yes it can be done buy its very tricky you have to be careful around those compresors. they make a removal tool and ive replaced just the clutch on the compressor before because mines made a very loud schreeching noise so to get it to shut up i replaced the clutch and left the dead compressor on.it was very economical and of course because im a cheap ***. LOL

 

So, haven't had a need to post anything on here in a while, but last night, my car left me stranded and John had to come get me.
I didn't hear or feel anything out of the ordinary on my drive to school; the only thing different is that when I got in my car to leave, I didn't turn the key long enough for the engine to catch and run, so I tried again, and it never did catch after that. It would try to catch, but couldn't ever quite make it, just keep turning over. There was also a lot of white smoke coming from my tailpipes, and a strong smell of gasoline from the bay. We tried push starting it, but that didn't work either. I've never done that before though I'd heard of it, and John thinks I may have done something wrong that it didn't work, but I don't know what I could have missed. Didn't seem like it was all that difficult from the way he was describing it.

So, John thinks I either have a blown engine, or it's pretty darn flooded. Which he told me, if it flooded from just letting go of the key too quick when trying to start it, then I have problems anyways. My car always started right up, until now no problem, so we never had a reason to doubt the engine.

 

Sounds flooded to me. They can be pretty finicky, mine's flooded from less than that. It used to have idle problems, and if it died right after I started it, it would flood about half the time.
There's directions in the FAQ for unflooding, its pretty easy. Basically, you pull the egi fuse in the engine bay, then crank the car for a while with the pedal is all the way down. Put the EGI fuse back in, then try starting it again. I have found that having the pedal floored seems to help, but maybe its just my car. If that doesn't work, try it again, and repeat as necessary. If it still doesn't work, the plugs might be wet, so pull the primaries and dry them off, then put them back in and try starting again. While they're out, do a poor man's compression check: listen for 6 even pulses or air (3 from each rotor). Make sure you have the EGI fuse out at this point. If this still doesn't do it, you might need to use ATF or something like that, but you shouldn't need to go that far. I've flooded my car a TON of times, sometimes quite badly, and never had to use ATF or even pull the plugs to dry them off.

A couple quick tips: make sure it is in a place where you can jump it, as extended cranking can kill the battery. Also, don't crank for more than about 10-15 seconds at a time or you could hurt the starter.

 

probably not a blown engine.
The engine can not blow while it's not running, and if it blew on your way to school, you would not have to turn it off with the key.
My favorite solution is the pull start.
When it's flooded a human push start simply won't cut it, you have to get it going about 15mph, or fast enough to get it up to 3-8k rpm in first gear, then turn key ON.
Another method that I found works well (but takes longer) it remove the spark plugs and pull the EGI fuse, then crank it for a few minutes. Then put NEW plus back in the motor.
New plus I found are important (chuck and I did some experiments on this). for some reason once plugs have been fouled and fail to spark, they never work the same again (seems like the resistance of them changes or something) and they tend to foul out much sooner even if totally cleaned.

 

It also likely would have started if you had held the gas pedal to the floor - that enables the "unflood" mode in the ECU, which basically just turns off the injectors while the pedal is held to the floor.

 

Mm.. the pedal to the floor idea is for s5, my car is a s4 for the important parts. Man I wish it had come with s5 tail-lights. :P
But anyways, I did already kill the battery I'm glad to hear about the engines being finicky, after we get the car unflooded I'll make sure John puts a compression test on it. Almost shameful, Compression tester guy's girlfriend's car doesn't get compression checked :P
Sooooooo John and I were talking before I finished this to post, and I brought up the spark plugs. John said they were new... I asked when they were new, cause I didn't buy any..... and then John thought about it...... and didn't even know where he'd gotten the spark plugs from exactly, he thinks he may have just changed them out of the old engine that came with the car, to my engine I have in their now o.O lol. Sooo, we're prolly going to put some new plugs in while we're working at unflooding my car.

 

Huh. Thought pedal to the floor worked on all EFI rotaries.

 

Compression test first......

Then if it is just low (A Extremly flooded motor will have Low compression) put some ATF in the motor and pull start it, Pull it down the road in 1st gear with the key OFF, this will make it not inject fuel.

Then after approx 30 secs of pulling it in gear, turn the key on with the car still in gear, this will act like a starter and start the car, once started take it out of gear.

The Chuck has spoken, back to the lemons project

 

The Chuck has spoken.

Amen.

 

Got her back on the road this morning. Pulled the plugs, they looked like crap. Turned the engine over a bunch to deflood. Put new plugs in and it fired up with just a little coaxing. Was kinda worried as to why it flooded in the first place. Oh well, we'll just keep an eye on it.
-John

 

As the saga continues.....
Got into my car today, started her up, let her warm up for a minute or two, took off the e-brake, and pulled out of the parking space and realized the symbol in the idiot lights that is usually on when I have the e-brake up was still on, thought there was an electrical problem again. Called John, pulled over, checked brake fluid level, low, drove home using down shifting to slow down for the most part, and when I got home John found the leak.
Three cheers for John Now I have a brake fluid leak If the car would stop breaking, we could get it fixed. :P

 

are fixing the leak you might want to check the brake pads as well. Just to be safe.

 

Not a bad idea o.o
Oh, I went and picked up a few goodies the other day, mostly small stuff. I picked up some side mirrors, I think I'll be sanding and repainting them before putting them on. Picked up a bin that Isn't broken on top :P, another motor for my sun roof and the random single after-market motor mount . I guess the motor mount was like, a door prize or something. :P I'll be posting pics of the mirrors and a comparison of my broken bin and the bin I got to replace it tomorrow-ish. We compared my mirrors to John's and they kiiiinda resemble his. But not that much. They look like they should fit though, and I still think they're sexy.
After ren-fest I'll be replacing my master cylinder since they aren't that expensive, it's fairly important, and I can't afford to do stuff right that often, so yeah

Someday I will have a working sunroof! Side mirrors that adjust! Working AC! And an RX7 that doesn't break!

Well... maybe not that last one, but I can dream can't I?

 

Good thing not too many people pay attention to this, takes me a couple days longer to get pics up than it really should.

Here's pics, nothing y'all haven't seen before.

Thought these looked kinda sexy. I'll be repainting them though.

My broken bin, obviously.

My new-to-me unbroken bin that is the wrong color. At least after I dye the interior it won't matter.

and then there's John's TII at the lemons. Still wish I coulda gone
Anyways, today was a day of firsts! I put the fuse in, and my rear windshield wiper works beautifully. I put the fuse in for my sunroof and OMG it WORKS. It doesn't even have the problem of only pulling on one side, it goes back evenly Tomorrow I'm going to try and lithium grease it and just get it moving manually see if I can't loosen it up a little bit. Don't even need the sunroof motor I picked up. Oh well, I'm sure someone will need it eventually. Also went ahead and put water in my wiper fluid reservoir and the front windshield washer sprayers work, but the one for the hatch does not. Oh well, can't have everything I suppose.
John also replaced my master cylinder. Something was making a hissing nose when I depressed the break while we were bleeding the brakes, but John was able to go around not once, but twice to all brakes and wasn't getting any air bubbles out of them. So I dunno. He took it out for a spin, and I did as well. So far so good! Tomorrow we'll have to see if I still have a leak. Next on my list is getting my rims sanded, primer-d and painted!

 

John realized today that one of my motor mounts doesn't have a bolt? A nut? Something like that. And he thinks the other motor mount is broken, sooooooo..... does that mean that at this point my motor is being kept in place by my exhaust? I need new motor mounts. I have one, now I just need another. :P

 

nice, good work

 

Yeah, Angels car is straight up possessed. I have checked her sunroof before, with a good fuse. It didn't budge and then she and I both tried opening it manually and it was very very hard to do, felt like something was going to break. Then yesterday I'm telling her we should turn it into a LeMons car and what do you know, the sunroof just starts working! Damn car keeps making a liar out of me.
We did get the new master cylinder in, looks pretty, hope it doesn't leak. Oh, and Angel did plenty of work on that. I broke the compression fittings loose, but I made her get in there with her small hands to actually remove the lines.
And the hissing sound was kind of bugging me. The brakes feel fine, but when you depress them the first couple of times there is this hissing sound. I'm going to assume air is stuck somewhere, but again, they feel fine and we bled the **** out of them and got no more air bubbles so I dunno.
-John

P.S. - Oh, I'd like to point out that the oil spots under my FC in that picture were NOT caused by my car!

 

The hissing sound may be the vacuum booster doing it's thing with stored vacuum the first couple of pumps.

 

Mm.. I sure hope so Franken! Well, I'ma go see if I can do a little cleaning on the sunroof. I'm not going to try and take it out even though that'd be the best way to clean it. From what I hear I think it'd be too heavy for me to do, so I'll prolly get to a point where I can see it and look around to see how it works, try to clean off anything really dirty, and just apply lithium grease and put a couple towels on my seats. With that being said, I need to find a stool >.> I'm getting the bug to put my mirrors on even though I haven't repainted them yet. I'm thinking I'm going to give in, and put them on - or at least try to. Someone did paint them, they just left fingerprints >.> Of course, when I'm cruising by people, they won't notice They'll be too busy noticing my exhaust is missing a tip, the paint is missing from my roof, or that I have no badges on the back, just holes where they should be. Or maybe... they'll notice my sunroof is up and that I have a neat little 80 sports car that just needs some money, and love. :3 So far, I've got the love part covered :P

 

Hey Franken! I just cruised by your RX7 page I really like how you found that an RX-7 was included in a calculus book I'll have John look at that if he hasn't seen it yet ^_^

 

Well, I cleaned up the tracks on the sunroof best I could w/out taking it out, that and I ran out of cleaner, and it's still really hard to open. Probably actually needs to be taken out and thoroughly cleaned. Maybe I'll be able to enlist Johns help?

 

Maybe weak motor? and just not enough amps?

 

Thanks! I didn't find that myself - another member of the first-gen RX-7 list I'm on found that. I just provide the webspace for it. I figure stuff like hosting that and the service manuals and such is how I can give back to the RX-7 community.

I really need to get my web gallery back up - that had a bunch of the stuff I've done to my cars, beyond what's on the site already. I used to build the pages manually, but stopped once I had access to a gallery - so much faster to add and caption photos. Unfortunately, my old host got "p0wned" and corrupted.

 

I actually removed and completely disassembled the sunroof in my '90. I cleaned out all the old grease by scrubbing the tracks and such with Castrol Super Clean (or a reasonable facsimile like Purple Power) in a tub, and brake cleaner squirted down the tubes for the cables. I re-greased with white lithium grease (Champion Chain Lube, actually) and spray PTFE (Teflon.) I even opened up the motor and gearbox and cleaned and repacked the grease there. The good news is that it motors back and forth nicely. The bad news is that the !@#$ thing still won't pop up by itself. Once the seal is free of the roof, it's fine, but that initial "pop" is a no go. Closes just fine, though. Weak motor, I suspect.

Without disassembly, you might try using WD-40 first. It will soften and partially dissolve any old, dry grease in the tracks, then try the spray lithium chain lube I used. It's supposed to not dry out, and be waterproof. This is what I used:
http://www.championbrands.com/perform-chain-lube.html
I got mine at O'Reilly Auto Parts, supposed to be available at Wal*Mart. Works great for door hinges and latches, hood hinges and latch, etc. I tend to use it in combination with spray PTFE (AKA Dry Film Lubricant):
http://www.gunk.com/CAT_L512.asp
to make everything as slippery as possible!
I hate squeaks and groans, and hard to operate latches and handles.

 

Not thinking so much on either of those. When trying to clean it w/out taking it out of the car, I was using an allan wrench. It was HARD-AS-HELL to turn. Just to see if this was fairly normal, or if I have a weak motor, I opened and closed John's sunroof manually. Oh yeah. John's sunroof was easily half as difficult to open and close. So I'm thinking, it just needs a proper cleaning.