I've had a strange problem regarding starting my 87 rx7 where the car functions perfectly normal, but will often only start once a day or so. Everything seems to work fine, the car will often start up as well as normal, though usually when it starts, white smoke and the smell of gasoline will often emerge from somewhere around the engine, but performance isn't affected whatsoever, but after driving for a while and turning my car off whether to run an errand or something of the like, when I go to start the car again it wont turn over and will instead continuously crank.

(Also apologies for any possible bad descriptions or anything similar as I am by no means an expert on cars)

 

white smoke is usually a sign of burning coolant. strong smell of gasoline would suggest flooding. the last, continuously crank(turn over) but wont start is quite possibly a flooding/leaky injector issue.

 

I would start with a champagne test to check your coolant seals.

if that checks out then I would move on to checking the injectors.

good luck bud.

 

Probable leaky injectors flooding the engine.

There's a way to unplug the fuel pump so the car runs out of fuel pressure when you shut it off. If you can do that and it will hot-start normally, that's your problem.

This was a big enough problem when these cars were common that Mazdatrix sold a little device you spliced into your fuel lines to bleed the pressure off after shutdown. People would also rig switches to the fuel pump and shut the engine off by shutting the fuel pump off and letting the engine stall out.

It will take slightly longer to restart because the fuel pump will have to build pressure again, but it's an imperfect workaround.