After letting my 89 vert sit for 6-7 years, I am now in the process of getting it back on the road. Having sat for so long I am a little concerned that the engine may be "dry" from a lubrication perspective.

One of my hobbies is bringing dead motorcycles back to life. What I do on those is spray some fogging oil into the cylinders when installing new spark plugs in order to pre-lube the cylinder walls prior to starting an engine that has sat for several years.

I'm getting the injectors refurb'd and installing new NGK plugs before I try to start the RX. Would it make sense to spray a little fogging oil into the FI and plug holes prior to the first start attempt? Would that make it more prone to flooding on the first start?

(I do know about flooring the accelerator while starting to cut the fuel supply for unflooding it.)

 

fogging oil is a good idea. Before you start the car, pull the EGI fuse and turn the engine over untill you see it building oil pressure. This way you know the bearings wont dry start

 

What I do, whether it's a rotary or a piston engine is remove the spark plugs, pour some oil through the spark plug holes (low viscosity or fogging oil) spin the engine by hand a few times without the spark plugs as to avoid having high load on the bearings. Do this a few times and you should be good.

 

Marvel Mystery oil is your friend.

 

also good on salad.

fogging oil is fine if you have a bottle handy.
Some guys suggest rolling the engine over..say 120 degrees..like through the course of 3 days..(to totally lube and saturate the seals).
It's not a bad idea really.Just take your time and check out the fuel system mainly,along with this internal lube job..
You should be fine.
If you get Frisky,try a compression check before hand.(tons of threads on that..Poor mans compression check..or use a regular piston type comp checker)

 

pop open the tank and make sure its not gummy inside, if its clean, add a new fuel filter to your list before pumping into those virgin rebuilt injectors.

Fogging oil or MMO and rotate by hand a few times is a great idea. I did that, pulled the egi and comp fuse and spun it with the starter for a bit to build oil pressure (so I thought) and then popped the fuses back in and let it rip.

 

MMO is "wax mud" as the late Icemark liked to say. Why people use it for anything, I have no idea. Check the MSDS. It's a solvent with wax dissolved and then some other ingredients which contribute little.

Fogging oil is the appropriate lubricant for storing a vehicle long period.

To resurrect an engine which has been sitting, regular old motor oil is the thing you want. Actually if you suspect seals are frozen in place with carbon/junk, then diesel fuel can be introduced and the engine rolled over by hand. A few of those over a few days, then replace the diesel fuel with motor oil and attempt to start (once you've dealt with all of the other issues though ... Removing An RX-7 From Storage, Dealing With Improper Storage ..).

 

Well been busy moving but now getting back to the vert.

Plan to drain the tank and empty the fuel system, then add a couple of gallons of fresh gas with some Techron added to it. I purchased a new fuel filter that I'll install once all the old gas has been purged.

I purchased a new battery a couple of weeks ago and have that on a battery tender to make sure I have sufficient juice when I try to start it. When I turned it on the fuel gauge read pretty close to empty so I won't have much old gas to deal with.

I bought some dino Rotella and a Bosch oil filter so I will give it fresh oil before I attempt to start it. Figure I'll run that for 5-600 milesto clean things up and then give it another change with a long range filter and either Mobil 1 or Rotella synth.

I also have new NGK plugs and leads to install.

How do I "turn the engine by hand?" Use a torque wrench on the nut for the main belt pulley to turn the main cam?

When I parked it it had a slight coolant leak. I figure the radiator is probably toast from sitting anyhow so I ordered a new CSF radiator and bought some new silicone hoses I plan to give it a flush with distilled water once I have the new radiator installed and it's running again.


The good news: Once I got my motorcycles out of the way I opened the driver's side door for the first time in about 7 years. I feared it would be filled with spider webs, mouse droppings or whatever but was pleasantly surprised to find that the interior was immaculate! I must have detailed the interior right before I stopped driving it.

All of the tires were down to about 20 PSI so I refilled them. I'll probably need to get some new tires once I have it running again.

 

Follow Aaron's advice - storing rotaries is an annual topic in the Canadian forum, and everyone just links to the aaroncake.net site to answer.

Turn the motor over by hand with a socket wrench on the main pulley bolt (sorry, don't recall the size - a deep socket or short extension may be needed too) - if you have the stock fan shroud, it's probably easier from under the car, but you may have to remove the plastic belly splash/aerodynamic pan. Remember rotation is clockwise, so use the righty-tighty setting on your socket. Doing it with the plugs out will also help you to better judge if the motor is "sticking" due to stuck seals, since it should spin fairly easily with the plugs out, and therefore no compression resisting you.

 

My advice would be to follow Aaron's website. But, in addition, in my experience cars that have sat that long also need to have the fuel injectors replaced or cleaned. So as you said, drain the gas. FILL it with fresh gas and fuel system cleaner, run the fuel pump to purge the lines. THEN, pull the fuel injectors and have them cleaned or have new or cleaned replacements ready to go. Whenever i am doing fuel injectors i always buy new ones or buy used ones and send them to RC engineering for full cleaning and blueprinting. Then, you can install them and just throw out or clean and sell the old ones. Replace the fuel filter, the car should be ready to go.

This is especially true if the car sat with any mixture of ethanol. That stuff turns to horrible goo if sitting for more than a year and only gets worse. Injectors become completely clogged.

 

I can highly recommend raven works in MN for injector servicing as well. Same day turn around usually and flow sheets are provided with before and after. Was $30 an injector If I recall... The guy even polished them up on a buffing wheel or something, they came back like new and they run perfect.

 

My main hobby these days is bringing old motorcycles back to life so I know about clogged injectors. I use a guy named mrinjector.us. $17 a pop and he does all of the usual: new O-rings and pintel caps, sonic cleaning and flow printout. He's in Idaho and I'm in Seattle so the turnaround via Priority Mail is uber-fast. In the past I've sent him some really crappy ones that had rust spots on them and had been sitting in salt air for more than a decade. When I got them back he'd sanded and repainted them and they looked almost new.

The radiator fan shroud will not be in my way to turn the engine. IIRC the radiator had a pinhole leak when I parked the car and I'm sure it's FUBAR'd after sitting for so long so I'm just going to replace the radiator with a new CSF one. (Hoses too.)