So here's my story: i've been looking for a project car for a couple months now and just last week stumbled upon a 1990 GXL that i picked up for $700. owner said it wasn't running (previous owner was a woman which makes a lot of sense in a bit) so i was expecting a rebuild. anyways i get it home, charge the battery, take out the spark plugs and EGI fuse, didn't have a compression tester on hand but i felt all the consecutive wooshes each as powerful as the last on both the rotors (apex seals still good, but will have to get compression tester on later to make sure it's all good). the spark plugs smelled strongly of gas so i was guessing flooded motor, cranked for a while without EGI fuse, reinstalled everything, no luck. took out the spark plugs again and put a little bit of auto tranny fluid into each leading hole, reinstalled spark plugs and SUCCESS! got it started! now the problem is it was backfiring a bit at low RPM (guessing getting that excess gas out of there) but when the RPM droppes to idle speed the car dies. if i keep the revs up with the gas it's fine, but it can't drop below 1,000RPM. i even ran it up to temperature and it did the same thing. also i ripped it around the block (no plates) and it had almost 0 ***** in the low end, which my friend who owned an RX7 before told me that's normal, but this didn't feel normal, it felt like something was off. so my question is why is it dying and running like that? timing? running too rich? what does everyone think the problem is?

thanks to anyone who reads and helps

 

sounds like the timing is off... or the plug wires are reversed...??? or a major vacuum leak

 

well i'm trying timing maybe tomorrow (probably won't get time until wednesday though). plug wires are fine (trailing on top, leading on bottom and i marked t1, t2, l1, l2 respectively as i pulled them off). vaccum leak i don't think so since it goes away with higher RPM's and vaccum leaks usually have the same effect throughout the power band

 

so today i got the idle up to 1,500RPM...didn't go down from that, whatever, at least it's holding idle now... i don't have a timing light so i don't know about timing. i think my TPS might be pooched since (even in neutral) i press on the gas and the revs climb very slowly, but when i go under the hood and pull on the throttle it revs like a normal car should...that could be one of the problems. the other is it was smoking a lot from under the hood today, didn't smell like coolant or oil so i'm guessing it's just burning off whatever was there when it was parked for so long.

the engine heats up really fast, but i know rotaries are hot motors so i'm guessing as long as it doesn't get into the "H" zone it's normal to climb that fast. any other ideas on possible problems?