I have a 88 GTU. Bone Stock minus an aftermarket cat and slightly larger than stock cat back. I purchased the car a few months back.

My first new full tank of gas was low grade. The car ran like crap and "pinged" until I had flushed the tank with 2 high grade fill ups. Since then I have only used premium and never had the problem.

1 Week after I got the car, I flooded it by driving a few minutes to the parts store. 5 minutes later it would not start. Only started after letting it sit an hour and pulling the plugs and fuse. Later that week I put in new plugs. NGK 7s and 9s. Same ones that came out. Although the previous owner had them flip flopped for trailing and leading.

I started having a no start situation that would happen once every two weeks until it progressed and caught me leaving work 3 days straight. It was always between 5 and 7 PM after sitting for 8 to 10 hours. Never had a problem in the mornings.

I would cure the situation by pulling the plugs and fuse and turning the car over. At first this would work immediately then as it progressed so did the time it would take to get it to crank. A side note: I have un-flooded MANY rotary cars over the years and it seemed to me that I was not pushing enough fuel cloud out of the spark plug holes for it to really have been flooded in the first place.

Going with the info I found here and even though I did not think it was flooding, I wired a switch to my fuel pump. I will kill the car by turning the switch off and to crank it I would turn it over for 5 or so seconds and flip the switch on. It has never not cranked for me since in the last 2 months.

I decided that clogged and leaking injectors had to be the problem. I wanted to fix the problem rather than use the switch band aid indefinitely. I pulled all 4 injectors and took them to work. They were not leaking. They would hold 100+ psi as long as we cared to leave the machine sit. They all 4 flowed evenly as well.

I have put the car back together with all new o-rings and gaskets and it feels stronger - after cleaning the injectors.

Thanks for making it this far -
My questions are what else could it be? I have had two theories. First being a messed up ECU that may be holding the injectors open after the car is shut off and the second is a 80+ ambient temperature for 5 or so hours while at work causing something else to intermittently fail.

What do you guys think?
-billy

 

Also wanted to point out the car seems to be running very rich.

-billy

 

Before you get all crazy thinking of a theory, why don't you do a compression test?



-Ted

 

The wise man has spooken :p

deffinatly do what ted said first, if your problems are as you tell them then your compression numbers will be lower than normal.

the main things that effect compression is tempurature, cold compression > hot compression.

Check to make sure you coolent system holds 13 psi aswell, also changing the oil and the coolent both have good effects in these car, something like 50% of the engine is cooled by oil.

if your flooding it alot try using some good quality 87 octane (cheveron)

 

the stock ecu's do not like vacuum leaks, thats always a good thing to look for

mike

 

How about checking the operation of the bac???? If you look in the manual you'll see that the bac is supposed to be full open on start up. That should aid in starting the car. Plus the other posts above. How about spot on timing?

If it will make you feel better........I looked on a site called RX8 FORUM, or something similar last nite, and whoa and behold, in the posts there was talk about FLOODING on the RX8. As in brand new automobiles Kinda scary, eh??? Ugly car anyway. They shoulda just retooled the second generation with the new engine and been done with it

The part about the bac mentioned above was found in the 88 manual. In the Fuel section. I think it was in the RElationship page or a nearby page.