Today i was working on stripping the interior of my 79 rx7. it was pretty warm so i thought i'd give the REPU another try starting. I pulled the plugs, washed them in my parts cleaner, and set them up infront of a small heater to warm them. I cranked the engine over a few times to try to get some of the excess gass out. I then worked on the 7 for about 2 hours. When i came back i put about a 1/2 pint of motor oil down the primaries of the carb. i was turning the engine by hand and the oil level was still at the bottom of the carb...i was like...uh oh....then it occured to me to open the throttle....duh...all the oil flowed down. i continued to turn the engine by hand for about 5 minutes. by this time i was getting really good squishy noises (and oil) out the spark plug holes. i was also getting good suction noise in through the carb, even just turning slow by hand. i cleaned up the spark plug holes, and installed the now heated spark plugs. sprayed a healthy dose of starting fluid into the carb, pulled the choke and cranked her over.....HURAH!!!!! She started after about 10 cranks! Tons of smoke as i expected.







The engine was running pretty good. I only let it run about 10 minutes, just long enough to warm it up. For some reason the guages wern't working and i didn't want to risk anything if the engine was gonna overheat. the guages were working last time i started it, but that was a year and half ago. Turns out it was good i only ran that long. I had a fuel leak!!!!!! After i shut the engine off i looked underneath and saw what looked to be a puddle of oil. right under where i know the oil pan gasket leaks. I thought it was strange though that the oil had spattered when it dropped????? then as i continued looking everything over i saw this!



turns out fuel had been leaking, over ran the two catch plates and dripped down the side of the engine absorbing the oil and creating the puddle on the floor. I would have never seen this in all the smoke and who know how long it would have taken for the exhaust to get hot enough to ignite it!!!!

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