For the pass couple of days my car has been hard to start. It kind of felt like my starter was dragging. I got up for work this morning and it would not start. After work i tried again and still nothing. I pulled my plugs and three of them were wet and one was not.The front housing plugs were wet but the looked like the had a bunch of deposits on them. The rear housing top plug was dry as a bone and the bottom was wet. I am getting spark to all 4 plugs. The first try i heard my fuel pump but after that i did not. I have gas in the carb. I pulled all plugs and cranked it to make sure its not flooded.It will take a day to get new plugs.Whats up with the one dry plug?

 

Sounds like your flooded. You don't have to get new plugs to fix a flooding issue.

Just pull the plugs and clean them with a wire brush and some strong solvent like
brake cleaner or electric contact cleaner.

Spin the engine with the pump off for a few seconds until you don't see any mist.
Make sure your wires aren't able to spark when you do this or it could blow up
of course.

Then let it sit a few minutes, put plugs back in and start it up.

 

I was doing a little reading on here and stummbled on a thread and it was pointing to a blow motor. I pulled the top plug and cranked it, and had plenty of compression.I did that for the rear housing also. I was always told that plugs do not last long in these things if the are not tuned right.I am thinking that my starter is not turning the motor over fast enough for it to fire. Could that be right?My motor is not locked up because i can turn it by hand and also i have no metal in the oil.I may jump the gun with this car but its my only ride besides my wifes car and she is not giving that up. LOL! But still why would one plug be dry?

 

If it's not spinning over fast enough it's probably not the starter but the battery. Put it on a charger or take it to an auto parts store for them to check.

 

^ I agree with this. It's easy to inadvertently flood the engine if you have starting issues.

 

The dry plug is the only one firing properly. The electrical charge will follow the wet fuel and not arc across the electrodes on fuel saturated plugs.

 

I am just throwing some ideas around. When i got home from work i tried to jump my car off with my wifes car and it still sounded like the starter was dragging. I let it run for at least 15 min.For me to start my car, i pump the gas twice and turn the key and it starts with no prob. If i flooded the car in the morning wouldnt the gas evaporate 10 hours later?I am just asking these questions because i dont have the money to buy stuff i dont need. I am going to take battery to work and put it on charge. I will be getting new cap and rotor and plugs because it is time for that. I will give update later. Thanks for the help.

 

Does that mean i have issues with my cap or button or coil? Or is that not enough juice from the battery? Well im gonna be late for work, thanks for the input.

 

possibly a little of both... just pull the cap off and check to see if there is any excessive wear on the button and cap... hook a switch up to your fuel pump so you can avoid flooding by cutting the pump off while you crank it, and by flipping the switch when you are parking it so you are draining the carb of any fuel that will collect in it after shutoff..... your engine might be getting older and getting tired which can tend to lead it to flood more and to be harder to start

 

Awe, you popped your flooding cherry. Welcome to the club.

 

I don't know if this will help, but...

I had an issue where a bushing on the end of my starter was pushed out and we had to "re-bridge" to make the bushing stay in. What that meant was taking a screw driver and a hammer and hitting the housing of the starter across the bushing and making some of the metal stick out and stop the bushing come out. The bushing was between the end of the rod that the starter gear was attached to and the housing of the starter. They recommend that if I keep having issues with the bushing coming out that I should put some lock tight on it and re-bridge.

My symptoms where that the engine spun very slowly, and it would not start, I had good spark, didn't check them to see if they got wet or not though. It sounded like I either had a bad battery, or that engine was hard to turn, but I could turn by hand, and it felt smooth.

I had never heard of bridging but it worked and stayed working for about a month now.

 

I've found, for whatever reason, rotaries tend to be hard to jump start. A fully charged battery along with clean, sound battery cables is the first place to start.

As for the one clean plug, The top/trailing plugs take longer to foul because the opening in the rotor housing is so much smaller than the lower. leading ones.

Flooding can have it's basis in the charging, battery, starter, ignition systems or fuel/carb system. Pull your plugs, clean and dry them putting that one firing plug in a leading spot. Then get the wife and a tow rope and and pull start the car in 2nd gear. Hope she can run fast enough.

 

Rotaries will not "unflood" themselves like a piston engine will over time. In fact, I believe that flooding is probably the number 1 reason why these cars end up in the junk yard. The problem is, when a rotary floods it will show zero compression. So what happens usually goes something like this:

1. Car floods and won't start.
2. Car goes to the shop, and the first thing they do is check the compression.
3. Compression test shows zero compression.
4. Shop tells customer that they need a new engine, cost somewhere around $4,000.00
5. Customer can't afford it (or figures the car is not worth that kind of investment), so off to the bone yard it goes.

I met a guy at a race in Lansing a couple of years ago, who had a question about his vert. He said it just wouldn't start one day and he needed a new motor. The shop wanted 5 grand to do the job, and he wanted to know if that sounded fair. Perfect_circle and I hop in the car and run down to the shop with him (Sunday, so they were closed). Ran through the deflood procedure, added some gas to the tank, and it started right up. Needless to say, he bought the beer that night.

My last motor was at 213,000 miles when she coughed up an apex seal, but she was pretty tired even before that. The compression was pretty low, and when you add a race carb to a motor like that you tend to get a lot of experience deflooding the motor. After working through the "standard" deflooding methods (pull plugs, clean them, crank motor, replace plugs, dump ATF down carb, start car, let warm up, pull plugs and replace them since the ATF fouled them), I got fed up and was determined to find a better way.

This is the absolute best method to deflood a rotary in my opinion. It worked 9 out of 10 times. Grab a can of Seafoam, dump an ounce or two down the carb, then start the damn thing. It almost always will fire right up, and will even run better after a taste of Seafoam than it did before it flooded.

Good luck!







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You guys are great. I took my batt to work today and put it on there charger. I hookrd up a meter to it and it said 12.4 volts. The batt was made or it had a 12-09 sticker on it. It is a 650 cca and it measured 450. I bought a new starter,NKG plugs,cap and button. I also bought a new Holley Red fuel pump. I am now going out to put the freshly charged batt in. I will give an update.

 

Well, put in the battery and it still dragging. It sounds like a dead batt so it must be the starter dragging.My parts well be here Thursday so i will put them in then.

 

well i put the starter in and plugs,cap and button and she fired right up like she always did. i am just waiting for my holley red to come in friday and that should take care of it. i thought tuning it up would smooth out my idle but it still is not running smooth, oh well.

 

i spoke to soon.the starter dose not want to disengage. i am getting sputtering bad. i have a uneven stream of gaas going to the carb. i tried to adjust the carb and pulled in my drive and it baackfired out the carb and would not start.

 

man ur having alot of problems. i guess when it rains it pours... i hope my time isnt coming very soon but im sure it is. good luck and i wish i had some kind of helpful input for this

 

Measure the length of both battery cables, then go down to Autozone and you will find a selection of cables out on the shelf (do not ask for stock replacements). Select the proper length of the heaviest gauge wires that they offer, then go home and install them.

The stock cables are aluminum, and tend to corrode internally so that even if you clean up all of the connections, you still won't get good power. I also had what I thought was a starter issue (dragging, failing to disengage) and after replacing the starter, still had the same issues. Replacing the cables did it for me.

Good luck...

P.S. Why did you choose a Holley pump? I'm not sure of the specs on said pump, but you will most likely have to get a pressure regulator to go with it. Otherwise it will overpower the carb. I put together a writeup on the installation of a Carter pump with Holley regulator, and most of the information should still apply to your situation. Check it out: https://www.rx7club.com//showthread.php?t=529605





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