Mura

Earlier tonight, after work, i was driving a friend home, so basically, I didn't have time to warm up the car. Other little things were involved, but whatever. just to give you a background of what I'm driving:
91 N/A Stock
Automatic...blah blah blah, I'm(maybe) saving up for the au/man swap.
87k miles when I purchased it, and only had the car for about 3 months.
I've driven the car so much and listened to the revs alot, that I pretty much know when to let off the gas, let the car shift, then press on the gas again....this is going fast might I add. Pretty much, I got the shifting points down just by sound.
But back to this small concern. Me and the donut guy got on this long straightaway(Rx somewhat versus diesel truck) we do this for play, but anyways, sped up to about 70mphs, dropped my friend off, and went home. On my way of going home, I drove it somewhat hard to about 65mph.

I turned into my neighborhood, and press on the gas again, and I all sudden the idiot noises quickly came on then off as if I red lined.
Correct me if I'm wrong on this, but I thought automatics couldn't red lined in drive when you step on the gas? Once I got to my house, I sat in my car and watch my rpms for a min. During that time I'd hear a "putt" noise which will then slightly drop my revs from 1000 to about 950, maybe a tad bit more. It did it 3 times. Upon that happening, I opened my door and smelled an odd odor.

The smell that came from my car was somewhat of a rubber burning smell. While that was going on, I just happened to noticed that a small batch of thin white smoke come from my hood. I quickly opened the hood, and a tad bit more came out. It was still the same rubber-like burning smell. The smoke was coming from the back of the engine, I can't precisely tell where, but I know it was in the back of it. Since I didn't have good lighting, I drove it to the nearest gas station to check it out. I didn't see any smoke or anything, except for the putt noise and the revs dropping slighty after each putt.
I'm thinking that a wire could've burned, or maybe the idiot buzziing noise wire could've burned, I don't know. Can anyone tell me anything?

Btw, I know this is off topic, and I remember reading that someone has already done it, but if I were to (just to be different) do a Turbo conversion, with the automatic tranny, will I be looking at a short life for the transmission? I wanna be different from all the other 7's out there, though, I've only seen 3 TII's in the small part of Orlando. And from what i heard, there were no automatic TII's ever made, so I was thinking, if I were to add a turbo to my automatic, or better yet, drop a TII motor with the auto tranny, it could work. On the flipside, the life of the tranny would decrease greatly. But since alot of you people would know more than me, I'd rather hear you guys opinion on this....on being different. To add, if this were to happen, there would be no way that I would throw mods on the car since it would most likely kill the tranny even more.
Anyways, can some one give me feed back on my small concern(rubber smell)? Bare with my punctuation...I pretty much talk the way I type...Sorry

MechE00

Regarding the weirdness and the smell, I imagine people are going to suggest a compression check, but I could be wrong.

Regarding "being different" with the automatic transmission and a Turbo II engine... you could also drive a rusted out Yugo, that'd be different... or maybe a Thing. I don't have the kind of motivations as other people, and I couldn't imagine the "being different" desire to be anywhere near as strong as my "have a decent transmission" desire. <hyperbolic joke> Automatic transmissions are a blight on the whole concept of a sport car. If you willingly choose and automatic transmission, you ought to skip the car, buy a playstation/xbox, and ride the bus! </hyperbolic joke> :p

Mura

hah, it was just a thought that I had at night. More than likely, since Orlando is filled with constant stop/go and slow rolls, it's best that I just stick with the automatic. I'll just do a small mod to it and be done.

tie pilot

nitrous?

MechE00

Wow, I'm kinda surprised nobody else has responded to this thread..

I'm guessing that part of that is that there were few automatic FC's made to begin with, and a fair proportion of people on this board who owned an auto probably swapped it to a manual..

So the expertise on problems with the automatic transmissions is probably relatively low on this board.. (could be wrong, though)

Sorry you're not getting more help..

how's the car running now?

Mura

Another problem I'm having, and i experienced this today. When i was going to my job, I was sitting at the light and noticed my clock flashing on and off. Upon that happeneing, my dash lights were doing the same, which caused my revs to go up and down for a little while. To add, this also made my turn signal blinker on the dash not work. Once I got to work, my seatbelt didn't work as well. So I was wondering, is there a main electrical system that controls all the the things mentioned in my car? This all started after the incident that I mentioned.

Edit: Mech, the car is running peachy. I love my car all the way. The only thing tha ti can say that gets annoying is when I pop it in reverse and backng ou of my yard, my revs drop to about 500 and I end up hearing some rattling noise on the bottom of my car, which would sometimes cause my car to shut off, but other than that, it runs perfect. As for the auto manual swap mentioned, I'm choosing not to go that route.

H4Inf

You didn't have time to warm up the car and were redlining it?

How long between driving hard and starting did you leave, plus what RPM were you maxxing at in that time?

Mura

That's the thing, I wasn't even close to redlining it. But I found out what the problem was, I was extremely low on oil. Which lead to the problem I mentioned. Now, not only do I not have any dash lights(except for the Hold light), I also don't have any actual turn signals and and worse....brake lights.

By the time I was halfway to his house, it was warmed up, and when I driving fast, I didn't stomp on the gas(me and the donut guy race), it was more of a medium sped up, rather than a instant foot to the ground. Between starting and driving fast, it was like 10 or minutes. And again, apparently, the idiot noise was the dash saying low oil. Today, my engine light flashed on and off, which prompted me even more that this was not a simple problem, but more of a serious problem. Especially for night driving when you have no turn signals and brake lights.

tie pilot

you should not be driving that car, daytime or nighttime, until you've at least fixed your brake and signal lights. how the car runs affects you. signal lamps affect everybody else on the road. do your duty as a motorist and fix that stuff.

Mura

I know, which is why I'm skating to work this time. But, I just noticed it last night that i had no brake lights and turn signals. The thing is, there has to be a main wire or fuse for all of this. Like I mentioned in my initial post, something burn and emitted a rubber like smell, with a small white smoke. This started happening 3 or more days after that small incident. That is why I'm asking you people if there's a main wire or fuse that I should be looking for.

tie pilot

oh. well, good for you for not driving. um... look at your fusebox near driver's left foot. the fusebox cover should have pictures of what fuses do what. there is a fuse for STOP and a fuse for TURN. check them, and check all the fuses while you're down there.

If your fusebox cover doesn't have the pictures on it, check the 2nd gen FAQ (it's a sticky post at the top of this forum section). the FAQ has pics of the fuse layout.

H4Inf

if you smelt rubber and saw white smoke, I'm guessing for some reason there was a short under the hood and one of your wires got very hot and melted through it's casing, shorting with something else. Before replacing the fuse, you might want to check out as much wiring under the bonnet as you can and see if you can find what shorted...

the putt noise was probably as a wire sparked to something, and you lose fuel or ignition for a second...

Mura

Ahhh, alright. thank you. I'll do that when I wake up. But as I've already repeated this question, can one blown fuse affect all the other fuses? In other words, if one fuse that controlled, lets say, my radio were to blow, wouldn't that fuse affect all the others causing my dash, tail, etc... lights to stop working, until i replace that blown fuse?

H4Inf

I think there are some main fuses like that, I'm not completely familiar with 2nd gens, but I would look to fix your bad wiring before putting a new fuse in, or you could hurt some things... hopefully only fuses. Under the bonnet on one of the wheel wells theres a block of fuses i think.

Mura

Yea, I looked at it, and instead of checkign all of them, I only checked the Stop and Illum fuse, but I'll definently check for shorted and burned through wires along with the rest of the fuses.

Edit: Even if one of my wires were shorted and burned through, Would I need to replace the wire, or would it be best to replace the whole harness, if there is a harness?

H4Inf

Really would be easiest to replace that wire. Look for a wire that has maybe fallen down near the exhaust or on something that gets hot... that would explain the casing melting thru and allowing things to arc..

All the best

Mura

Not a bad idea. In fact, my car has more problems that I can imagine, except, not all that serious. The beeping sounds, the "Hold" button that I'll need to go to Mazda for, BAC and ACV, valves....rear wiper doesn't work, same with radio antenna, but I'll get to those once I'm able to buy either Haynes or FSM, but at the moment, I'll do as you say.

H4Inf

Yeah its just a case of simple troubleshooting, check for wires which look melted through/cracked around hot areas. I strongly recommend getting a haynes manual as it will tell you which coloured wires go where, really helps out!

Good luck

Mura

Well, I looked in my engine, by the transmission, and noticed that one of my wires, which is connected to a connector, was burned through the casing and exposed the wire. The casing of the wire, has like a brownish color to it, and is connected on the right side of the engine. Not too round, but more of an oval shape. I'm checking the fuses, which is very annoying to pull since I just dropped one in the corner of the carpet and can't get it out. Luckily it was a 10 fuse, that went to my antenna....that never worked. Tomorrow, I'm having my friend come over with his car jack, and i'm going to jack it up and check under the car to see if any more wires were exposed. But for now, since this exposed wire is shown, I take it, the best thins to do is disnnect that wire, and try to find where it ends, and disconnect the other side of it, then replace that wire.....This is gonna be a task, especially since I need to get this done by Thursday.

H4Inf

Good to hear you have found something. Can you explain in more detail where it connects and what to, and perhaps where the other end is. Was the wire hanging against the engine? Or a photo even...

I have the Haynes 2nd gen manual here for reference

Syonyk

It sounds like that might be a grounding wire. Does it connect straight to the engine block? If so, it's a ground.

If you've got grounding problems, they could easily cause all the symptoms you're describing. There's a main ground connection that should handle most of the current, but if it's not, there's a small wire that will handle a lot of it (and proceed to burn up).

Also, don't worry about the "putts" at idle too much. Rotary engines are somewhat difficult to get to idle properly, and occasionally a charge doesn't light off. New plugs & adjusting the timing will help some, but it's more or less normal.

-=Russ=-

MechE00

regarding brake lights and turn signals, do your in-dash lights work? On some other cars I've owned, there was a combination switch that could burn out and take out the rear lights (including brake lights), the turn signals, and the in-dash lights, and there was nothing to do but replace the switch...

I don't know if the FC has the same failure mechanism, though..

Good luck...

Mura

I turned the car on today and had no other choice but to drive it to work, so at about 3000, the check engine light came on. Then once I switched gears, at about 25 to 3500 it came on again, so now I know that this has turned to a serious problem.

H4Inf - I'll give you a better description when it's light out side.
Syonyk - I'll also let you know tomorrow

Mech - The lights that work on the inside of my car is that panel that shows Door, brake, oil, engine, etc... Other than that, nothing else works. Just found out my defrost light works and my wipers work, but that's all. I'll be able to give more info tomorrow. One thing I can hear, but at a very low tone, is the beeping noise when you open the door.

jhammons01

Sounds like your having a ground problem and after 6 days of politley asking a few stopped making fun of you and started with suggestions. You being new or young don't seem to have the jargen down just yet. Best if you take some digital photo's of what you see and post them along with your questions. this could really be helpful and a lot of folks will chime in.

About your Tranny idea, JDM TII motors (Motors imported form junked cars in Japan) have an Auto tranny with them lots of times. If you are going to do a motor swap to a TII then you should just wait and find one with the tranny that you're looking for.

And if that is what you want to do to be different then go for it and don't listen to some fucktards bad advice.


'If you willingly choose and automatic transmission, you ought to skip the car, buy a playstation/xbox, and ride the bus! </hyperbolic joke> :p"

Mura

I'm going to see if a friend of mine has a digi cam, so I can take a picture of a several wires. And thank you for suggestion on the TTI Auto idea. I appreciate it big time. I'm new to all of this, and if 22 is young, then yea I'm young.