88 FC vert goes to mechanic, then won't start
 

Things are extremely busy at the office for me right now, making it impossible for me to find time to fix anything on my RX-7 (1988 convertible) aside from adding oil last week. The passenger-side window recently quit working (from either side's switch), at least having the decency to get stuck in the closed position. Took the car to a local Mazda dealer who has generally been OK when I've needed work done on it, and who was recommended by a colleague who drives an RX-8 (and who drove several prior Mazdas), and they determined that the driver's side power window switch was shorting to ground; they replaced it and said it worked fine.

So last night Ms1995hoo and I went to pick up the car (me driving my other car, her to drive the Mazda home; it used to be her car until I bought it from her in May 2005 when she got an Acura, so I also like to have her drive it on occasion). The guy goes to bring the car around and I commented to her, "You know, I hope they didn't flood the engine pulling it over to the storage lot since it's such a short way." Funny that—a few minutes later the guy comes over and asks if there is some trick to starting the car, as he can get it to crank but not start. I then went over and tried and sure enough, wouldn't start; sort of a wheezing sound as the starter cranked.

So we wound up leaving the car there since there wasn't much else we could do, and today they call and tell me that (a) the battery was quite low and needed to be replaced and (b) because the battery was low the engine flooded. They replaced the battery and wanted to keep it overnight again to test to see if there's a drain on the battery somewhere. Given that I couldn't get over there today anyway, I said OK.

This sounds a bit suspicious to me on the whole. Certainly I'm familiar with the issue of a rotary engine flooding if turned off too quickly (and Ms1995hoo is familiar with it the hard way), and I know the service advisor is familiar with the issue because we talked about it as to the RX-8 once. But I've never heard anything anywhere about the idea that a low battery results in an engine flood, and that sounds a bit bollocks. Last March I replaced the battery when the previous one was dead and there was no flood issue, and the car has started fine ever since (including the other day when we took it in to have the window switch fixed). It strikes me as awfully bizarre that the car was starting fine last week and then the battery suddenly goes dead after the car is in for repair (makes me wonder if they left the door ajar or something; they claim the battery was too low to take a charge). On the other hand, the battery before the one installed this past March was installed in early 2005, so it does seem that there's a fair chance that there's some electrical issue somewhere putting a drain on it, perhaps some kind of a short. Unfortunately, I won't have time to do anything about it myself until after Christmas due to this stuff at the office.

Does anyone have any thoughts for me on what to do with this situation? Under the circumstances where I couldn't pick up the car tonight anyway, I'm willing to have them test for other shorts or a drain somewhere, especially given the prior battery going in only two years. But the business about the battery suddenly having gone so low in the course of just a few days, and then them saying that a low battery is related to a flooding, strikes me as more than a bit odd, and I'm thinking that maybe what I should do is to take the car out to the RX-7 specialist someone told me about out in Chantilly to give it a more thorough examination.