I just bought the car a couple days ago and the guy i bought it from said that it had some bad gas and needed a basic tune up. i some how convinced the poor car to drive 140 miles to get it home and it was rough. would not idle and would not do more than 4k rpms. well i replaced fuel filter, spark plugs(which were all finger tight), distrib cap, rotor, and wires. now she idles a little rough but atleast it doesnt die anymore. but when i am driving first gear will let me redline. which is 7k rpms. 2nd gear lets me go to 6k before acting like it is starving for fuel. and the remainder of the gears only go to 4k before acting the same. this is my first rotary engine so i have no clue what is really going on under the hood. but i feel like something may be wrong with the carb. does anyone know anything about this or has had similar situations? im hoping to remove the carb soon to get a better look at it. but i have no idea how to do that on this motor. any tips or advice would be MUCH appreciated! thanks in advanced!

 

Hey, you're almost local! I'm in Richmond. Anyhow, you'll need to drop and clean your gas tank. The pickup is clogged with rust and gunk. It's an easy job actually. Search "marine clean" in the 1st gen section. You'll need to go to a parts store and look through their inventory for a pickup sock that fits. The factory strainer is NLA.

After your tank is clean I suggest a carb rebuild. I'm sure the carb is not in optimal shape if the tank is so bad. I have been where you are.

Edit: I cleaned my tank by dumping in 10 pounds of clean aquarium gravel, shaking it for 30 minutes, dumping the gravel, and then using some water base rust remover from the parts store. It was after I'd done this that I found the Marine Clean thread. My method is crude, but better than nothing. Radiator shops can also do the job.

 

Awesome! Thank you! I will be giving that a try tomorrow. I just finished rebuilding the carb but I haven't put it back on yet. I'm going to clean the gas tank using the method you showed me first tomorrow and I'll let you know how it goes. Thanks again for the reply!

 

So I rebuilt the carb and cannot get the car to start. The carb itself gets fuel but it seems like it's not getting to the engine. I can see the fuel in the barrels and only the butterfly valves on the drivers side open. Do you know anything about this? Also, I went back to work after it wouldn't start, when I came back it looked like the fuel had seeped into the engine and it started. But I think it died once that fuel had burned off and there was just more sitting inside the carb. I'm lost as what to do.

 

Idk much about the carbs on first gens, but my overall general knowledge about carbs tells me you have the float set incorrectly from what your saying. And i believe only the butterflys on the drivers side should open, those should be your primaries, the engine wasn't creating enough vacuum to open the secondaries

 

Check float level. Fuel should be 1/2 way up in the sight glass on each bowl. You may have a problem with sticking needles. Did you use the new ones? If so it necessary to burnish them, as they tend to be coarse (not smooth) from the factory.