As you might remember..my car has been running like ***** for a couple of months. Ive repalced the oil, filters, plugs, wires..tried MMO..nothin. I've spent hours lookin for a vacume leak and tweakin the carb..nothin. Well, my friend's dad used to work on Rx-7's back int he alte 70s early 80s. He took a peep and noticed something. If you look at the rats nest and those plastic color thingys...go to the foward most one. The two vacume tubes go to the front of the carb down by the engine. Driver side..real low. There is yellow crap ALL along the entire seam that runs back on the carb. It looks real nasty. He thinks that my seal there has blown between the carb and the intake? The carb has to be set ULTRA rich to unm.. like 7 1/2 turns out on the mixture screw. My gas milage..well..its *****. He thinks that air is getting sucked in there and thats why my idle sucks and ive got to set the mixture high. He spent a while fooling with the carb..couldnt make it work right..so i dont know whats up. The Shutter valve is ok (I did the test on mazdatrix site plus its only 2 years old) and the ACV is new. One last thing. They replaced the ACV and i noticed that on that side there is a GREEN electrical connector NOT connected to anything? Looks 2 pronged..I cant tell where it goes. I don't got a diggy so pics is hard. Any ideas on if that seal could be blown?

If that IS my problem..can i fix it on my own? Hardest thing i have done is the choke and oil pan. Would I need any special tools? I dont got $$ to take this to a shop and if my mom finds out the Rex is broke again she will probably make me sell it. So.... opinions?

 

Ok. I did some looking. If this seal really is bad it dosen't look that hard to replace. If i disconect all the vacume hoses all that holds this thing down is a few bolts right? Take them off..pull the carb off. Scrape off the old seal with like a plastic knife or something (so i dont scare the metal), put the new seal on, bolt the carb back on, reatach all the hoses, start her up... retune the carb. Is there anything else to it? Is this a job I can do in 2 hours with my dad? Before I start tearing anything off I want y'all's opinion on this. Anything I should be prepared for/watch out for?

 

Yea one thing to watch out for. Plan on buying the carb spacer and gaskets!, the gaskets dont come off very easy and when I tried mine back in the day the spacer got destroyed!

 

And make sure you block off the carb spacer so gasket crap doesn't fall into the engine when you're scraping off the old stuff.

 

Yea. I talked to my grandpa and he said put like a big rag or sponge in there. Just wonderin, would someplace like pep-boys have this gasket? It's only like $3 on mazdatrix but i don't really want to wait 5 days for snail-mail.