im a member of the rx7club forum and have a first gen and second gen turbo. ive rebuilt motors and worked on the 7's quite a bit. my friend called me today looking for help on his 8 and im not sure about a few things.

symptoms.. not starting

he thought it was the sparkplugs so he replaced them.. all with trailing plugs.. not good but should still run. he didnt remember the plug wire order so i wired them like this coil pack farthest from fire wall is L1 next is T1 then L2 then T2. is that right? also he says he just filled the tank friday but the gauge shows empty with the light on. i verified spark and i deflooded it by pulling the lower plugs and fuel fuse. the plugs were dripping with fuel and starting fluid. i got it to sputter and start once where it revved up to about 2500rpm then died. i had my foot to the floor when it did this as well. do these cars have the fuel cut with a wot while starting? we also reset the computer by unplugging the battery and holding the brake pedal to the floor for about a minute.

this car is an automatic and he seems to be having a lot of problems with it. they say it runs like hell and the auto is shot

any suggestions or help would be great and ill try to find more info out. he was not sure about the fuel gauge being accurate. he said it was getting stuck at about 1/2 all the time.. related?

 

wow...overflooded maybe???? good luck with that i wanna know what the problem was.

 

one more piece of possibly valuable info. it ran yesterday but would not start today.. thats why he changed the plugs to begin with.

 

hope ur friend isn't clumsy enough to pump in diesel fuel in that sucker as well. and how did he manage to foul the plugs with starting fluid on a drive-by-wire car, thats what i'd like to know! maybe he had the help of someone else while he sprayed through the maf??? may need to see if anything is soaked...

i don't really know yet. i'm not very familiar with the car yet. had it for 3 1/2 wks now.

good luck, and i hope anything helped.

 

if you can manage to use carb cleaner and work around the maf, while cranking. if it can run on the carb cleaner, but dies without it...it may possibly be filled with diesel in the tank.

 

There is a de-flood procedure in the tech forum. I believe it is a sticky.

Even though they are new plugs... they still could be fouled.

Since it's an automatic... maybe it's time for a new engine under the recall.

Here ya go

https://www.rx8club.com/search.php?searchid=3003274

It's in the DIY section.

 

holding the brake pedal to the floor wont reset the pcm. battery connected turn the key to on and stomp the pedal 20 times until you see the oil guage needle sweep.



also follow the restart procedure as mentioned above- and keep your foot off the gas pedal while trying to start it. with as flooded as it sounds you better get a charger on that battery or at least have it hooked to another car. the other main issue of course is that he probably has little to no compression now because all the fuel has washed the oil away from the seals