Hi,

I have been away from my RX-7 (94 FD) for quite some time, it's been sitting in the garage for something like two years; don't ask... kids.

Anyway, my calender has cleared up and it's time to give the car some love. First of all I drained out the old fuel as it's been sitting and put in fresh high quality stuff. Next I took the sparks out cleaned them up and made sure they weren't fouled up (they were "ok"). Checked all the usual stuff, and have a nice new battery.

So, tried starting it up and no go. When I was running it before it had a history of flooding quite a bit, so I figured it was flooded... did the usual deflooding procedures by taking out the sparks and EGI relay and turning over until no mist comes out. Have put some light oil in the plug holes turned it over and left overnight. Kept at it and at it, but nothing. Compression seems good, however I've only done the poor mans test by getting somebody to crank the car while I put my hand over the plug holes, so I can't be 100% on that.

So, I figured I'd ask to see what other things I could check out? All the fuses and relays are good. I can hear the fuel pump kicking in, I know it's pumping as I get the mist out of the plug holes.

It very nearly wants to start, am sure it's sooo close, but something is stopping it.

I could get a brand new set of sparks to totally eliminate that, but the spark seems good.

Any suggestions on where to look next would be most welcome...

 

1. Put in some new plugs.

2 Did you hear 3 even pulses from the plug holes when you did the ghetto compression check?

3. Rotary engines have a tendency to have the apex seals get stuck over time from carbon build-up. The stuck seals will cause the engine to flood due to weak compression.

4. Just because your old plugs are sparking doesn't mean there sparking well enough to ignite the mixture of your cold engine.

 

I'll go and get new sparks tomorrow, currently it has #9s all round, but as the car isn't really heavily modified I might give the stock setup a go with leading #7s and trailing #9s. Have the emissions test to do so will probably get a better result with that when I get it running.

I did see a proper compression test kit so I figure I'll get that as it'll come in handy. I'm sure the pulses were correct, but nothing like measuring it properly.

I've got some ATF, but I'm hesitant to put it in the engine as it potentially won't get burned off and I don't want it sitting corroding things. Will only use that as a last resort.