2x more because it fires every 180°. No other ignighters can keep up and last vary long. Can't use fc cas without a ECU . It's only a crank angle sensor won't fire the plugs the ECU does that. I tried every ignition set up on my fb. The best was two stock ignighters two coils on the leading side. Trailing left stock. It's super easy too. Just split the signal wire going to the leading ignighter to a second ignighter. I have a pic of my old setup somewhere. I went all out on my current ignition system. four IGN-1a coils in direct fire stand-alone ECU. Spark so hot will fire when flooded. Whatever u do don't waste your money on msd 6a.