ianewk

Posted a while back thinking I could have a blown rotor...but there's still way too much power available at the wheels to be running on half an engine! Pulled the plugs and listened for a bad apex, everything sounded good...really strong pht pht pht sound on both rotors.

The car just seems to run crappy under 3000 RPM. After that it's smooth as can be. Fuel/air meter shows I'm running rich under acceleration and I still have alot of power. Could it be my primary injectors???

Thanks for any help you can give me.

ianewk

COME ON GUYS!!! I NEED YOUR HELP!

I'm relying on the forum's experts on this one as I have absolutely no shops in my area. The nearest rotary expert is 6 hours and two countries away in Germany!

So far I'm all alone on this and my 7 is sick. She needs to get better so I can continue to trounce these Italian snobs and their rally cars (It's important to note here that I own a Lancia Delta Integrale as well...so rally fans, please refrain from sending any hate mail).

For her sake, give me some insight here.

- Ian

silver93

can you give more details as to what you are experiencing?

ianewk

Specifically this is what's happening, at an autocross, coming into a straight, I lost power under 3000 RPM but didn't die and started to idle very rough at around 500 RPM. I drove it home with very little power. But now, I have all the power as before the incident, it's just sluggish under 3000 RPM, and still idling rough.

I checked the usual suspects--map sensor, vacuum hoses, plugs, etc.

Boost gauge is a little shaky and hovering around 10 psi of vacuum at idle, but it goes up a little at higher idle.

Air/Fuel meter is pretty sporadic (normal) but shows "rich" under acceleration.

As mentioned, I pulled the plugs to check for compression, but the preliminary test (minus gauge) sounded so strong that I don't think a rotor is bad. Especially when I have all my power.

I'm thinking it's a fuel problem...especially because the gas here in Italy SUCKS!!! I ran it for two days (lightly) with injector cleaner which seemed to help a little, but not enough.

silver93

Sounds like you have water in the gas! At auto stores here in the states, they now sell something which will dry it out, but all you need to do is put some rubbing alchohol in the tank. That should dry the water out.

It might take a while, though. if you can drain the current fuel out of the tank, that would be best. water is heavier than gas, so it settles to the bottom. But when you drive around, especially throwing it around like at an auto-x event, the water mixes well and gets sucked by the pump.

I would try that first. naturally, put some new gas in the car. also, remember, there is problably some water in the fuel lines, etc... and it can take a while for it really clean up.

also, have you checked your fuel filter? does it need to be changed?

ianewk

Thanks for your reply

I ran through the rest of the half tank of gas I had left after the event (plus injector cleaner) and went until it was very close to dry, and have since gone through another half tank (plus additive).

I haven't checked the fuel filter yet, but I'm planning on doing some work with it tomorrow. I have to check my fireball amp to see if it malfunctioned, plus I'm putting in rotary performance coil (in case it's a spark problem), so I might as well check that too.

Thanks again for the input, If you think of anything else give me a holler. I'll let you know what I find.

Ian

Resource

Did you get it fixed?

ianewk

Do you have any idea how old this post is?

Dude, this one one engine ago.

Resource

Heh, so what was the fix?

ianewk

The fix was pulling out my credit card and shipping a Mazda reman to Italy (where I was at the time).

It was a blown apex seal.

Not very good diagnoses above from the computer monitor mechanics.

Did you search under injector problems or something?