Ok. Last night, it was snowing pretty bad, so I pulled my 8 into the garage. It was outside overnight the night before because I was working on my brother's car in the garage. So, it sat outside in 20-30* weather for about 24-30 hours or so..basically cold to the bone.

I opened the garage door, started the car, pulled it in, and shut it down immediately. The instant I did this I thought "zomg, I only ran it for about 5 seconds..it could fllood!" but..it's never flooded before, so I let it off my mind..not to mention, I have the hot-start plugs and starter/battery, so...all's well, right?

Wrong! Went to start it up today, around 5PM..crank....crank...won't catch! Doesn't even try! So I tried holding the pedal down all the way and cranking, doing about 10 second bursts once per minute or so. Tried that 4-5 times, no go.

Pulled the fuel pump fuse, and had another go. Still nothing. This time, I put washer fluid into the maintainence ports to the rotor housings (the ones with the rubber caps on them from the factory). Tried again, fuel pump fuse still pulled...nothing! Still not even trying to catch.

So..all bets are off..I called the tow truck, ETA of 30-45 mins, so, I decided (I live on a semi-big hill) to try roll-starting it. Get about half way down the hill, doing around 15mph..slowly pop the clutch in second, car bogs way down, and starts..less than 500rpm idle..WHAM! HUGE backfire from directly underneath me, brother says no fire, just a MASSIVE ball of white/grey smoke came firing out of the exhaust..

Can't get the car to pick up the RPM, nearing the bottom of the hill, I try again. Same thing..kind of starts, then WHAM! Massive backfire, huge cloud of smoke. Tried it one last time before reaching the bottom, barely starts, WHAM. Sounds like a shotgun going off right underneath me.

So...it's sitting at Mazda right now, it won't get looked at until Monday..what should I be ready to hear?


Thanks :|

 

Sorry to hear that. Did you get the new starter and battery from the TSB?

If you do happen to kill it w/o warming up. I hear it is best to start it up right away again. I think it's less likely to flood the quicker you restart.

Let us know what happens.

 

Yeah, I got the new starter, battery, and lead plugs a few months back.

Anyways..anyone have any ideas about the backfiring?

 

Ouch...lately I've been reading a lot of people mentioning that they have never flooded since they got their car....you didn't brag about that, did ya? You could have upset the flooding gods!

 

Mine flooded a few months back (after 3 years!), and it REALLY didn't want to get going. My garage was completely filled with smoke when it finally got going....ridiculous amounts of smoke! I think that is normal, but I don't think it actually backfired...it was really bogging down when it finally started up, even for a while while I was driving it to try to clear out any gunk that might have gotten in the engine

 

Sounds flooded to me. I wouldn't say it had anything to do with the coldness cause here in PA its been about that cold and even colder below zero and it started up just fine. but I always let mine warm up b4 I move it anywhere. Try taking the plugs out cranking it then cleaning the plugs and pul them back in. Good luck man

 

i totally don't like the description of those backfires.... hope nothing's broken as result of it...