CEL flashing, car won't start, what does it mean?
 

I'm helping one of my buddies with his rx-8 (2004). Car turns over, can hear it firing once or twice and but never starts, swapped out batteries, tried leaving the hot lead unplugged for a few hours, check fuses, can't figure out whats going on. Think it might be the fuel pump, don't hear a whining but I don't know how loud the fuel pumps are from factory on this car. After attempting to start the car the CEL will flash 8 times, does this mean anything? I know w/300zx twin turbo's you can do self diagnostics via an LED on the ECU so I was thinking this might be the same idea but I'm starting to doubt it means anything cause I've been searching the web for a day now and found nothing but the actually error codes listings. Our next step is to tow it somewhere to get it hooked to a code reader but I thought I would run this by you guys first.

First, you can only read the code with an OBD-II scanner.
There are no "blink codes" that'll tell you whats wrong.
Second, the engine might be flooded. Have you tried to de-flood?
This is on page 7-20 in the owner's manual.

Yeah, we tried to deflood it last night, buddy had the documentation, I'll try it again just in case. I figured there weren't any blink codes, I was kinda suprised that the Z did. Thanks for the help.

I only flooded my car once.
It took me a few tries to get it running (not to mention I had to keep recharging my battery).
Have you tried to pull the fuel fuse, crank for no more than 10 sec, then reinstall the fuse?
Many people seem to have luck with this method.

Oh god I"m gonna just put the directions on how to deflood as my signature.
1: Jack up car and take of drivers' side wheel
2: remove spark plugs(accessible from this side)
3: have somebody crank engine while you look for all the gas coming out the plug holes till it's all gone.
4: Install plugs correctly
5: install tire and lower jack.....
vehicle should start now if it has been flooded....

or just tow it for 20 feet and she'll turn over.

Welcome to hell! :banghead:

Seriously? In gear or in neutral?

Need to get it up to about 20mph in neutral, then let out the clutch while making sure that once it starts to turn over that you don't let it stall(by working the throttle). Once it is running in 2nd, you can then move it back to neutral and start rev'ing it a little bit up and down...............again, don't let it stall. If you haven't smacked into what is towing you, you could proceed to go ahead and run it in 2nd and just go for the drive, but assuming neutral..........once it has kinda settled down(and don't be surprised if there is white smoke) after you rev it kinda hard, then go drive it for at least a good twenty minutes, during that twenty minutes run hard when able to.

P.S. you can do it in 1st(although I've never had to do it with this car), I usually use 2nd.

Well there's only one problem, its an auto :( We just pulled the plugs and the fuel relay, sprayed a huge fuel cloud in the air at work, got me covered in gas and almost got blown up by some idiot in the parking lot smoking and we still can't get it started. But I think I screwed up, it was still spouting gas when we put the plugs back in (yes I cleaned them and made sure they were dry), I just assumed that it was because the fuel pump was still pumping even though I pulled the relay, after putting it all back together and it still not starting one of the guys pointed out that we didn't take the gas cap off to release pressure, don't know if it makes a difference but wanted to run it by you guys and see what other suggestions you have. We must have been blowing fuel for ten minuets, 10 seconds at a time, had my car running hooked up to it to jump it. I'm charging the battery tonight to.

Update

Got the battery charged, going over there after class to work on it some more, any suggestions at all as to what else we should try?

Sorry....didn't realize it was an Auto. :uhh:

You sure you pulled the right relay?

Its cool dude, I didn't point the fact that it was an auto out earlier, yeah, i pulled the right relay, it was marked "FUEL" on the fuse cover, I'm searching right now to figure out where the injectors are at and am going to attempt to pull the plugs for them w/out breaking them just to be sure, don't know how hard this will be but Its worth a try.

You've seen this right? http://www.finishlineperformance.com...5-08-1883f.pdf

If not......you might want to print it out and have it handy!

One more thing you can try.
Take the engine cover off. There is a hose going from the intake manifold to the idle motor. This is hose is locate after the throttle. Pull out this hose. When cranking, use ur shop air and put in "unmetered air" into the manifold side. Of coz you need two guys to do this. Also, the guy adding air needs to know when to stop. It might take a few try, but worked for me.

one note: once the engine start to fire, dont' cut off the air right away, just slowly add less air, til the engine really get going, then stop. and put the hose back in

Thanks for all the help guys, after Thursday night we gave up, I took a closer look at the plugs and realized they were garbage, needed new ones, didn't wanna risk spending 80 dollars on new ones, put in and mess them up too. He took the car to Mazda yesterday, I think we had most of the gas out of the motor so that will definitely save him on labor but the plugs from them are gonna be 200 :( I told him we could wait and try some more but he needed the thing fixed and I was busy yesterday with my own stuff so I couldn't work on it till tomorrow.