EleviN_

Hello everyone!

So, as the title says my rx-7 wants to die when I press the throttle quickly and it does small backfires. It also does a HUGE backfire after doing a good pull up high in the RPMs and letting off quickly. Apart from this the car runs really good! Been trying to chase this problem down for weeks now by looking through the forum and other places. The car is completely stock, trying to get it back on the road after 26 years of storage (indoors thankfully). The carb had been restored, about 2 years ago. I am quite new to cars in general, especially carburated ones and this is my first rotary so I might ask some dumb questions, apologies in advance.

What most places and people suggested was that the accelerator pump was bad or just not working properly, so I took the carb apart, checked the pump and the little tiny bearings (luckily didn't lose any) and it all looked fine and the carb was spotless since it was restored fairly recently. Put that back together and I can see the accelerator pump working when I operate the throttle so that doesn't seem to be my issue and the carb gets fuel with no issues. I also checked the anti-backfire system as it does backfire big after a pull but testing it according to the workshop manual shows that it works just fine.

Next up: timing. I think this is where my problem lies but I have no clue what to do. I checked the timing, it was a little bit off, can't remember right now which is leading or trailing as my memory sucks. Either way, tuned the timing for the yellow dot (turning the distributor as instructed by a great post here on the forum), then checked the red dot which was perfectly lined up. After this I checked the vacuum to the dashpots and realised that they weren't getting any vacuum at all which I'm guessing they should. So then I checked the baseplate between the carb and intake where all the vacuum lines go to.. nothing. I took the plate off and it has all these vacuum canals that I'm guessing have to line up with the holes in the carb and intake but the gaskets didn't have any holes in them to let the vacuum through. I tried finding pictures of where these holes should be but I found conflicting information so I just made holes pretty much everywhere the canals lined up. I'm thinking that may have been wrong because I still don't have vacuum at the dashpots. The most left hand vacuum line (standing on the left side of the car) now has lots of vacuum and changes the car's idle when I pull it off so at least some vacuum is happening there.

The car still wants to die as soon as I press the throttle quickly but the issue does seem somewhat better. I haven't took the cap off the distributor yet, been focusing on the vacuum problem so far. I've thought about buying a new one of those plates as mine barely has any plastic left around the plate itself and the gaskets would have holes where they are needed right off the bat. I just need some tips on things to try, is the vacuum blocked somewhere else maybe? Is it the distributor that's causing my issues? Coils?

Thanks in advance! Hope you all had a great weekend

diabolical1

iTrader: (3)

welcome to the board.

the first thing that comes to mind is to check the idle mixture.

you mentioned that the car sat for a while. how old is the gas in it?

EleviN_

Thanks for the welcome! I have been messing with the idle mixture some but it's hard to know when it's good, I'll have to try and fine tune it again. The gas is new, first thing I did was replace the gas tank as the old one was rusty and crusty.