Hey folks,

I need help. I drove my car for the first time tonight in preparation for smog and registration. I did 16 miles total. It went great for about 15 mins then the Add coolant and Oil lights popped up then I had no gas pedal input. I pulled to the side on the freeway, popped the hood and waited for about an hour. Started her again, and was able to limp her to the nearest exit. When I was about to pull in to the parking lot, she died again.
The temp gauge was in mid the whole time. I put ~3.8 qts of oil in just a couple hours prior. Car does have coolant. Now when I start, she would start rough, whole car shaking for about 5-8s then dies. It feels like she needs gas. I put in 10 gal with 0.5 premix/gal. No leaks anywhere. My car is a '99 and stock. I am thinking the fuel pump is probably done. But what do y'all recommend me to look at? I've owned the car for about 2 weeks and I gotta say, the 1st 15 mins when it was working, it was pure joy!!! But now, HELP!

 

Clogged fuel filter? If there was residue in the tank from not being driven for a long time, the fuel filter may have gotten filled with crud.

 

This would be most concerning to me. You said it had coolant. Was it full at the filler neck when cold? The stock gauge is nearly worthless. The reading isn’t linear so if it went past the half-way mark it was likely over heating. And did you check the dip-stick?

 

Save yourself time and start with the thing everyone hates and most refuse to do, a compression test.

Denial is a bit of a plague for rotary owners.

 

I have the hardware, I was thinking of changing it after registration. It sat quite a long time in JP before getting here. Almost 5 months

"This would be most concerning to me. You said it had coolant. Was it full at the filler neck when cold? The stock gauge is nearly worthless. The reading isn’t linear so if it went past the half-way mark it was likely over heating. And did you check the dip-stick?"
The coolant in the filler neck wasn't full at top, it was bit lower than the little hole in the neck( ??) Dip stick was almost at full in the overflow tank. The temp was actually never in the middle but a tick lower??

Updates:
I had a bit of time this morning:
_ It idled while being jumped with white smoke and miss firing. The battery came with it was manufactured in 2007. I went and got a brand new battery, and it was able to idle on its own but rough, miss firing. The "Add coolant" and Oil lights are now gone.
_ At neutral, when I let the clutch out, RPM would drop down to about 300 and it wanted to die but it didn't
_ I will do compression test when I get back next week. Hopefully it was just the plugs and not the coolant seals!

 

ahh i am not sure why my latest reply is not showing up, let's try it again:

Quote:
Originally Posted by DaveW
Clogged fuel filter? If there was residue in the tank from not being driven for a long time, the fuel filter may have gotten filled with crud.
I have the hardware, I was thinking of changing it after registration. It sat quite a long time in JP before getting here. Almost 5 months

"This would be most concerning to me. You said it had coolant. Was it full at the filler neck when cold? The stock gauge is nearly worthless. The reading isn’t linear so if it went past the half-way mark it was likely over heating. And did you check the dip-stick?"
The coolant in the filler neck wasn't full at top, it was bit lower than the little hole in the neck( ??) Dip stick was almost at full in the overflow tank. The temp was actually never in the middle but a tick lower??

Updates:
I had a bit of time this morning:
_ It idled while being jumped with white smoke and miss firing. The battery came with it was manufactured in 2007. I went and got a brand new battery, and it was able to idle on its own but rough, miss firing. The "Add coolant" and Oil lights are now gone.
_ At neutral, when I let the clutch out, RPM would drop down to about 300 and it wanted to die but it didn't
_ I will do compression test when I get back next week. Hopefully it was just the plugs and not the coolant seals!

 

Updates:
_ My rear rotor is done. 121/24/52.
_ Front rotor is excellent: all 3 were 103+

Time for rebuild

 

Sorry about that. Hope you find a place to rebuild "in the Desert". Check out RX7 Specialities in Calgary. Shipping your motor to them can be surprisingly cheap. (Full disclosure, we have had four motor rebuilt by them this year.)

Be mindful that for 1996, and later FD, Mazda changed the position of the coils. Many mechanics are not aware of this. There is a risk of hooking up the coil harness or spark plug leads in the wrong order.

If this was the case for your car, a couple hard pulls could have broken your seals in the rear housing, as, in essence, the motor tries to run backwards.

(This actually happens often and happened to me.)

Don't drive or run the car (obviously). Hopefully much of the engine can be reused.

 

Sorry for the news, but i hate seeing these threads go on for months while people prod others to keep spending money on things that wouldn't make a difference.

 

Sorry to hear that, but I'm glad you started with a compression test. I've seen people spend AGES of time and lots of money looking for all sorts of causes when the problem is the engine itself.

Good luck!
Dale

 

Compression test four times a year, ftw!

 

Japanese auction cars usually don't give compression tests. What matters is if the car can be driven onto the Ro-Ro ship.

Failure of engine shortly after the cars arrive in North America is quite common (i.e. the healthier cars don't get auctioned off).

So it is important to put the cars through a battery of tests before driving any meaningful miles once they arrive.

 

You are absolutely right. I went hot on it because it said the engine was rebuilt ~2k miles before but they never sent the documentations on the rebuilt, SOAB! But oh well what can I do haha. I am way too far from Calgary but fortunately, there is a rotary shop that's not too far from me and it's the only one in my state. I am talking to them today and see how soon they can get things started. Also, about the coil harness position, I will also mention to them as I don't think they have worked on any 96+ FDs. Do you by a chance have a diagram of it somewhere, so I can print it out?

Thanks man!

 

I created a thread within the past few months that documents the difference in the 96+ coil wiring, should be easy to find it.

Dale

 

I suspect a lot of these imports are still on original engines, with 3 piece seals and lots of carbon from sitting for ages. a real recipe for disaster, no matter how well a car is maintained.

It will also give you a reason to go through everything more thoroughly and potentially fix any underlying causes that forced it to go south as well. A rotary can fail for literally almost no reason, but there is usually some major contributors.

 

This is a "sticky" in the 3rd Gen Forum. I am not sure if Travis has finished his work, but there is some discussion around page 5.

https://www.rx7club.com/3rd-generati...glish-1157199/

 

Here is a download of all the JDM manuals. You can find the electrical manual for each version and also the FSM update manual for your version.

The password is embedded in the file name.

It is a 400MB download (4000 pages).

https://redirect.viglink.com/?format...r4xRa%3Fdl%3D0

 

Dale's thread:

https://www.rx7club.com/3rd-generati...iring-1168174/

 

Thanks! I believe I have downloaded this version for awhile now. I got lost after going through a few pages due to everything was in Japanese.

 

Thanks! I found the thread. I printed the pics out. Will bring them with me to the shop.