my friend and i bought an 88 turbo ii about 2 weeks ago. its my friend's dream car, so i helped him with it. we knew that we were going to be working on it so we grabbed the factory service manual and the haynes manual.



in the last week we have done a coolant flush, an oil change, spark plugs, wires, and a thermostat.



the car runs decently, but it is idling very rough, there is popping in the exhaust and the car stutters during acceleration. the timing is correct so now we are stumped. the closest rotary mechanic is 200 miles away.



any suggestions, or questions would help tremendously.

don;t always believe they are that far away, tell us where you are now and maybe someone can let you know where to go.

start checking stuff, thats why you have the book.



set the tps, idle mixture and speed first

we live in kankakee illinois



also, the car has started overheating (again). we replaced the thermostat (two days ago) and it was running fine, but it has started to overheat again. i went over to look at it. my friend had said that it had been sitting for over 2 hours. when i popped the filler cap the coolant was still warm (normal?). when i put the filler cap back on it made a hissing noise, telling me that it was leaking. would that cause it to overheat?



also, my friend (whose car it is) tells me that when its overheated that it sputters and skips hardcore.



thank you for the replys. we'll try to dive back into it sometime this week.

pressure check the cooling system?

r u the guy that Im'd me last week?

hey, do u know where elign is? well if u do than its way less than 200 miles away. there is a place called Babb's Auto, and believe it or not they work on rotaries. they dont openely advertise it but i got reffered to this place from my reg. mechanic. they do pretty good work and they really dont charge much, espcially for workin on a car that the majority of mechanics are freaked out about workin on.

...do the work yourself you *****.

well, more bad news



my friend hasn't run the rx since it had its little meltdown, so i asked him if we could take a spin in it real quick to see whats up. he goes to start it and it barely starts (for some reason the battery is draining). then it kicks up to close to 3 grand, as it goes to come back to normal idle it starts shitting out like mad. the tach was jumping from 1k to 2.5k sporadically like a strobe light before it went to 0. the engine was still running (barely) and the tach wouldn't move above 0. there was loud popping in the exhaust. i had him turn it off. i could smell gasoline (which to me says that its timing is off, its got gas going through the system and not burning). i'm going to run another timing check on it, but until then, does anyone know what the hell is going on with his tach.



i had him run it two more times, the second time it did it again. he had his foot far enough into his accelorator that he was getting boost, but it was still sputtering and popping like mad (i don't think it broke 2 grand). the third time he ran it it idled closer to normal and he didn't have to give it gas, but again the tach was resting on 0.



i'm not a rotary mechanic, my friend isn't, and we don't really know any. we are trying the best that we can using the materials we've found. any suggestions would help us greatly.



i think the only thing that is keeping us going right now is the one day that we had it running. i wasn't there but my friend said it was the most beautiful thing he had ever done in his life. i have never seen a rotary in working order, but from what i have seen of this car, i can only imagine what it was like. i just wish i was there.

we are trying to. dear lord are we trying to.