Post by mgr550 on Mar 3, 2022 18:52:09 GMT -5
Hello all,
Last fall I finally found my dream bike: a nice RE5 with low miles and in great shape! Bike looks great cosmetically, 23k km on it, but previous owner hadn't been able to get it running during his ownership. Said he'd taken the carb apart and rebuilt it, but was admittedly completely foreign to 'the way of the wankel'. I've had a few RX-7s and am somewhat mechanically savvy, but am not terribly familiar with these machines yet.
I started checking the basics: compression seems good, few burnt out bulbs but other electricals work without smoke, leaky fuel tap (which I'm still yet to fix), had to re-line the fuel tank, and it had very weak spark. I poked around the board here and found the CDI diode issue, so swapped those out and yay-spark! Since then I've gotten it to run for a grand total of maybe 10 seconds, 2 or 3 seconds at a time at best. I strongly suspect the carb at this point, but am reluctant to dig into a seemingly complete piece to look for problems if I can avoid it; though I may just do it anyways. Was reading up on the board about carb swaps and the SU swap looks favourable.
Are there any other bits to check out on the bike after its been sitting so long, important posts/bulletins to know of, and general do-s and don't-s I should know about?
Thanks all in advance,
Matt
Last fall I finally found my dream bike: a nice RE5 with low miles and in great shape! Bike looks great cosmetically, 23k km on it, but previous owner hadn't been able to get it running during his ownership. Said he'd taken the carb apart and rebuilt it, but was admittedly completely foreign to 'the way of the wankel'. I've had a few RX-7s and am somewhat mechanically savvy, but am not terribly familiar with these machines yet.
I started checking the basics: compression seems good, few burnt out bulbs but other electricals work without smoke, leaky fuel tap (which I'm still yet to fix), had to re-line the fuel tank, and it had very weak spark. I poked around the board here and found the CDI diode issue, so swapped those out and yay-spark! Since then I've gotten it to run for a grand total of maybe 10 seconds, 2 or 3 seconds at a time at best. I strongly suspect the carb at this point, but am reluctant to dig into a seemingly complete piece to look for problems if I can avoid it; though I may just do it anyways. Was reading up on the board about carb swaps and the SU swap looks favourable.
Are there any other bits to check out on the bike after its been sitting so long, important posts/bulletins to know of, and general do-s and don't-s I should know about?
Thanks all in advance,
Matt
