I've been having a no start issue for some time now and decided to test my coils to see if they could be keeping it from starting.

I pulled both plastic covers from the coils and tested the resistance.

On the Leading coil I got about 1.8 ohms

On the trailing side I got 1.8 and 1.9 ohms.

The spec from both the haynes manual and the FSM are 1.0 ohms or less. A couple weeks ago when I pulled the wires to check for spark I could see a spark, although my Dad did think it looked weak, didn't get to test last night to see if I could still see spark.

Should I try replacing the coils? Are they for sure bad if they are testing higher than 1.0 ohms? I think the local pick and pull may have some coils that ZI could try to swap in. Thanks guys

 

That is a little high, but unless you hooked up your battery backwards at some point, I wouldn't rule them out.

The FC coils are very tough and very hard to waste. Probably the toughest coil to blow up of any Japanese car from that time period, so the idea that all three failed... well, I would be looking at a bad resistance read from my meter before looking at a bad coil.

 

That is kind of what I was thinking. The car has 183k miles and I assume the coils are originals so a little high reading makes sense.

The car drove home 30 miles fine, and now I can't get it to restart. So I wouldnt really think it could be the coils since it ran fine on the way home

 

what is your compression? Are the plugs wet?

 

Havent checked the compression....yet.

Plugs are coming out wet, with fuel so I am good there. I need to get the battery recharged and play with it some more, I spoke with Ari from www.Rx-7.com and he gave me some good pointers on getting it started.

It was almost there the last time I played with it, it even backfired once, so I know its getting spark, I just thought maybe the weaker spark from the coils was a problem.

Supposedly this engine was rebuilt around 30k miles ago. My guess is that it wasnt and that the engine is low on compression which is why its so tough to start, it doesn't help that its only 10-20 degrees F outside either.

 

Also, whats so weird is that the guy I bought it from was driving the car to work daily the week before I bought it and he never made any mention of starting troubles, though he may have been hiding that to sell it. But he was making a 25 mile trip one way to work and back for that week!

So I am unsure why after I drove it home (babied it also) I can't get it to restart.

 

Sure sounds flooded. Plugs normally are never wet unless it is flooded.

And because of the design of the rotary engine, if the plugs get wet, they don't fire a big enough spark to start the combustion process.

Have you tried following the unflooding procedure found in the FAQ for FC sticky threads (found at the top of this section and the new member technical section)?

 

Yep I did and that made a big difference. At one point The engine was spinning very quickly as if ithad no compression, after following deflood procedure it returned to normal and almost started.

I am going to try recharging the battery and try injecting a small amount of ATF fluid to see if that can get her to run again. I think at this point ATF can't hurt. I will also try pull starting it if that doesnt work.