So i havent been able to get my S4 to start, and i put it up on the lift, looked around and noticed that my oil drain plug was leaking. so i took it off and was draining my oil and noticed it had a very strong gas scent. What would be the most likely cause?

 

worn side seals/extremely rich running issue or too many times flooding the car.

 

I found out that the spark plugs were not matching L>L and T>T. I had two Trailing plugs on my rear housing and the plugs reversed L>T on my front housing. Could that potentially create flooding problems?

 

its not helping!

vacuum leaks, bad/poor injector seals, and dirty old injectors are the big vacuum leak culprits, although after 25 years everything else can be bad too

 

How many miles are on it? Smelly oil is normal.
How has it been maintained. You probably have a leaky injector and flooded the car bad. You also should consider a new pulsation dampener for saftey if you haven't.

 

It has 136k on it. I havent actually even thought about any of that. I'm new to rotaries so any help is appreciated, thanks guys.

 

Premixing will cause rotary to accumulate gas in the oil.

 

what? explain... you mean oil in the gas?

 

Think of a rotory as a large, bastard of a two-stroke.

Chainsaws, ATVs dirtbikes, these all use an amount of 'pre-mix' or really REALLY light diesel - a combination of oil in gas.

The reason WE need this is because unlike a conventional engine, the rotory doesn't have a separation of oil and combustion chambers, and so oil in the gas helps the apex seals (think of them like piston rings) glide along the rotor housing, keeping your adjoining combustion areas sealed.

OVER mixing (too MUCH oil in the gas will not only make the combustion chambers all icky-like (massive carbon build-ups, etc) but will also lead to killing other bits, by proxy.

The FIRST thing you should do, when you rectify your plugs problem (AFTER changing your oil) is to do a compression test and make sure your seals are good. This will help settle both your mind and a couple of potential concerns.

As well, adding a tiny (when I say tiny, I mean, like DROPS) of brake fluid into the trailing (top) spark plug holes. I've heard that this has helped people, but haven't done this, myself. What this will do is help burn up all the CRAP in the original chamber and clean crap out, a bit (though, from my understanding wil smoke like a 420 festival).

If anyone else has anything to add or amend, please do. The brake fluid bit, as I said, is not from personal experience and I'd like to hear from someone who's done it.

 

No, gas in the oil. What happens is that normally in a rotary, the oil in the crankcase is slowly consumed. The level drops, you top it up.

If you block off the OMP and then premix, the crankcase oil is not consumed. All the blowby unburned gas can accumulate in the oil. This is magnified if you are adding extra fuel to a turbo with increased boost and power. The oil level can actually rise in the crankcase. Imagine what happens to the lubrication ability of the oil.

There are quite a few old threads regarding this phenomenon. I read up on this before making the decision to NOT block-off the OMP (and go Rtek and premix) on my S5 when my OMP took out my ECU.

 

prime your engine.