From reading the title of my post, most of you are thinking I wrecked my FD due to rain, but this is a little different...

Ever since last Wednesday when i purchased my Greddy FMIC, it seems everytime it rains something goes wrong with my FD. The first problem i had was not that big of a deal. I was pulling my car in the driveway, and it started to rain a little bit. Water somehow got into my engine bay and was getting on my ran relays, grounding them making them come on and off.

This morning was the worst...

It had rain last night pretty bad, my car was soaked. Went outside to start it up and let it warm up. Seemed to be doing fine. So after it warmed up i left. Got on the highway and noticed it started stauling. I looked up and my "charge battery" light came on. As I sped up it went away. Got to work and noticed my car was running very low idle and I smelled something burning. Got to the parking lot at work and poped the hood. Definalty something was burning. There was smoke coming from the turboside of the engine bay, but it only being 7:00am there wassn't much light to see down that well in the engine bay. It smelled like rubber or melting plastic. I guess I will not know what the deal is until i leave work today and see if my car even starts.

Any ideas as to what this could be? Or any input at all?

Thanks

 

Do you have the factory underbody splash guard in place? If not, maybe too much water is getting up into the engine bay and screwing something up.

 

^ no i don't, i guess i should put that back on... Any other ideas?

 

I don't think the burning smell is rain related. Check your hose conections and the area around your turbo's. Make sure that nothing has broken off and fallen onto them.

What type of smell was it? Rubber, fuel, or plastic?

 

I think it was water on the turbo's or something honestly, it was like boiling water on metal or rubber or something. but i'll check that before i leave work today also.

 

THEORY:
If your getting sudden water splash on your hot turbos(caused by lack of undercarriage guard), the rapid cooling process may be causing acute oil coking in the internal Turbo components.

That may explain the burning rubber/plastic smell coming out from that area??

 

^ I was thinking the exact same. But if your gonna boost in rain you should have something else to worry about.

 

^i was just driving normal

 

if you dont have the underbody splash guard, water will hit things underneath the car, most likely the turbos, the turbo heat is evaporating the rain hitting it cause it to smoke and giving a smell of whatever its evaporating

just like when you detail your engine, you spray the bay with water and then you let the engine run, smoke will come out and you will smell all different things including the degreaser

same principle

but are you sure this didnt occur before any rain?

 

how much rain did you get/what do you mean by your car got soaked? did you mean the water got higher then your floor boards?

 

he said it's only been happening since he installed that FMIC. does anyone else think that it may be water collecting in the FMIC and being sucked into the turbo's and then boiling/evaporating and making that smell?

 

Actually, the turbos aren't very protected by the underbelly pan. The pan stops at the front of the crossmember, the turbos are aft of that point. I can imagine water also gets thrown in around the crossmember by the wheels hitting puddles and other stuff. But you should have the underbelly pan in place for other reasons.

Do you have your turbocharger heat shields still in place? If not, I think they are responsible for protecting your turbos from splash cooling. Can you comment on whether the smoke was actually smoke, or might it be dirty-smelling steam?

 

I just installed Greddy FMIC , drove in some HELLA rain and I haven't had any problems with it ...

 

The school system in Arkansas isn't very good, is it?

 

The air flow pressure current would prevent that from happening.

 

it may of been steem yeah, but it rained a lot, not flooding or anything. But when i had left for work it had stoped raining for a while and was just wet.

 

LOL

X...

 

another reason why i dont drive the fd in the rain

 

i dought its totaly rain related. look at the guys in okinawa, they get along fine

 

I'm sorry, but they dont teach us about turbocharged rotary engines in K-12, and I just graduated. Also, I've had my car 3 months and am still learning. I was taking a guess at it, at least my previous post had reason to be here, whereas yours was just you feeling the need to be a pompous ***. At least in Arkansas they teach us manners; we.re not all inbred rednecks like you may think.

On a side note, I'm originally from South Carolina.

 

Water does conduct electricity just the moisture in the air can cause a skewed plug wire. I might think about looking at the power inputs and grounds. You also might look at the ecu. A water leak there is also something to consider. I would also inspect any areas worked on in the last 3 months.

 

You said a couple things. Burning smell, maybe rubber or plastic. You also said something about the battery - low idle, so on and so forth. It might be as simple as a grounding issue.

As an example, some of the grounds are covered in plastic connectors, and if the main grounds have trouble, the plastic around these can start to melt.

Was there any work done on the car recently - or recently before you started to have issues?

 

It's called common sense -- how is water "collecting in the IC" and then getting sucked back into the turbos? Intake air is drawn into the engine. The only time air flow would move backward is letting off throttle while boosting, in which case, it vents out the BOV. Also, since when does boiling water smell like something burning?

Not to mention the fact that the car would be pretty useless if it wasn't drivable in the rain.

While I have been guilty of this myself, posing a completely random guess doesn't do much to help the person with a problem.

You're right, it was a pretty rude thing to say.

 

while i'm really new to this RX-7 stuff, i did have similar problems with my Integra after a rain. Turned out to be a grounding problem within the engine bay. don't know if it's the same thing here, but the symptoms are mighty similar.

also, cocaine is a helluva drug, and the dave chappelle show (where that was taken off of) is funny as hell

 

And like that is supposed to be better?