never ending life...
 

so I went to pull the rx7 out of the garage today to get some gas in it, and have the oil changed and about... 5mins into my adventure the car stalls out. Now please understand that this happens all the time when the car is started, but after it has had a chance to warm up it stops. Well I got to stop light and lucky me, the engine stalled, I tried to start it back up but it never came online. 6hours later after many attempted jump starts, and trips to the gas station to fill the tank I finally gave up and had it towed back to my house.

So what's wrong? I'm pretty sure it wasn't the alt. or the battery. The alternator looks new, and it would start on the jumps, so it probably isn't the battery. I can here the starter trying to get things going, but all it does is spin, and spin. On try #3 I could hear the engine turning over. So I think the starter is good. The reason I think it might be the battery though is because before I had it pumped the headlights would move up and down, but very very slowly. Dunno what to do, its sitting on the side of the road right now, I'm moving it back into the garage tomorrow. I'm thinking it might be bad spark plugs, spark plug cables or bad coils. (I'm getting a miltimeter tomorrow) Any other suggestions?? And could this all be related to why it had problems starting before? Please help me.....


BTW, anyone in the Greater DC area that wants to help is welcomed! I'll make cookies!

Your profile says you have a S4..

Think you might be flooding? Leaky injectors? (why it only stalls when cold)

my doesnt stall at all when cold it has that auto warm up shit and it goes back down to about 800 rpm and it stays there without probs dont know maybe what he said ^^ if not then it prolly is battery thats not getting charged and your not getting a good enough spark
TwEaK

it's not flooded, I think I have good compression, could it be bad coils?

It could be spark plugs but b4 you dig way into that (if your going to)

try this:
(this is what helps, if it is flooding)
- pop you hood and near the top right corner of your engine bay there is a pastic box, pop that open and take out the green fuse. and try to start it, it MIGHT start and than turn off if so thats good than put the fuse back in and it should start.

that fuse is what tells the extra gas to go into your engine to get it to running temp, at he beginning of starting the car. BUt ya try taking that fuse out, it shouldnt harm anything.

Try what Jao said. It might be spark-related though. How old (miles) are your plugs/wires? But if what Jao said works, then it isn't spark-related. Good luck!

It's flooded.
From your description above, it is flooded. And you don't know if you have good compression without measuring it.

Unflooding is as posted below except that you must hold the gas pedal to the floor while cranking so the air pumping through clears the excess fuel from the chambers. Once it's started get a compression test done. If that's okay then remove the injectors and have them professionally cleaned. Leaky injectors is the other main cause of flooding.

If you're still convinced it's spark, then check by pulling one of the leading (lower) plug leads and laying it near one of the strut tower nuts. While cranking you should see sparks from the conductor to the nut.

Ok, I'm gonna try all this tomorrow, thanks for you're help

one other thing... I just swapped in a new ECU, could that have any effect on it not running? I know it's good, just came from icemark completely rebuilt. And the alt. is practically new too... I think the plugs and sparks have 80,000 miles on them.

80000? holy hell thats a lot of miles on plugs

yeah it is, but!!! that ain't the problem!!! NZConvertible
and poor red neck were right, it's leaky injectors.... I pulled the plugs out and I was soaked in gas. so now I just have to search on how to fix this, thanks everyone!.... um... does flooding mean I have low compression?

Everything about unflooding can be found here: >http://rx7.com/tech/unflood-fc.html