300 miles on rebuild and won't start, I'm out of ideas
 

I have ~300 miles on a JDM rebuilt engine. At the time of the replacement I replaced all the plugs/coils/wires. It ran great for the first 290 miles or so but then I went to town to run errands and after one stop I had a very hard time starting and it didn't want to idle any more. I limped home to diagnose. Upon opening the hood I could smell a bit of fuel. It seemed that one of the injectors might be leaking so I went ahead and replaced the O-rings on those. Turns out one did have some physical damage to it and was probably the culprit. After this went through a deflood procedure and still had no luck getting it to start. It seemed like it was having a harder time starting than before I changed the o rings. I've triple checked all the vacuum lines and everything seems good. I'm all out of ideas of what else to even check. Any help would be appreciated.

2004, manual transmission, JDM engine built by Banzai in AUG2014

UPDATE:Didn't realize I never posted this but turns out that there was a secondary failure in the cooling system that caused further damage to the engine. The rebuild was fine; it was something outside the engine that caused the damage. The re-rebuild just charged me for the parts which was great and more than they had to do.

Did you replace the damaged injector? Is it NA?

Is it a MT?

It is likely really flooded.......you can pull start it if you think the injector was the problem

Anything else relevant that you can think of?

I checked all the injector wiring this morning and seemed fine. I guess tonight I'll pull the plugs and deflood as pull starting isn't a real option for me. I was getting a cylinder 2 misfire on the way home I don't know if that sheds any light or not.

Hopefully they didn't screw up on your rebuild.

Me too. I've played that game before. I had a 460 I paid good money to put hardened piston rods in because I didn't have time. They kind of forgot to tighten/put the keep ring on one. That engine died a horrible, horrible death.

But here's the update: pulled the plugs and they were indeed soaked. Turned the engine for a bit with the fuel pump off and no plugs until I was satisfied the cylinders were dry. Put everything back together and tried to start. After a LOT off effort the engine started. It ran smooth and the idle jumped around a bit at first but then idled well. Had a CEL when it first started but after about 60-90 second it went away. Revved the engine up to 2k, no problems; revved to 4.5k and CEL came back: P2004 and P0302. Allowed it to come back to idle, revved quickly to 4k and let it fall, tried to idle but just died. Wasn't able to restart.

I get that having the intake runner stuck could cause a misfire but could it keep it from starting? The only other thing I can think is that a primary injector could have gone/going out and now it's trying to start on one cylinder?

Try an NVRAM reset, I had misfires happening on mine after my rebuild and I reset the NVRAM and I haven't seen a misfire since.

I've cleared the KAM as well with no improvement on the situation. Thanks for the idea though.

JDM rebuild? Please explain. What codes do you have exactly? APV stuck? You need to test things properly.

ENGINE ---> SYMPTOM TROUBLESHOOTING

http://foxed.ca/rx7manual/2003mazdar..._S01_0002.html

]Never mind. I figured out the problem:


But to be clear, my old engine was out of specs so I ordered an engine and had the hard parts from it used in the rebuild(I had a company rebuild it, not me). The symptoms all make sense now though (except the P2004, I've checked, cleaned, etc. Maybe the switch is faulty? Not my main concern right now.) Engine has a minor leak so it burns the water as it goes. When it cools it sucks water into the cylinder making it hard to start. This sucks seeing as how that's the exact problem I started with 6 weeks ago.

Who rebuilt it and how long ago?

Banzai, work completed on the 15th of August.

Well when you say leaking, you mean you are burning coolant? Have you pressure tested the coolant system? I would be dealing with Banzai.

I've contacted banzai and I'm dealing with them. They want me to do a hydro carbon test first so I'm heading to pick one up this afternoon.

Coolant test?

The bubble through, color changing test for exhaust in the coolant. Picked one up tonight and will try to run it in the morning.

Rotaries are not hard to rebuild, but man, if one seemingly insignificant detail is overlooked, bye bye $5000 engine, in some cases.

Good luck to you sir.

@Ber1n: But even if u rebuild these engines regulary there is a possibility to make mistakes.... simple things like forgetting threadlock or sealant can mess everything up.

I'm sure the OP will sort that out with the rebuilder...

Greetings
Thomas

When my coolant seal failed (minor caught early) it was also confirmed thru a $20.00 oil sample test. Blackstone labs has a pretty quick turn around, they email you report the day after they get the sample typically. Just another option.

Thanks for the support/recommendations from everyone. This morning the car simply will not start. I'll have to wait until my brother gets back in town tonight and I'll try to pull start it.

I've done the UOA to confirm coolant leaks as well but I figured that even if I had to wait for my brother this test would be faster.

I agree 100%.

So I'm just copy/pasting what I sent to Banzai because I'm lazy and angry:

"I ran the hydrocarbon (blue to yellow indicator liquid) just now. First the car had to be pull started as it would not start from cranking. Also the car would not idle so I had my brother hold the tester on the reservoir. The liquid started to turn a light green after about 60 seconds, however at this time the coolant was bubbling up out of the reservoir and contaminated the test. The test could not be allowed to run to completion because it was pulling coolant into itself. I would like to note that I had drained the reservoir almost completely prior to testing and it still bubbled through the tester. After the car was shut off the coolant immediately began draining back into the engine.

This is what I'm reading this as:
1. The problem is degenerative. First symptoms were harder but relatively short starts, then long hard starts, then an inability to start at all.

2. The problem is likely a exhaust being pushed into the coolant as gases are exiting the reservoir at an alarming rate and the test began the blue you yellow change, but as I stated could not be completed.

My conclusion is that there is a blown coolant seal that is only getting worse. Likely it began leaking early on and I did not notice and on the day I mentioned in a previous email it developed a larger break and began affecting engine performance drastically.

Trust me, I sincerely hope I am wrong here but I don't see any way that I could be. I can not think of any other fault in the engine that would make sense.

Please let me know where we go from here. Thank you."

For conclusive results you need to pressure test the coolant system. And for further proof test a sample of oil for the presence of coolant. The coolant test you are doing seems like a waste of time IMO. Too bad you are not near San Antonio, we could compression test it for you as well.

I agree about the UOA but if I let the engine sit for a week waiting on the test I'll start getting rust in the engine if it is leaking, no?

Do a pressure test on the cooling system that should give you a faster result.

Twisted water seal? No ones perfect. Hopefully they will make it right!