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Change the fuel for sure. Whether or not that is the culprit you're still running half a tank of bad gas. These short idles and stops are also probably adding to the flooding. That's what did it to mine on the chances that it floods. Quick on and off is asking for flooding.
You probably have carbon built up in your housings from all this. If and when you get it to run and warm up - get it to redline (as recommended by Mazda themselves) to burn off carbon deposits.
Def get clean fresh gas, premix correct amount if you've deleted OMP, deflood, and then we can get into the sensors and stuff. Could have dirty sensors somewhere...my money is on the gas though
The fact that you plugs are fowling so badly is a very big clue.
What is causing that?
Although my car was flooding badly, tne worse the plugs looked like was a light black smudge on the uppers.
Somewhere there is an analysis table that identifies what your burnt up plugs are trying to tell you.
how can you tell they’re fouled? I’m not too good at being able to gauge that, to me it looked fine but I guess I was looking at the ground part. Based on my pictures they’re 100% fouled? If so I can order new ones or try sticking them in the oven or try to find my blow torch
Change the fuel for sure. Whether or not that is the culprit you're still running half a tank of bad gas. These short idles and stops are also probably adding to the flooding. That's what did it to mine on the chances that it floods. Quick on and off is asking for flooding.
You probably have carbon built up in your housings from all this. If and when you get it to run and warm up - get it to redline (as recommended by Mazda themselves) to burn off carbon deposits.
Def get clean fresh gas, premix correct amount if you've deleted OMP, deflood, and then we can get into the sensors and stuff. Could have dirty sensors somewhere...my money is on the gas though
if the gas pedal trick doesn’t work how do you recommend deflooding? Do I have to unplug bottom two spark plugs and disconnect ignition to let the rotors push fuel out those holes? If there’s a quicker way I’d appreciate that one too lol
You may want to have better confidence on your set-up before going the "Italian tune-up" route *.
If you lean out at high revs you risk detonation **.
Maybe better to get an AFR gauge installed sooner than later.
* Perhaps read up on other ways to remove carbon build up first.
** This can be made even more risky by the carbon build ups getting red hot and acting like glow-plugs.
Italian tune-up is factory recommended by Mazda every time you drive the car. It's in the manual for all their rotary cars. But I understand your point about an AFR gauge - not a bad idea for any car when adding power.
To deflood if it's not working at the pedal - just unplug the harness going to the fuel pump is easiest, but you still have fuel in the lines that needs to get cycled out. It'll take quite a bit of cranking to spray all that through the engine and you'll have soaked injectors still.
It'll take some work but you can remove the hose from the injector side return line, add a long length of hose to it and a bucket, and then run the fuel pump to drain everything. Yeh you can drain the tank with the drain plug but it leaves fuel in the lines too, this way empties the lines.
Once the tank reads at or near empty, then can stop and reconnect the lines.
Now with the fuel pump harness disconnected, remove the spark plugs, keep the gas pedal depressed, and crank to deflood. Once you've completely gotten all that out, put in clean plugs (i wouldnt waste new ones just in case, use your cleaned old ones), reconnect fuel pump harness, and fire her up. If it works, remove those old "clean" plugs and put new ones in to be sure the old ones wont fail shortly after.
Italian tune-up is factory recommended by Mazda every time you drive the car. It's in the manual for all their rotary cars. But I understand your point about an AFR gauge - not a bad idea for any car when adding power.
To deflood if it's not working at the pedal - just unplug the harness going to the fuel pump is easiest, but you still have fuel in the lines that needs to get cycled out. It'll take quite a bit of cranking to spray all that through the engine and you'll have soaked injectors still.
It'll take some work but you can remove the hose from the injector side return line, add a long length of hose to it and a bucket, and then run the fuel pump to drain everything. Yeh you can drain the tank with the drain plug but it leaves fuel in the lines too, this way empties the lines.
Once the tank reads at or near empty, then can stop and reconnect the lines.
Now with the fuel pump harness disconnected, remove the spark plugs, keep the gas pedal depressed, and crank to deflood. Once you've completely gotten all that out, put in clean plugs (i wouldnt waste new ones just in case, use your cleaned old ones), reconnect fuel pump harness, and fire her up. If it works, remove those old "clean" plugs and put new ones in to be sure the old ones wont fail shortly after.
Hopefully that'll do it.
I totally forgot about just running the fuel pump from the diagnostic box to get all the old fuel out. Genius. Can’t believe that skipped my head. Tomorrow I’ll go grab a long length of fuel hose and put it on the return line and let it drain into a bucket. Going to be a lot of extra fuel you think I can throw it into my Jeep that runs on 87 gas? Mine has premix though in it and dye so not sure. Also will the fuel going to return be super pressurized? Do you know the pressure off the top of your head?
If you really wanna reuse that old gas I'd say only add it to the Jeep like a gallon at a time. The stuff is old and beat up, maybe good for a good ole bonfire or some clearing of weeds.
Here is a range of plugs from my discard bin. The ones on the right are from my recent flood recovery exercise. I am hanging onto them because I am hopeful that they are reusable.. But because they had been through many flood cycles the tech replaced them with new, to eliminate as many possible negative factors as possible. The really blackened and burnt ones on the left are from prior removals. I can't recall the exact history. I note that my tuner insists on using only BUR9EQP for both upper an lower.
Alright guys dumped all the gas out of the FD. Even reserve. Tomorrow I will get new fresh gas and try to start it with current spark plugs since the new ones will come Monday or Tuesday probably of next week. Hopefully we’re getting close here. Tbh I think either gas or plugs or both is the issue because I didn’t mess with any settings.
Take the week to let your housing breathe out and, check everything over again, to make sure they are in spec.
Coils (Did the alternator short toast one of your coils?)
Map sensor (is the filter pointing the correct direction?)
Spark plug lead wires (are they melted?)
ISC
Air filter
Air intake pipes. (Someone recently found their aftermarket "cone" filter had broken apart and got sucked into the pipe.)
What is the highest octane gas available in your area?
Take the week to let your housing breathe out and, check everything over again, to make sure they are in spec.
Coils (Did the alternator short toast one of your coils?)
Map sensor (is the filter pointing the correct direction?)
Spark plug lead wires (are they melted?)
ISC
Air filter
Air intake pipes. (Someone recently found their aftermarket "cone" filter had broken apart and got sucked into the pipe.)
What is the highest octane gas available in your area?
those plugs were really bad? The ones I had before that were in way worse condition, almost completely black but the car still ran fine weirdly lol. I was thinking of grabbing a $10 air compressor spark plug cleaner tool from harbor freight tomorrow and blasting the spark plugs as well as hitting it with some brake clean.
as for spark plug lead wires, before the alternator sparks short I had, I put in brand new spark plug lead wires, brand new coil pack harness and plugs. How can I check if the lead wires are melted? They have rubber covering them.
to test coils I guess I could use a spark plug spark checker that I have and test each plug to make sure it’s firing and getting signal right?
also what do you mean by the map sensor filter? I know the map sensor has a vac line that plugs into the TB but that’s about it.
For ISC, MAP, TPS and Coils, I am referring to checking the conductivity of the electrical connection as per specs in the FSM.
You can check for spark from the coils. In my case we had spark (and the shop owner nearly blew himself up because of all the engine starter we had sprayed around.)
But one tech felt from a prior test drive, that there still may have been something wrong with the coils. In the end we replaced the full set from spares I had.
Because we had tried almost everything else.
When I popped a corner seal in 2016, the engine rebuilder found that a lead wire had melted onto one of the coils. (among other issues, such as the leads not connected in the correct order to the plugs.)
There should be an acorn shaped filter that sits in the vacuum line just ahead of the MAP sensor. I suppose it is there to block debris from getting to the sensor. It is surprising how often it gets put back pointing in the wrong direction. I may not be material to the running of the car, but we are trying to eliminate any variable that we can.
There should be an acorn shaped filter that sits in the vacuum line just ahead of the MAP sensor. I suppose it is there to block debris from getting to the sensor. It is surprising how often it gets put back pointing in the wrong direction. I may not be material to the running of the car, but we are trying to eliminate any variable that we can.
oh yeah that’s put the right way, at least it should be because I never messed with it and the car ran fine before with it put the way it was. As for coils and testing all that I’ll probably do all that if new plugs and fresh gas don’t fix my issues. Let’s hope they do lol
See the acorn shaped piece ahead of the MAP sensor. It has an arrow on it, but people get confused about which way the arrow should point. (p.157 of FSM).
Check the wire colours of coil harness against the wiring diagram. This was the way we could confirm we had the coil harness connected correctly. You can get the coil harness plug order reversed. Also, the coil harness was changed for later models. Make sure your replacement was the correct part number.
so fresh gas and new spark plugs went into the FD today and she started up right away. I also let the housings breathe a bit before putting new plugs in.
new issue, when I backed out, there was a massive oil puddle on passenger side.
good thing is I’m familiar with the oil system because I installed new stainless steel oil lines that run from the OMP to the oil injectors on the motor.
besides this, and the oil lines going to the turbos and back out from underneath, is there any other oil lines or systems going on there? I don’t believe so. Tomorrow I will check where it’s leaking from.
also remember when I said there was smoke? That smoke seems to be oil related (probably from this leak) and definitely smells like oil burning. The smoke is coming from the turbo area so I can attach a pic.
also fyi, before, the car never had any massive oil leak here and I never touched the turbo oil lines. Only oil lines I touched are the OMP lines and I installed new oil injectors on the motor. That’s all I messed with so I doubt it could be turbo related since it ran fine before but you never know
I think you got all of them. 1x turbo supply, 2x turbo drain, OMP with fittings and lines.
I guess you also have the PCV which I think exits the oil filler into a pipe and then enters into the primary turbo elbow.
ok so I think I found the leak, I think it’s where the stainless steel oil lines meet the OMP and the banjo bolts. Maybe I didn’t tighten them enough or something because I took a glove and put my hand around there and guess what? Fresh oil
do you or anyone know the size of those banjo bolts so I can tighten them? It was a while ago I did that so I honestly forgot
02-23-24, 02:00 AM
