A little background.

The car ran great till 2006 but then as my friend was driving, it started "smelling" hot and running poorly. It was taken to a mechanic who kept it for a year and finally gave it back to the owner after a court order forced him to do so. I don't know what he did to the car. It still ran badly. As far as I can tell, everything was original on the car. The car has now been sitting for almost 4 years (1 year with the mech). I got the car 3 years ago and have struggled to get it running. I have had to work on many other projects in the last 3 years! I need help!

What I know now is the temp gauge never indicated any overheating condition.
The first of the 2 cat. converters burned out and a wire mesh clogged the input of the second (main) cat. The exhaust looked to be original equip.
There are no coolant leaks nor bubbles in the radiator. A compression test showed 3 even pulses on each rotor.
TPS resistance readings are close to the service manual specs. (Resistance values only. I don't feel comfortable letting run for very long with flames out the pipe all the time.)

I replaced the cats with some original equip cats from Mazda and they GLOWED RED after only 5 min of running.
The car starts easy and is smooth for around 15 sec. Then it starts to miss intermittently and will shoot flame out the down pipe. I have also replaced the plugs. Leading plug wires are a different color (same manufacture) than the trailing plug wires so I think they are connected correctly.

The item that I can't find a description about is why the timing of both leading and trailing spark pulses happen at the same time on the front rotor.
Both leading plugs fire when the yellow mark is at the pin. The trailing plug for the front rotor is firing at the yellow mark also. The trailing plug for the rear rotor is firing at a different time and there isn't a mark to judge when that is happening. The leading coil set (front of the car) is connected to the lower plugs on the engine.

I've been told the local Mazda dealer no longer has the "good" RX 7 mechanic and I'm looking for one in the middle TN that can help or I can do regular mechanic things myself.

Thanks for any suggestions.

 

First question: are the spark plug wires in the correct locations? L1 = front rotor lower, L2 = rear rotor lower (though you can swap these with no issue since it is wasted spark), T1 = front rotor upper, T2 = rear rotor upper. Are you ABSOLUTELY SURE?

Remember: leading = lower, trailing = top.

Check the operation of the CAS, or even better, just swap in a known good unit. Time as per the instructions in the FSM.

Have the injectors professionally flow tested and cleaned. A dead injector will cause all kinds of ignition misfires.

Has the wiring been hacked at all?

Boost sensor plugged in?

 

Don't want to thread jack, but I'm having a similar problem to this one here. Both my leading plugs are firing right on the yellow timing mark as expected, but so are both of my trailing plugs. Is this something that adjusting the CAS could fix? If so, would it be just turning the whole mechanism or would it be changing something on the inside?

 

The problem with the timing was fixed when I replaced the trailing coil pack. I got one from a local pull a part for about $30.
The 3k rpm acceleration problem was with the N353 computer under the passenger floorboard. The electric oil metering pump had gone out and taken the computer with it. The previous mechanic had replaced the oil metering pump.
The CATs still barely glow red and the mileage is bad (18mpg). It does finally run and I have driven it for about 3 months.
Now I'm finding that water pumps are very expensive and also oil cooler lines. I love the car but this isn't nickel and dime. I can't afford to fix it at the speed of the failures. Oh, but what a car!