its an 88', it seems like it accelerates abnormaly slow. i think im losing compression when im in 5th. it slows down to about 45 mph and wont go past 2000rpm. it hates hills. what do you think is wrong with the car? is one of the rotors dead, are the seals broken? do i have to rebuild the engine to get it to run properly? is there any way to fix this with 250$? should i get rid of the car and cut my loses? would you drive it from northern california to washington to repair it later? what is the car worth as it is? i payed about 1300 for it, what should i sell it for?

 

If you have a flub, flub-flub, flub-flub type idle, it is probably a blown apex seal. Nevertheless, you may want to try a couple things before concluding its blown. First, check to make sure the spark plug wires are all seated onto the spark plugs. If they all seem tight and secure, then you may want to replace all the spark plugs. (You'll want new ones anyway if you need to rebuild). If that doesn't cure it, then you can check each of the spark plugs for spark. You may have a bad wire if they haven't been replaced in a while. Finally, do a compression check to see if in fact there is a loss of compression in either rotor housing. Let us know the results.

 

just replaced the spark plugs. turns out the moron who sold me the car had the leading wires crossed. it runs alot smoother now, but i drove like that for about 600 miles. will that do any damage in the long run? the car still doesnt accelerate as fast as it should. or it just isnt as fast as i expect it to be. im gonna try to have the compression checked in the near future. if the apex seals are broken, is driving my car just screwing it up more? ive already been driving it on the highway for 600 miles like i said with the wires crossed. the idle still makes a flubbing sound sometimes. its not everytime i start it though. and it doesnt pass smog at idle. its fine at other speeds. the guy put a new maf or map sensor on it. i dont know which one they werent speaking clearly, and i dont know what they are i just know they help control the air mixture. would that have anything to do with it? dude doesnt put stuff back together properly. what should i do about that?

 

Well, running with the ignition firing out of sequence will eventually damage the apex seals as you will actually have a plug firing on the seal itself (not good). But, at least you caught it now and you can only hope there hasn't been any real damage done in 600 miles. Before concluding that your car is still sluggish, I would suggest you drive a buddies 2nd gen and see if his/hers feels any different than yours. A 2nd gen doesn't get busy until about 3500 rpms anyway (N/A rotaries have poor low end torque). But you may have a host of other small issues to deal with. The car is now 25+ years old. Nothing lasts forever. Your BAC is probably past due for replacing, your TPS maybe sluggish and not moving smoothly any longer, on and on. My nephew had a 2nd gen and he was always tasked with fixing stuff just because it had become old. (Now he's rebuilding a REPU, but that's a whole other set of headaches, ... haha). The maf sensor (which I believe is the one on the 2nd gen), is a plug-in affair if the prior owner did in fact replace it. There is not really a way to screw that up unless he pulled the connector apart, but that would take a real numbskull to accomplish that. The smog issue still suggests an ignition problem. You may want to look into a new set of wires. In addition, you may have a problem with the air supply to the exhaust that is causing your CO to be off. I am familiar with the s4 system, but I believe the s5's went to a different air system so I cannot tell you how to check it. All in all, you're just dealing with an old car. They can run great too, but they all take a lot of work. You can also do a compression check. Unless you know someone with a rotary compression tester, however, you will probably need to have it done by a dealer or rotary shop.

 

the leading ignition on the fc is fired off of the same coil, so as long as the wires from the coil pack closest to the front of the car are going to both lower spark plugs, then it was ok.

I read your other thread, about 5th and hills, the na fc doesn't make a whole lot of power, and 5th is a verrry long gear. = not much hill climbing power,

if your on the highway it is normal to have to downshift into 4th to climb hills, very rarely even 3rd on say a mountain pass or something extreme

if you go to 4th when coming up to a hill at highway speeds does the car maintain speed?

 

yeah i just got to give it a little extra gas. my question is should it stay exactly at 2000 rpm when in 5th. shouldnt it at least accelerate, but slowly while in 5th?

 

Similar thing happened to me, except it was the trailing wires. Glad it's running good now.

 

just did a compression test. im getting about 99 consistantly. my car still feels sluggish, my idle is still irratic. what do you think could still be wrong? worn seals?

 

have you checked the cat to see if it is clogged yet?

 

It's good to know that the rotary doesn't make much low end torque, so you shouldn't spend much time driving under 3k really. If I were at 2k in 5th, I would cruise in 4th. It is typical to have to move out of 5th even on the interstate to go up some hills.