Hi Flying 8

After all the rotaries I've had, I am embarassed to admit that I flooded my 8 and couldn't get it strarted. I have been using the 3500 blip and shutoff method which seemed to be working. However, I had to move my car to a different spot in my garage while it was snowing. Not wanting to get the car too wet or leave the car running in the garage until it warmed up, I quickly moved it, blipped the rpm's to 3500 and shut off the ignition. After two days of cold weather where the temps in the garage were 25-30, I tried to start the car to no avail-flooded terribly. I put a charger on the battery for the day and worked on the car that night. I did the typical-pull the plugs, clean, inspect and gap them, and blew out the gas with the fuel pump fuse pulled out. I heated the plugs after I cleaned them with a hair dryer and reinstalled them. With a full charge, the car turned over quickly and smoothed out in just a minute. A couple of observations on previous posts. If you do not have a good spark in a rotary, the gases that are swept by the plugs will actually extinguish any flame. This may be the reason that Mazda has the trailing plugs firing first when cold so as to start the ignition of the gases with the relatively protected trailing plug before the gases are swept by the leading plug. This may also be why the starter turns so slowly-a faster cranking starter will only move the gases by the plugs that much quicker and possibly cause the flame to be extinguished rather than ignited. Just some thoughts that I would like to hear other's opinions on.

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rx8cited

Hi Flying 8,

Glad you got your car running by yourself. Thanks for sharing your story. A few questions come to mind .....

How long did you spend trying to start it before having to put the battery on a charger? Did you try the flooded engine start procedure in the Owner's Manual ? ("Depress the accelerator all the way and hold it there, then crank then engine for 10 seconds ....") Is your car an AT or MT?


Thanks,
rx8cited

Hi Flying 8

I knew right away that the car was flooded by the sound of the engine. I continued to try to start the car using the method in the manual without any luck for about five minutes off and on until the battery started to get low. That is when I had to give up and put the trickle charger on. It was very important that the spark plugs were warm and that the battery was fully charged or that it was jumped.

My car is MT and I'm pretty sure that the car would have started by roll starting it, but I didn't have anyone available to help pull the car back home if it l didn't.

RX-Nut

Great that you were able to "un-flood" it.. Most people don't have the skills or resources to do so.. (like me)

It's just spooky that it COULD happen more often than a normal pisston engine.. But I guess that's the price we pay huh..

jonalan

You forgot the part about letting the car idle for 5 minutes. Did you do this and it still flooded?

khoney

OK, I'll bite... how do you gap a rotary plug? Have they changed from the 13B plugs (I haven't removed mine yet).

Hi Flying 8

Firstly, I did not let the car idle for five minutes as I didn't want to get a layer of snow on the car and I did not want to fill the garage with exhaust gas. I hoped that the method of blipping the throttle to 3500 rpm's and then shutting the engine down would work to keep the car from flooding as it had up to that point. Well, it doesn't work when the car is that cold.

Secondly, The new plugs are single electrode irridium plugs that should be gapped at .046-.049 in. However, I have gapped the older, four electrode plugs by lightly tapping the electrodes to close up the gap to the original setting ( .050-054 in I think) that helps a lot until the center electrode starts to get too narrow.

By the way, I have found the easiest way to pull the plugs is to jack up the car, take off the front left tire, remove the two plastic fasteners off of the small splash shield and the plugs are right in front of you. This also gives you a good look inside the engine to view the rotors, apex seals and the carbon buildup on the rotors.
I run a cleaner through the system with every tank of gas but the buildup still looks pretty sizeable.

With the easy access to the plug openings, I may do the ATF treatment every month or two or run a can of BG 44K through the tank.

mmmdowning

What do you mean by the "I may do the ATF treatment every month or two"

This is new to me.

Thanks

91vert

Look at the RX-7 forum and do a search for ATF treatment.

There are about a million posts about it.

Some rotary gurus claim that Automatic Transmission Fluid, if put into the combustion chambers, will loosen and break down any carbon buildup that exists. Carbon buildup is a bad thing for a rotary engine. It makes the apex seals "stick" in their grooves and when that happens you loose compression. Some other people have mentioned that if big pieces of carbon buildup break off that it could trash the apex seals. Not sure if this is true or not.

Anyway....the procedure to do this involves removing the plugs, putting a couple of teaspoons (or maybe more....I don't remember) of ATF in the combustion chambers (I assume in each phase of the rotor cycle), spinning the engine over with the plugs put back in but plug wires unhooked and the fuse removed for the fuel pump to work the ATF around good, let the car sit for a couple of days to allow the ATF to work its magic on the carbon, and then start the engine and run the livin' **** out of it to get all of the loosened carbon blown out of the engine.

When the car is started it will smoke like you would not believe.....tons of white smoke.....for up to a few minutes. Some on the RX-7 forum have suggested waiting until late at night to finally start the car as to keep the neighbors from thinking that your house is on fire and calling the fire department. There is apparently THAT MUCH smoke.

There are some RX-7 owners who swear that this has brought new life to their rotary if the car had lots of miles on it. Others say they have tried it and have noticed no difference. Then some other say that as long as you are running the engine up to high RPMs on a regular basis (like it is designed to run) that there is no need for this ATF business.