Hey Nctrooper
I haven't got her purring quite right yet. My main draw back right now is the lack of exhaust. Once I get that done then I will fine tune the idle.

I guess I would check your timing, shutter valve, and perhaps the air/fuel mixture adjustment on the carb. Does it backfire as the engine is decelerating? By "surging" do you mean it is hunting for the idling RPM, or a stutter in acceleration?

Weak accelleration, you have to pump the pedal to find the spot where it will go like it should, then it will bog down again. Surging I guess is the wrong word. Backfire when I let off the gas after accelleration.

ps, just replaced fuel pump and all rubber gas lines. Haven't driven it yet though. Will tomorrow and see what happens.

I had a couple minutes to tinker on my seven. The idle had never been wonderful, but I thought it had to do with the missing exhaust. I was also curious why I couldn't find the timing mark. I decided to try restabbing the distributor. I spun the
eccentric shaft pulley and found my missing timing marks. I restabbed the distributor and
she is now purring!

I also pulled the brake proportional bypass, clean and reinstalled. I think I found a mistake while I was reconnecting the nrake lines. I have not yet bled the brakes to see if I found it or not. Hopefully I will get to that at the end of the month.

I also found a vacuum leak in the number 2 choke diaphragm. I am in the process of trying to find a replacement.

Slow progress, but progress none the less :-)

I finally got around to bleeding the brakes. They work great! I also started cleaning up the rust spots and covering them with quite a few laters of rattle can primer, color, and gloss. This will take a few minutes to complete and a few months between those few minutes.

I am looking at putting a non-California legal exhaust on her for now. Its in Minnesota and will be staying there for the forseeable future. Maybe by spring time. A lot of other projects on the burner right now.

I did manage to replace the fuel level sender. Unfortunately the fuel gauge still does not work. I have a little more work to do there it would seem.

I also replaced the secondary ignition coil. I have been having a problem with a slight rough idle and after testing the coil it was out of limits (1.35 ~10%). I think I will replace the primary soon as well, but it is working well for the time being.

Hopefully I will have some time to put up some pictures soon. Have a good weekend guys!

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I also replaced the oil level sender and the oil temperature sensor in the oil pan. The wires were cut. I replaced a temporary connector. The plan is to make a list and order a hand full of them eventually from http://www.easternbeaver.com/Main/main.html. (Someday I will learn to inbed a URL in an underlined world instead of paisting the full URL.)

Idle
 

Alright, so half of the problems that I've had on this car have been from my own doing. This happened to be just such a circumstance. After I restabbed the distributor a couple months ago I thought she was running good. However I could still never get the idle to get below 1200 RPMs... aka she is NOT running good. 90% of the high idle forums suggest a leak in the vacuum. In the process of checking for just such a leak, I disconnected the charcoal canister and noticed an immediate change in the idle. I thought that the cannister was just clogged, so I pulled it off and tested it. That's when I noticed the rag still stuck in the bottom. Oops. I had put it in the bottom when I had cleaned and painted it a while ago.

Here's a video comparison of the two idles.
http://i1191.photobucket.com/albums/...risonmovie.jpg

Nice find there, glad you got it! Always liked checking out your build, keep her going!

Read the whole thread, I love your dedication and attention to detail man.

great Post and like always thanks for taking the time to documents with pics and comments.
I have a newbie question when people say the got these gaskets sets and are rebuilding their motors are people really laying donw 1000+ for complete kits
sorry dont mean to hi-jack your thread

Thanks guys. I appreciate the feedback.

lti_57 - like every obsession it is possible, but usually those rebuild kits are replacing a lot more than what is usually needed. My rebuild kit only cost around $350. Go to http://atkinsrotary.com/ to get an idea of the rebuild kit costs.

Well I had a few minutes today so I decided to fix the fuel pump correctly. I want to be able to prime the fuel system since I am only able to start her every couple of weeks. By then the fuel bowls are dry. I don't like cranking her for ten seconds waiting for the fuel pump to run the fuel to the bowls.

I bought an illuminated rocker switch from Autozone and installed it right below the stick shift. In the "on" prosition it bypasses the fuel pump cut relay and turns the fuel pump on. In the"off"position the fuel system reverts to the original designed function. The downside is I can't install the switch the way I want to and get it to illuminate as well. But the switch is installed and it does what I need it to do. That will do for now.

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I understand how the switch is suppose to work, but for some odd reason I keep shorting out the 20 amp Engine fuse when I hook it up the way I am suppose to. Oh well. I will look more at it later. I will put up a wiring diagram and see if anyone might have some ideas about where I might have gone wrong. They seem so simple though. Oh well.

I was looking through ebay and found a functional stock stereo. Mine was missing the face plate for the equalizer, and more importantly was working.

I got it in the mail about a month ago, but have not had a chance to get to Minnesota to work on the car until yesterday.

The install went well. It turns on at lights up, but I need to do some work on the speaker wiring and perhaps pick up a new amp sometime too.

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At least it looks pretty, lol. I still want to repaint the center trim and clean the stereo face plates as well.

There will be a bunch of small projects to keep me busy, but the last large project is a new exhaust. I have been toying with the idea of putting it on myself, or having someone do it for me. I also was debating about whether to put on California legal exhaust, since I would like to bring it home eventually. This past nine months I have had little opportunity to work on it.

What happened to the build? Haven't checked in for a while!

Hey Lindahlish,
Its been slow going for the past six months. My job has kept me on the other side of the country so I have had little time to work on her. I did manage to fix the stereo. I had to rewire the speakers, replace an internal fuse and swap out with a different tape player. I replaced the clock display as well. It was missing the black cover. Unfortunately I have run into another problem. The stereo and clock have both mysteriously stopped working. I have not had the time to track down the problem yet.

Thanks for the interest. :-) As it stands I will be replacing the exhaust next year and then she should be mostly done. There is an acceleration hickup that I have to still address as well. Have a good weekend!

Well I got the radio and clock working again. The fuse for the clock was the only problem. Although the display for the clock is still a little weak, it'll do for now. I have already gone through and redone the soldered connections and cleaned off the brass wire connectors. Oh well. As you can see from the picture, its legible

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(new photobucket design. I hope this works)

The radio was another simple fix. One of the old solders on the speaker connection had broken loose and was just grounding. It took a little while to find it, but it was found and all of the solders have been fixed now.

I also think I forgot to mention that I replaced the old antenna. It had been missing since I bought the car. Finally got around to fixing it. I put in a fixed power antenna from Autozone called a Raptor. Yeah its probably bottom line, but it gets the job done and looks better than it did before. I didn't plug in the antenna to a power source. For the time being the extra power for the antenna is not really needed.

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lol, as you can see from the bottom photo, I need to replace some Mazda emblems.

I was in town for a few minutes last week and was able to work on the clock issue. I took it apart and cleaned off the connectors that you can see in the pictures. That did the trick. Sweet. (Although who looks at any clock other than their cell phone any more, lol)

I also go a hold of a guy near my car that is going to sandblast my exhaust heat shields. I have some repair work to do on them before I can reinstall them. I'm hoping to get a new exhaust in by summer. We'll see.

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