Here's the situation:

'86 RX7 race car, 13b, Weber 45DCOE carb, Bridgeport, uses FB distributor and coils.

The other day, we loaded it on the trailer and it was raining out. A few hours later when we went to offload it from the trailer, it wouldn't start. It would crank over, but not catch, but sounded like it was almost going to catch. Then sometimes it would catch, then die immediately. So we thought it was a problem with spark, tested that, and the spark was yellow (sign of it being weak) so we upgraded the ignition system.

Installed a Mallory 6al (equivalent to the MSD), with 2 MSD blaster 2 coils powering the leading plugs (directly wired from coil to plug) and one coil powering the trailing through the distributor on the normal trailing outputs. Installed as per the instructions on Mazspeed's site (http://www.mazspeed.com/msd.htm). The leading ignitor was removed and directly wired to the Mallory box as per the instructions. Box is set to 4cyl as per instructions. Also, installed nearly new distributor cap and rotor button.

Car is getting spark for sure (We tested it on the leading side)

Car is getting fuel, I can see the fuel spraying in the venturis.

When we finished installing it, the car started up ok (after a few tries) and ran alright, we warmed it up and shut it down. This was the first time it would actually start in a few days.

This morning, we go to start it up and it won't go. Sometimes it'll catch, run for about 10 seconds, sputter and stall, and backfire like mad. Now it won't even catch, just backfires. The car has never backfired before.

We turned the distributor a little bit each way to see if that would help it get started, so that we could check the timing, but no dice, just more backfiring.

We've spend the whole day trying to get it going now, and no luck.

Any ideas??

 

Timing is off!!! line the yellow mark on the pointer pull the dis. point the arrow forward. put the dis back in without turning or twisting the arrow!!! (NOW THE ARROW IS NOT GOING POINT STRAIGHT TOWARD THE FRONT OF THE CAR IT WILL POINT DOWN JUST A LIL!!!) when you got it back in turn the dis dead center on the hole. Take out all the spark plugs clean them with carb cleaner, turn the motor over to get all the gas out!!! put the spark plugs back in and all wiring and crank it over!!! should work

 

We'll try that, anyone have any other ideas to try while we're at it?

 

Wow, so we got it to run, but it was weird how we had to do it for now.

Took out one of the leading coils, ran the Mallory to one MSD blaster 2 then to the Distributor cap and out to the plugs as it would be stock. And it ran.

So running the coils in sequence directly to the plugs was having some weird effect on spark timing.

It runs for now, which is the main thing, we now have some flexibility to figure out the rest. We can try to make the direct fire work after this race weekend.