SA starting issue
 

hi im new here and new to rx7s and fairly new to automotive technologies, i recently just pulled a 1979 rx7 out of the woods. of course it has a lot of surface rust, but when got it in the shop we connected a battery and turned the key and the dash lights came on and most of the electronics work except the wiper motor and the antenna. when we tried to crank the car it just clicked once and shut off all the electronics and you had to "reset" the battery to get the electronics to work again. Anyway the ground cable's installation roted away in some places so we replaced that then we got it to click multiple times so then we replaced the starter and the positive battery cable because it was corroded to hell and the car turned over! Now we are trying to get it to start, so we replaced the distributor cap and rotor and all the wires and spark plugs and both ignition coils. Now we are stuck, its not sparking, we kind of have and idea that the points on the distributor might need to be cleaned and reset we cleaned them but haven't set them yet. I was just wondering if anyone had ant tips and ideas, like i said im new to this, im surprised i got the thing to crank honestly. ill update my progress.

first things first, get some MMO, take the plugs out, and pour the MMO into the engine, and turn it over by HAND a couple times. After your sure you have the MMO in the engine front and back, drop your gas tank and clean/replace it, along with your fuel pump, and blowing all the old crappy out've the lines. Then Rebuild the carb.


When it comes to your spark problem your ignitors are probably no good, pretty prone to failing being 30 year old electronics.

but before you really do anything that I suggested, or anything else for that matter, compression test it to see if its even worth tinkering with

The 1979 doesn't have ignitors. There are however some external resistors on the shock tower.

You can find the wiring diagram here. This site doesn't have the 1979 workshop manual. The 1980 is pretty close except for the semi-electronic dizzy.

http://foxed.ca/rx7manual/manuals/19...ingDiagram.pdf

Ahh, my bad

so ive been looking around the forum about how to compression test a 12a and i saw that you have to remove the trailing spark plugs and compression test the lead, i want to confirm that. They also said to run the MMO before the test encase the apex seals are stuck. i did do a compression test the on the L1 spark plug with the rest of plugs still in the engine and still plugged up and the test was at around 30psi which im kind of worried about but i think i did something wrong. Also a little history on the vehicle, it was running and driving up till 2001 then a tree fell on it and the owner just let it sit after that.

ive printed out a wiring diagram from pro-demand at school but thankyou for the link!

30psi is very low, but if you get some MMO in there and let it start sitting, and spinning it by hand, it will probably work free and might come up enough to fire