'86 RX7 Rally Car

OK, this car is berkeleying haunted or something. Got my new heater hose, installed that, started the car and... it idled like E36 M3. Checked for things bumped loose during hose install, and tried to rev it- no response to throttle input at all. Plugged the TPS (the one it WOULDN'T EVEN IDLE WITH) back in, car runs great... like it did without the TPS before. Does the ECU "learn" when new sensors are installed or something? Going to let it cool, top up the coolant, and drive it again to verify all is well.

Confirmed via test drive, car now runs excellent on the "new" TPS which it wouldn't run with when I first got it. Yay?

It's possessed by the ghost of Nagasaki. Or Lucas.

Either way it needs a painless harness and a boosted gm 60 degree v6.

We all know rotaries are black magic. Perhaps someone had a seance for the car....

With TPS, without TPS, I don't give a flying berkeley as long as it runs until the end of Waste Management. I just wish the car would make up its' mind about which it prefers.

I've had the same sort of thing happen with my Lincoln.

"I'm fixed...wait, no I'm not! LOL"

Hopefully you get it sorted well enough to thrash on it for it's insolence.

Right now it looks like I'm just going to leave the TPS plugged in- with the rally in just a couple of days there's no time to really tear into it. If it starts running like E36 M3, I'll unplug it again.

And just in case Josh is right I'm going to say "hail satan" every time I start it.

I'll keep my tow strap handy, assuming you start ahead of me ;)

In reply to irish44j:

Towing is for when you get stuck- if the car is broken you can just throw your toolbox at me as you go by, because I'll be wrenching on it until sweep comes through.

EDIT: This being a rotary, however, maybe I'll need a Shawn style "pull start"

Good luck!

btw I give up on finding time to run over and grab those seats, between work/illness/wife's new work schedule. Sometime.

yeah, I was SUPER surprised that it ran well at all with the TPS unplugged.

AFAIK, the computer does not LEARN anything with these.

Is it possible that you unplugged something else the last time?

Are your connectors corroded at all for the TPS switch? Did you reground your ECU?

Hey, what the hell do I know? My RX7 wont start....

In reply to wvumtnbkr:

ECU regrounded. I absolutely have been unplugging/replugging the TPS connector, it's the only thing in the vicinity and super obviously attached to the TPS. It does have some corrosion. It DID run great with no TPS whatsoever. I think what I'm seeing is most likely related to the wiring for the sensor, which is nice and hidden under the intake manifold- but I'm not removing that with the rally in 2 days.

you can rewire it pretty easy. Cut plug off and run 3 wires to the ecu. Cut wires at ecu and connect them together.

I can find the wire colors and positions at the plug if you like.

If it runs fine for now I'm done berkeleying with it. It's pretty clear to me at this point that we don't have anything pinpointed, and I don't want to risk making it worse, even if that means sometimes I run sans TPS and sometimes I have to plug it back in- so far doing one or the other has consistently fixed the issue. It only has to go ~60 miles under its' own power before I have 3 more months to play around with solutions.

Got home from work and immediately fired the car up to go for a drive- it runs fine. Hopefully this holds!

FYI - they just changed teh rules to allow rally tires, it appears.

So I guess I'm throwing on the Dmacks, which will not be as good for mud as the snow tires, but are far less likely to get a flat I guess....I assume you'll do the same?

What the berkeley? Bunch of inconsistent bullE36 M3 is what that is. I don't care if it's good, or helpful, or what: don't change the rules 2 days before competition!

Yeah, DMacks it is- although I do have a little time to think about it. On the other hand, this is what I bought the snow tires for...

Supps can change up to the day of the event. Its part of the fun!

Here's what I'm thinking for now: leave the snows on it, bring the gravels, and carry a gravel tire as a spare. I can switch based on what I see during recce: if the roads are anything like my local gravel stuff, they will still be icy.

Good call. I am no expert but just based on my rally-x experience you don't want to go out in snow/mud on gravel tires when true snows are an option.

In reply to RedGT:

Yeah but based on my stage rally experience you don't want to put a wheel in the ditch on snows when gravel tires are an option

It's going to come down to what we see during recce I think, but it's a gamble between "will gravels make me slide off the road?" and "will snows pop even if I stay ON the road?"

Same dilemma here, but it's supposed to be in the mid 40s by the time we start on Saturday so shoudln't be much ice (and from what I hear, there's no snow at all anyhow. I'm brining 2 snow tires and if it's slick I'll put them on front and my 2 soft compound gravels on the rear. Else mixing and matching medium/soft gravels. I know Alp (other e30) is running snows since he didn't get any gravels yet but he's not someone I want to copy regardless lol.

Talking to a half dozen people who have run WMWR / STPR before (all of them 2WD cars), they were uninanimously of the opinion that the WMWR stages are rough enough that snow tires are extremely risky without snow, and that even uncut gravels are a better choice. YMMV.

OK, I've changed things up based on your intel- gravels are on, snows are in the truck. Mostly so that I don't have to have an "I told you so" moment while I'm switching tires in the hotel parking lot.

Time to make the chimichangas:

The more I watch vids of the WMWR stages, the more I think to myself "how could a street tire possibly survive this brutalism???" I highly suggest the one of the Honda Racing CRX - excellent in-car and rooftop views of the course and you can almost feel how rough it is....

And that sticker is so '80s it hurts

Did you cut your hand when plugging in the TPS? My rotaries required a regular sacrifice of blood in order to keep running. I was actually kind of glad when a tree fell on the last one.

Since you're relying on yours (relying- AHAHAHAA!), just get a diabetic testing pen and some lancets and make sure your stick yourself and smear it around near the intake every time you go to start it.