Ok I just bought an 88 rx-7 two days ago and I love it but I'm having idle problems like I've seen so often around here. It bounces from 1300 to 1500 at idle. Other times it idles way too low and has stalled once. Looking under the hood I found what looks like a hose blocked up with duct tape. Could this be my problem? Here's a pic of what I saw

 

That is the split air hose.

It looks like you have headers, so I can assume you don't have a cat.

The split air pipe can be removed, as well as the ACV.

The bouncing idle is a combination of a vacuum leak and a misadjusted or bad TPS.

 

Ya it has headers and a test pipe so no cat. So that hose isn't causing my problem and it can just be removed? When I pulled it out and removed the duct tape it looked like this

 

Yes. Just unplug it from the lower intake manifold (LIM), and set it aside. It's purely emissions related.

 

So I never resolved the vac leak or idle problems and just decided to leave it alone for now. But 4 or 5 days ago I parked it and the next morning it wouldn't start. I connected a working battery to it and still no luck. You can smell gas though and some smoke comes out the exhaust but it just doesn't start. Found a weird corroded part with some wire wrapped around it if that could be anything?