Hi kymber, i have a 79 model rx7, havent had the time to jump under and check out the wireing yet for you just to double check that everything is on in the right spots. my starter works fine but my motor will not fire up, but soon putting in new motor and start rebuilding the other one. Well when i get on to it ill draw up a diagram and not the wireing for you and see how you go, it sounds to me like a wireing prob. my ski boat was doing the same thing till i traced that the alternator trigger wire was conected to the starter motor wire, so id keep turning with the key off cos it was getting powerd up via the alternator. But ill check it out soon and get back to you with the info. Best of luck.

 

Actually the starter has a total of four or five wires... there is the 1. positive 2. negative cable 3. ign start (spade) 4. Hot start motor (spade). Its kinda hard to make out what you're saying but let me see if I have this right... you turn it to "start" and the motor continues to run 10sec after you let off "start". You checked the ign start wire to the starter and it recieved no power when you let off the "start" position on the key? If not keep tracking the short/problem in that wire... You took the starter off and bench tested it by connecting it up and tapped the spade with + 12v and it spun and then turned off when you gave it no power to that spade on the starter? If it continues to run after you disconnected power to the starter solinoid (spade on starter) then its deffinately the starter. the motor in the starter won't get power unless you give the spade power meaning it shouldn't continue to run w/o power to it.

At the time you can disconnect all the wires to the starter except the positive, negative and "start" wire. The hot start motor isn't going to do anything being you can't get the motor hot cause it won't start... its a long shot but maybe you are getting some power back through the hotstart wire. Disconnecting it might fix it... maybe. Have you tried swaping that solinoid/relay with the one in your other RX7 (80)?

I'll be thinking about this until you fix it... I've owned many FB's and not one has done this so this is definately a challenge to think about...

 

I only see 3 wires connected to the solenoid. The positive cable, the wire with the link on it (also attached there is the starter body ground wire), and the wire attached to the spade. The negative is grounded on a bolt on the block, above the starter.

Starter does continue to run after releasing key (hell, I've even taken the key out).

The ignition start wire DOES continue to get power when this happens...the light goes dim, but it's still hot.

When I released the 12V from the spade during the bench test, the starter stopped spinning and the bendix went back into it's hole...all seemed perfect.

Is the wire with the link in it the hot start assist? If it is...it does the same thing with that disconnected.

There are no relays in the 80...someone must've snatched them at the boneyard before I got her.

I'm gonna try disconnecting the ignition start wire when it does it again. It's connected to the ignition switch by a pigtail and all that's exposed now. Should be pretty easy to get to...easier than crawling under the car to unplug from the starter. I'm also gonna clean the negative cable and bolt it to the front bolt on the starter instead...dunno if that will make a difference, but heck...nothing to lose there.

Someone in a previous post suggested bellhousing damage...it looks perfect. Just like my other two Ist gens...no scratches or dents that would indicate any damage. It could just be a shorting out issue. I'll keep you updated!

 

Kim,

There shouldn't be a relay for the '79 ignition. It is a straight shot from the ignition switch, through a fusible link (under steering column) , to the starter solenoid. If there is a relay in there, maybe the previous owner had installed an alarm that killed that starter when armed.

The '79 is a bit unusual. Could you take a pic of the wiring?

Anyway, it should be like things according to the wiring diagram:

- BY (black w/ yellow stripe) coming from ignition switch
- this BY wire goes through a fusible link (under steering column surround)
- it then goes to the tab on the solenoid (center, between the 2 large posts)

- one large post on solenoid should have a wire that goes into the starter body
- the other large terminal is the battery cable +

The '79 also has a LW (blue w/ white stripe) connected to the starter that also has a fusible link. This goes from the starter to the hot start relay. The hot start relay is active if getting power from starter (starter engaged) and if the coolant is above a certain temperature. I would disconnect this wire just to eliminate it as causing the problem.

The next thing that I would do is to remove the spade terminal from the starter (BY wire). Then use your test light or voltmeter to measure between ground and that wire. Have someone turn the key to 'START'. The test light should come on. Now turn the key off. The light should go off right away. If it doesn't, the ignition switch is bad. If it does turn off right away, the problem is in the starter area.

 

There is a relay that says "ignition relay" on it...but I removed it and the problem is still there...figured that's not the problem...rather than go through all that again...here's what happened today:

I cleaned all connections...still doing same thing...
unplugged wire from spade connector while it was still turning...no change...it continued to turn...
Started thinking outside the box and this is what I came up with...

I took the starter (still wired up) and pulled it out...
I twisted it where the bendix could be seen and bolted it on one side (so it would be grounded)
Turned the key....starter works perfectly!!!! What the hell?!?!

Inspected the flywheel and it seems all hunky dorey...

It seems that the bendix is sticking in the flywheel, but there is no apparent damage to either. It almost seems like it's too far toward it. My Dad wants to grease the teeth on the starter to see if it will help. Not sure if this is a good idea or not...What do ya'll think???

I do not see a fusible link from the BY wire under the steering column...there are some there, but not on that wire. Doesn't look like it's been altered, but who knows?? All the wires are correct according to what everyone and the manuals have told me...

I'm having trouble uploading the pictures and I will try again later....there is a database error or something...

 

Can we have pictures of this car?? o.o

 

This is how she's wired and how I twisted the starter to check the system for shorts...strange, I know, but now I know the starter works perfectly...if I could only learn how to upload videos....

 

bump~

 

I have no idea what the wire with the blue crimp lug on it is - I've always seen that second lug on the starter left blank, with the braid for the brush attached under the nut and running into the starter - no connection to the car. The ground should go to the rear iron, the positive to where you've got it, and the starter bendix hot wire is the flat spade with the black plastic, wired just how you've got it. When you put 12V down that wire, the solenoid fires that throws the bendix forward to mesh with the flywheel. When the bendix flies forward, it makes contact for the motor and starts pulling huge current for the starter. There shouldn't be a 4th wire involved, so far as I know.

 

That is for the hot start assist on the '79 cars. The later cars didn't have it wired that way. Anyway, it is not needed and can be unplugged while getting this sorted out.

Kent

 

I unplugged it and got the same rusult...BUT...thinking outside the box once again...
I put a couple of washers under the bottom of the starter and reinstalled, causing it to tilt down a hair...Lo and behold the starter is not sticking anymore. It makes a strange noise, but it doesn't stick.

So....this means wiring is fine, starter is fine, and apparently there is a problem with the bedix and the flywheel being too close together.
Now I need to find a permanent fix for this. Leaving it that way could let water and dirt enter the flywheel compartment.
Any suggestions?

I pulled the starter off of the 80 and found oil and coolant in there...this obviously isn't normal...what could cause this? We haven't tried to start it yet or anything...that's our next project...but if the motor is toast I won't even try to get it running...I'll drop in another or rebuild that one.

Back to the 79...We installed new ignition wires and now we seem to be getting really good spark. We can get the car to backfire, but not start. I was not able to get the jets out when I rebuilt the carb...(I know...I got in a hurry) and now they continue to drip. Even the secondaries are dripping. Looking at another carb rebuild...Having said that...could this be a flooding issue at this point?

 

Just so you know...my 1980 has the hot start assist wired in the same spot...that's how I figured out where the broken wire went in the first place! LOL
We did unplug it for now...we can plug it back in later since we don't need it now anyway. Thanks for the good advice, though!

 

Ha Kymber, hows your starter problem going, i finally got my series one starter off with the wireing,hope it helps, mine is working all good so hope it helps you alittle.
When looking from the back, the main termanel on the left is main battery pos, the other on the right side is going into the starter motor, it also has a fuseable link on it that goes into a blue wire with a white line along it an into the loom plug, on the top edge is the male tag where a black wire with a yellow line plugs onto and into the loom plug. the earth just gets bolted under one of the starter bolts. The other two wires that come out of the same plug are for the reverse lights. I got it all drawen up but cant figer out how to post the pics. I hope your
RX7 has the same coulor wireing loom it should as it should be standerd for the series 1. Well hope it all makes sence to you. Best of luck, im in the middle of putting new motor into my RX7, few things to do now and put the new on in. Cheers and best of luck.

 

Starter is trying to stick again, but not like it did before.
We got the spark going good, thanks to a new set of wires. There was also parts seized in the distributor that was keeping me from being able to properly set the trailing timing. Unstuck the plates and now it's set on TDC. The leading timing is TDC +/- 1 or 2 degrees.
We were getting backfire at one point and my Dad decided to start adjusting things...I told him not to do that and now we aren't even getting that.
We noticed some drippage in the secondaries in the carb that shouldn't be there. Looks like I need to do a search to figure out how to get those darn little jets out without breaking anything so I can clean them this time. Argghhh.....
Is it possible for me to have compression and it not be strong enough? Dad thinks we have good compression and won't even think about checking it with a tester at this point...

 

hey i have 84 first gen just looking for some help my car blew a fuseable link and i replaced it and now the car is all fucked up the radio and dash light and the car dosent idle right what could it be

 

Bump

 

for the dripping jets i would reccommend that you remove the floats and weigh them to make sure they are not taking on fuel ( has happenned to me with 3 carb rebuilds so now i instinctively check them. if they weigh different than eachother then i would get some new floats...assuming you can find them... and make sure that the needles are not sticking.

i cant really help wiht the starter thing though as i have never dealt with an sa

 

Don't worry about the gap in the starter just get some shim material(chevy uses
some of differing sizes get from a boneyard) Alot of bell housings on many car
has gaps, holes and people leave inspection plates off all the time. Throw a few
teaspoon fulls of 2 stroke oil in each cylinder while spinning motor by hand!!
That will help the seals from hurting themselves(hopefully not too late)
Run a new ground wire from the battery straight to the motor at least a 10gauge
to the starter area and a 10 ga to the opposite side of the motor and one directly
to the frame, You don't have to make em pretty just for diagnosing. Your plug
wires should have around 5000 ohm per foot of resistance on the dmm.
Check your Voltage at the battery and at the output of a wiring run and if you see
much of a drop in the circuit you could have 1 corrosion 2 a cut 3 just bad/over
heated wire. Lets say a 1 volt drop is real bad 1/4, 1/2 probably normal depends
on the length of the run.

 

What is this cylinder you speak of?

 

Sounds to me like Kymber has isolated a couple of interesting new problems here:

1-misaligned starter shaft and pinion gear requiring shims (warped/bent bell housing?).

2-frozen distributor internals.

Maybe leaky carb floats, too.

Must have been a very neglected/abused SA.

Anyway, good work running these problems down. Keep us informed.

Since you have an SA, does it have mechanical or electronic distributor? If mechanical, you are lucky, because it can be "static timed" without the engine running. The one advantage of mechanical over electronic distributor (until someone tells me how to static time an electronic dist.). I posted the instructions once, so if you need them I can probably find them.

 

i had the same problem with my starter when i first put the junkyard motor in. i found out that the starter i got from autozone had this tiny flaw in the solonoid. all i did to solve it was get under the car and turn the solonoid to the left and it hasnt done it since. i had the same problem with my crx starter as well. both from autozone!

 

Rebuilt starters are often defective. I prefer to get a used one at the JY, or very carefully shop for a good rebuilder. Or rebuild it myself, which is actualy not too hard and just requires a few dollars of parts.

 

Here's a thread that describes static timing the distributor.

https://www.rx7club.com/showthread.p...me#post7977094

 

You know exactly what I mean by cylinder. How about this in a parlance that
whatever wording you want to use means what I originally posted.
Remove a spark plug add the oil there, while turning the motor over
by hand. Great way to help another person
by arguing semantics when the point is a valid one especially with a rotary and
as delicate as the seals are in them. You may even want to add some 2 stroke
oil to the gas tank (or is it FUEL tank?) until you are certain that all is well.
You should also drain the fuel tank of all the fuel since any fuel that is 90 days
old is starting to turn bad and after a few months the octane is actually getting
higher and you could have 250 octane gasoline in there and it wouldn take a
act of god to get it lit!! On cars that are weekend warriors a bit of Sta-bil in
the fuel will ensure it stys fresh.

 

The SA that we are working on now has a mechanical dist. the 80 has electronic like my FBs do. I'll check out that thread on static timing...that could really help get it back to backfiring at least.
I'm gonna take the carb off again and check the floats...I do have a couple of extra carbs laying around that have the floats so maybe one of them will have good ones if I can't locate a new set.
As far as the starter goes...I think shimming it on the bottom will help...right now I just have a couple of stacked washers holding it off the flywheel a little and it's better than it was, but it's by no means a perm solution!
I'm gonna remove the dist again and pull it all apart...as much as it's a PITA to set the points it will be worth it to get it unstuck so that the plates move freely against each other instead of with each other. Got lots to work on!
Thanks for the ideas, as usual! I think once we get her to run we can all celebrate!! Ya'll will be the first to know!
May be a few days before I get to working on her again, but I'll be back soon!