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Looking at your earlier pictures I think you also broke a nipple off the purge control solenoid. If you look in the vacuum diagram it's near the top with an orange line going into the upper intake manifold, it has the aluminum check valve in the line. In the picture you can see plastic sticking out of the vacuum line.
I disagree with Axton, you aren't anywhere close to removing the rack. Replace the broken solenoids, get new vacuum lines on where they need to be, and get things buttoned back up. Removing the whole rack involves all the electrical connectors, the fuel rail, coolant lines, fuel lines....it's a mess and there's LOTS of things that can go wrong.
That's definitely one course of action. It will get you quickly back on the road, but it may be a ticking time bomb. Another course is preventative maintenance. How long will baked 25 year old parts last? A full vacuum hose replacement is not a terribly difficult project, but it's involved and you need to take time to ensure everything is routed correctly. If you are in that deep, you can also check other things that are old like having your injectors serviced and replacing old fuel hose (and FPD, another time bomb). You can also do a simplified system if you are not required to get emissions testing.
I have a couple of used OEM solenoids left in my garage I think. Not sure the miles on them, but the nipples are intact and they do work fine. I replaced all of mine with new and just kept the old ones that were in good shape.
Dale and Tom are both correct. I think its good proactive maintenance for you to just go through the rats nest and clean it all up. That will also give you access to check out your fuel lines, injectors, and maybe put in a new FPD. You'll also be able to verify that your OMP lines have not broken/cracked or anything like that. You could also verify that you have the updated fuel crossover line that Mazda did the recall on way back when.
It's imperative you clearly track what goes where as you disassemble though, or like Dale has said there are many things you could confuse or make a mistake on putting back together.
Believe Dale is recommending replacing what's broken and buttoning it up. I can see his point
If i were to do it again, i would use different color hoses same as the colorized vacuum diagram. May look silly (and be a little more expensive than a single color), but you'd be able to clearly see where everything is going
If this was a car I was personally working on I'd probably pull the whole thing and go through it.
But, this is someone who is new to the RX-7 world and probably has some other issues on the car that are actually causing problems. This is a case of keep it simple - he has other stuff to troubleshoot and there's no sense in going off the deep end chasing "it might be a problem at some point" when there's other things to worry about. Also it looks like an untouched rat's nest - they typically are fine if you leave them alone, but sometimes you have to do something when you have broken solenoids and vacuum lines.
Get fixed what's broken, get the intake manifold back in, then see what else the car needs.
I was just saying I think you both have valid points, so it comes down to what Mod Bugs is comfortable doing. It looks like they will already need to replace some of those broken solenoids at this point.
I chose to tackle this a few months after getting my RX7 and just took my time like I mentioned in my first post. But I took the scorched earth, strip it down the block and just put everything back together new/cleaned up approach and that's definitely not everyone's cup of tea. My 7 just had so many small issues everywhere that the shotgun approach was easier.
Definitely wasn't easier or cheaper though which are large considerations to make.
Big thing here is there's a LOT to screw up with pulling the whole rat's nest - I am convinced that 90% of the sequential problems from when the cars were new were from Mazda dealers doing the fuel line recall which requires removing damn near everything on top of the engine.
There's so many tiny things that you have to know to do the job right it's just not worth doing if you're new.
Those solenoids that are broken are very easy to get to as-is. Just replace them and move on.
Absolutely correct. If you don't label, mark, photograph and photograph everything again each step of the way you are setting yourself up for a lot of frustration. My friend would occasionally stop by and see what I was doing, he thought I was insane for how carefully I tracked every little thing when I was messing with all the stuff under the UIM. It looked more like an autopsy than an engine bay for a little while.
I can't imagine trusting a random Mazda tech to get it right either. No one on the clock at a dealership is going to be able to take the time needed to track all the lines.
I think the two wires that were off the white idle control plug would def explain the idle issue.. so hope that will clear that up. I wish I could take it all off and do everything out of th e car clean and put it back.. but I don’t have a shop or access to too many space or tools now. So I will try my best to replace and clean up whatever basic things I can and put it back together for now.
and if I need to redo it I’ll at least have some experience now taking off the UIM etc
To get to that lower solenoid I think the double throttle one, is it a lot more to get to it? I haven’t even tried but looks like I would need to take a few more things off to actually get to that piece?
The diffusers are best left un-touched, as soon as you mess with them they are going to break. I always replace them when rebuilding an engine or any engine-out service.
Brittle plastic will stay together as long as you don't mess with it.
For removing it, I would try the shop vac trick first. Get a STRONG shop vac and put some sort of fine mesh or something over the end of the vacuum. Put the vacuum on the intake runner and hopefully you can suck the broken piece out. The fine mesh will let you see when you've got it. Or, make sure the inside of the vacuum is nice and clean so you can find it in there to verify you've got it.
If that doesn't work it's time to pull turbos and lower intake manifold which is far from a good time.
Been there done this. Get a tube and run it down the intake runner. Or 3 tubes to " step down" from the vacuum inlet. I used a lot of duct tape as to keep a good seal so I still had some good suction. ...Hope that makes sense. Very long day. I am fried. I just know it is a pain so I wanted to try and help lol.
shoot sounds like you got a bit more of an issue than i do, but kind of on the same path (just deeper)! good luck tho!
i'm about to replace the broken solenoids and put the vacuum hoses on. but i wanted to get your guys' advise on how to take the solenoids off? i don't want to break anything else!! lol it seems like it's clipped in and locked somehow on a plastic clip that you have to push down or something. it's a tight space and dirty so it's hard to really tell. any veteran advise would be greatly appreciated!!
the broken solenoids are: double throttle, and charge relief solenoids..
They're held on to the metal rack with a plastic clip on the body, use the widest flat head screw driver you have to apply even pressure on the back and slide it off the metal rail. Just be gentle or it might snap.
I'd recommend removing the Charge Relief solenoid (H in the diagram) first because it's on the upper part of the rack. Then removing the Double Throttle (G) below it afterwards.
Here's a picture of my old EGR solenoid so you can see the clip
Hold the sides here while pressing the tab down and wiggle it gently out
If you take it slow, you shouldn't have anything in the way to break, all the lines from the solenoids connect to the rack hardlines. If an Old line is being stubborn, cut the line with some side cutters (picture) and use needle nose pliers to pull the remaining old line off the hard line.
