Yes, I had done the 'pull it into the garage from the driveway' no-no the night before.....idiot me!
So when I went to start it last night, it did that oh-so-telling little "whirr whirr whirr" anemic burping noise.....oh damn!

And this time, I actually ran the battery down once, but in the end I got it started by using my "hold the pedal to the floor, crank 5 seconds, let off and crank 5 seconds, repeat......" routine.

My God that thing was flooded! It poured blue smoke for a good 40 seconds.....poor thing. When will I learn that you CANNOT just start an FD up for a few seconds, especially in cold weather?

 

I'm praying right now mine didn't get flooded :p
Yesterday, I went to crank her up, but the battery had almost no power. It turned over very slowly for a few seconds then I gave up since I didn't want it to get flooded. Am gonna jump her tomorrow.

I pray that she didnt get flooded

 

Oh, I think you just learned! I did it to mine in hot weather as well.
I thought I was going to go nuts getting it to start again and blaming myself for screwing up my vacuum hose job. All it took was four new plugs and zoom, zoom!

 

The FD ecu has built in logic for clearing flooding - put the accel all the way to the floor PRIOR to turning the key and the ecu will cut off all fuel flow - crank- try twice then if it still dosen't fire change the leading plugs - also a FULLY charged battery helps - mine was VERY hard to start when the battery was going bad even though it still tested OK.

 

cool

 

what causes the rotary to flood?? just turning it on then back off before the enigne warms up?? why does the enigne flood if you do that?

TIA

 

It has to do with the layout of the combustion chambers the Fireing chamber is NEVER open to the Atmosphere so any fuel or oil that condenses on the spark plugs stays there when the engine is not running The cold start system sets the A/F ratio very rich to compensate for incomplete vaporization of the cold fuel droplets - when the engine is shut off cold that fuel condenses on the spark plugs and causes the hard starting. the condition is also seen on FI engines with old/dirty injectors be cause MAZDAs FI system doesn't relieve fuel pressure on shutdown and they tend to leak fuel into the intake that then gets pulled in to the engine and onto the spark plugs.