It seems like you cannot use an RtuFramer for a synchronus serial server.
pymodbus.server.async.StartSerialServer(context, identity=None,
framer=ModbusAsciiFramer, **kwargs):
uses a framer as parameter, ModbusAscii as default.
pymodbus.server.sync.StartSerialServer(context=None, identity=None, **kwargs):
framer = ModbusAsciiFramer
This one uses only the AsciiFramer. No possibility to use RtuFramer