DuoWing

Phil I had a quick question. So you changed all the pins over and only spliced what was necessary for this swap right? Mainly I'm just curious because you mentioned having the similar problem I seem to where every so often the car starts acting up and it seems to be the plugs/harness. I see you said you've put about 800 miles on the swap, is that generally farther than you've managed to go compared to the 280ZX plugs where you'd have to re-seat them every so often? Recently my 280Z with turbo swap has been acting up, it has the Z31 ECU swap done to it and I was shaking the harness and found it to stumble every time I'd mess with the ECU/Harness so that prompted me to change the plugs. I can see that when just removing the pins from the 280ZXT ECU connectors that the pins had quite a bit of play in each connector. I could really move them back and forth quite a bit in the connector, where as like you mentioned with the Z31 plugs how they have those extra inserts to help keep them pushed forward and in place, along with smaller tunnels to center the pin better.

Well I swapped out the Walbro for a Bosch 044 pump and it's doing pretty much the same thing. I also changed out the relay. From what I can tell this is coming down to being a wiring issue. The black/white wire that feeds 12v voltage through the relay to the green wire that runs to the pump was getting pretty warm/borderline hot compared to the other wires. Also over where I connected it under the dash to a battery 12v line was getting pretty warm. None of the soldered connections in between where warm, and the green power wire seemed fine. Also the relay itself definitely felt a good bit warmer than any other relays in the car. So I'm going to try running a wire straight from my maxifuse blocks to the relay so it's getting pretty much the direct battery voltage off brand new wiring while still being fused. Also I found that there's some sort of wiring issue going on with my ECU/Main wiring harness, I could shake the ECU/Harness and the car would start to stumble and nearly die. I just finished swapping the 280ZXT harness ECU connectors out for the Z31 ECU connectors which should at least give a tighter/better fit at the ECU. So off to figure out more wiring issues....yay!

I have an M30 ECU lying around that I picked up for cheap. I'm actually considering swapping over to that at some point.

I'm really hoping changing the connectors helps for me. My car has been acting up lately, and it seems that I can shake the ECU/wiring harness and it will stumble. So I need to mount the ECU better, and the much tighter, better connections should help. I'm trying to find some better lighting to take a picture of the third connector and pins

I just did this same thing. I finished swapping the pins from my 280ZXT harness over to the Z31 connectors that I removed the pins from. Haven't tried the car out yet as I have some other wiring I'm messing with, but the connections to the ECU seem to click in better and the pins do sit much tighter. I tried to grab some pictures to help people out. I grabbed these with my phone so not the greatest/highest of quality. Here's a back shot of the connector with no pins in it. This is the 280ZXT Connector, but very similar to the Z31 Connector. The upper row is what I'm trying to show. You can see the tiny holes at the end of each tunnel is where the ECU pin will connect into the harness side pin. The longer rectangular hole on the bottom of each tunnel is where the pins latching tab goes through to hold it in place. That's also leading into the little access holes for removing the pin. Here's a front shot of the connector with a pin I popped back in. The middle larger holes are where you can place your screwdriver to push the latch in to release the pin. Here's kind of an idea as to what you'll be doing. I found a 1/32 flat head screwdriver I picked up at Sears worked the best for popping the pins out. About the biggest size you can use is the 3/64 which I ended up using for the slightly larger pinned 3rd connector which I'll grab some pics of later. Here's a shot of one of the pins itself. The tab sticking up is what locks it into place. Finally here's an idea of what you have to do. You place your screwdriver down the access hole in the middle of the connector, the pin would be in this position on the bottom half of the connector. This pin would basically just be flipped so that the locking tab would be facing down when it's on the top half of the connector. Essentially you push the screwdriver down the access hole in the front to try and depress that locking tab. Once you've got it pushed in enough you can then grab the wire from the back of the connector and it will pull out. It doesn't just fall out and takes a little bit of a pull, but if you're yanking and it's not coming out it's not loosened. The best way is to push the pin as far forward into the connector as you can while pushing the screwdriver towards the locking tab. The hardest part is just figuring it out, once you kind of get the hang of it it's pretty easy.

It's been a little while, but I was wondering how do you remove the pins from the third connector. It's the one with the slightly larger pins and the 300ZX version has that purple plastic piece around it. I can't figure out how you dislodge the pins from them. I got one out after bending the crap out of the pin, but I can't figure out how it releases. Edit: Nevermind, I figured it out. It was actually easier than the other two. Do you happen to know what size screwdriver you used? I was trying and trying and could not get the small pins out with any screwdriver. I finally kinda figured the trick out using a safety pin. I had to push the pin inwards, then use the safety pin's point and then work it and finally could then slide the harness pin back and out. The bigger ones I was able to just use a large paperclip that I straightened, push the harness pin forward, put the paperclip through that top opening push it in as much as I could then slide the harness pin out.

Well I found some other posts on here talking about issues with Walbros so I decided to give the Bosch 044 in-line pump a try. That will be here soon. I messed around with my car a little more to determine if pump or regulator played an issue. One thing I noticed is either I need to drive a bit or it's not until I hit higher speeds such as on the freeway that this issue decides to show up. I drove around a bit, hopped out of the car and fuel pressure was still looking normal. Went and hit the freeway for an exit or two, came back then hopped out and fuel pressure was now low again. I pulled the vacuum line off the regulator and the pressure jumped up, but not to where the regulator is set to. It went from 20-22psi up to close to 30 at idle with the vacuum line pulled. I played around with this and it seemed to do the same thing when putting vacuum line on and off. Turned off the car and did the prime cycle a couple times. It was priming lower than where regulator is set. Thought maybe this was related to removing in-line filter so I adjusted the regulator so it was priming at about 36psi again. I came back a couple hours later after everything had completely cooled and hit the prime cycle and now the pump was priming the system at over 40psi. So either this regulator goes back to normal after sitting or it's the pump that after cooling down completely is now pushing out the correct fuel pressure. Also have some more pump relays on the way in case that's an issue.

Cool, thanks for the info. I was looking at other harnesses from my 280Z and stuff I cut from a 300ZX and none of the relay connectors on those are the same as the 280ZX...

I can't figure out the best way to describe this, but when I was doing the turbo swap on my car and working with the fuel pump relay connector from the turbo harness the wire that gets wired directly to the ECU for the Z31 ECU conversion completely came off the female spade connector on my fuel pump relay connector. I managed to get the spade connector out of the connector without destroying the connector, but the spade terminal was no good anymore. I was able to make up another one with what I had, but the only thing is it doesn't have the locking tang on it to stay in the connector which makes it kind of a pain when plugging in/unplugging the pump relay from that connector. I was wondering if anyone knows where I can get these terminals or a part number? I'm not exactly sure what size they are. If anyone has used the Parking Light Relay upgrade kit it has a pretty similar terminal that you run through the car then lock into the relay connector. I need one of those so it will lock into the connector. Any help is appreciated.

Well I removed the filter between the tank and the pump. Put some 1/2" fuel line from pump feed from the tank to the pump. Started the car up. At first the pump was super quiet then after a few minutes it started getting louder, now it sounds like the thing is just always whining. When I start fuel pressure will be fine at just below 30psi. Rev it up a couple of times and it revs no problem. Fuel pressure is not rising much above 30 like it should. I take it for a drive come back and now fuel pressure at idle is as usual back to about 22-23psi. Pulled the fuel filler cap off and didn't feel any vacuum when putting my hand over that fuel filler hole. When I did take it off a bunch of air shot out like pressure was relieved. With cap off fuel pressure and pump sound still didn't change. Checked the fuel relay and it's warm, but not overly hot or anything so I think that's ok. I'm thinking it's the pump or the regulator and I'm definitely leaning on the pump. I'll post up a picture of how my pump and feed line are routed to see if anyone thinks there's an issue with the routing. I'm thinking I'm just going to buy another pump and try that. Any suggestions? I don't know if I necessarily want to stick with Walbro.

I did a pretty similar thing with my heat shield. I couldn't get the bolts off for the intake shield so I focused on getting the intake off. With a short and long extension, a 12mm socket, and a few cases I used one of those universal/swivel socket extensions or whatever you want to call them. I was able to get to all the bolts and remove the intake/exhaust manifolds.

Drove my Z today out to a local car meet about 25 minutes away. Drove there fine, drove around and parked and then on the way back it seemed like it started doing it's sputtering a little bit when cruising in fifth gear. I kinda let off it and just kept on the throttle real easy, it seemed to do it a couple times and I just kept cruising really easy and then it seemed to straighten out and keep going. As I got back near home I got on it a couple times and it seemed ok. I'm starting to suspect possibly the fuel pump? I'm still not certain that the Walbro I have is a real one. I think it's an ebay knockoff. It just came in a package with some instructions that said it's a Walbro I don't think there's any labeling or logo on the pump itself. Also it could potentially be my fuel pump relay. I'm using an aftermarket rising rate FPR and when I got home I popped the hood and with it in neutral I was watching my pressure gauge on the rail and as I'd rev it up it didn't seem like fuel pressure was really raising. At least not like it should be. If I have the car off and run the prime cycle it'll sit at about 35-37 psi like I have it set to per the FSM/Haynes for stock turbo motor. At idle my pressure was definitely sitting at 25psi or possibly lower. I'll mess with it some more but I'm thinking either bad FPR or bad pump. I may take the little filter off that I have before the pump to see if that makes any difference. I shouldn't even need that filter seeing as I had the tank fully cleaned, and reconditioned. Also I'll have to check the engine bay filter and see if that still seems to be clean. Pulled my plugs they didn't look lean, they looked kind of orange and dry, but nothing too out of the ordinary and they looked all really even across all six. Also can one of you guys point me in a good direction to buy a real Walbro pump? The more I search online I'm pretty sure mine is a knockoff.

Well I figured I'll throw this out here real quick to see where to start. For some reason my Hazard switch doesn't do anything when I press it, also my brake lights have decided to stop working. The one day I came home and my brother said the one side was out, but if I remember correctly the passenger side was working. Since then the only thing I've done electrically are add the parking light relay upgrade, some extra ground wires, and made new battery cables out of 4 gauge wires. My turn signals, parking lights, and headlights all work properly. Also the Brake light on the speedometer stays on all the time when driving. I thought it was related to the parking brake, but maybe it's a warning light for a brake issue? The dash was removed at one point, but that was last year. Although I don't ever remember checking to make sure that the brake lights or hazard switch worked properly after reinstall. I can't seem to find any disconnected wires. Also replaced all the fuses. Well not sure exactly what the problem was, disconnected the brake switch and then plugged it back in, checked the flashers, and then pulled out my test light and now everything is working. Both brake lights and hazard switch. I guess it was just a loose connection.

I don't know if the shock itself in the front of a 280Z is the same size as the shock used in a 240Z, but I do remember when swapping in my Illumina strut/spring set that the rear shocks had a spacer that I believe was longer than an inch on the ends of the rear shock to fit in the longer strut tube and be proper height for my 280Z. I'm not sure on whether the spring is longer or not. If I had to guess which is not the best thing to go by, I would say the front 280Z/240Z strut assembly should all swap over fine. I don't know if the boot is different for the fronts, but the back will probably be sitting too high. You can probably lower it some by swapping to the 240Z boot, but like I said if I remember that spacer on the shock was definitely more than an inch long.

Well I'm slowly sourcing parts for my rear disc swap and now I need to see if anyone happens to have the Modern-Motorsports brackets for adapting the 240SX rear calipers to the Z? It appears that Modern-Motorsports is dead and I'm never going to get what I ordered. Also if anyone happens to have the extra stuff to adapt the e-brake cable that would be cool too. Otherwise that doesn't look too hard to make. If anyone has any of this stuff for sale let me know. Also you can PM me or e-mail: duowing@gmail.com

I apologize I feel dumb now, I kept thinking you were swapping the 83 ZXT motor/harness into a 280Z not ZX...

Actually it looks like you have the two wires that you need, I believe those two brown and green wires that look like they're already wired up are the only ones you need. When I did my Maxifuse conversion I cut out all the left over links from the ZXT harness except the brown and green ones and wired them into their own separate maxifuse blocks. Unfortunately I don't have any pictures at the moment... Have you seen this pic? This was the most helpful of all the information for when I swapped my 83ZXT motor and harness into my 76.

I think pics would help, upload the pics to photobucket or something and then post the links with the image tag. For the turbo harness I believe there are only two fusible links that you need to hook up. I still had the fusible link box connected into the harness so I only had to connect the terminal to the positive side of the battery and the rest was connected into the harness. At least that's how I remember it.

I took apart my door today to rebuild the hinge. After some work my door finally opens and closes nicely, but I'm having a heck of a time trying to get the door lined up. Anyone have any tips on how to get it? I stupidly didn't make marks as to where the hinge attached and that leaves me in this situation. Hopefully there is some method other than just trial and error. Also this is what my roller pin and roller bearing looked like upon removal.

Well I got to work on my Z a bit today. The car never seems to have any issue with these short drives. I still need to go take my battery to have it tested. Also since the last drive my Voltmeter in the car decided to stop working. Either that or there's a fuse for it I pulled out. Anyway I felt like the alternator belt could definitely be tighter as there was more play than I feel like there should be. Tightened that up, then I replaced all my fuses. Some of them were old and I think the fuse labeled flasher fell apart when I removed it. I also installed the parking light relay upgrade I ordered through MSA. Dash lights, as well as the parking/running lights are definitely brighter now. After my short drive back tonight I checked the fuse box with it running as well as the harness connectors up to the signal stalk and everything felt cool to the touch. The relay was warm, but it seems like relays normally get warm? I'm thinking that was my problem, I can see on the connectors for the parking lights that it has definitely burnt up some. That 9-pin connector was charred a bit and showed signs that it's actually heated up and burned. So hopefully these couple things have taken care of the issue. While driving back I was getting on it at times and really running it up to redline through the gears and seemed to have no issue. So we'll see how things go. This sounds like what my Z used to do when I had bad grounds in the ECU harness. It would start to sputter or randomly decide to idle bad, or a number of odd things and I could reach down, shake the harness, and everything was good to go.

I'm working on gathering everything for my rear disc swap, waiting on my Modern-motorsports package to arrive, I have calipers and mounting brackets, but I'm not sure if the Modern Motorsports packaged comes with the hangars for the e-brake or not. So if anyone has a set of these I'd like to purchase them off you. PM or e-mail: duowing@gmail.com Thanks!

Hmm those are some good thoughts, I'll look into it. I forgot to mention I've done the Maxifuse conversion which did help as some of the fusible links were getting pretty warm and after the conversion I seemed to eliminate that issue. I made up new 4 gauge Battery cables yesterday and I grabbed some 10 and 12 gauge wire to run more grounds around the car. Next up I'm gonna replace all the fuses in the fuse box and I ordered the parking light harness relay kit. Like I said my headlights should be fine since I'm running the HID kit that runs them through the relays and ballasts.

So I've been getting back to work more and more on my 280ZT lately as the weather has been pretty decent. The car sometimes will have a hard time on the first cold start, sometimes it will start immediately, and sometimes it will start then die, then immediately start up on the next crank. When driving around town I have no issues with it it seems to run perfectly fine. Today I took it on a much longer trip than normal just because I haven't driven it very far and after about 15-20 miles of freeway driving I kicked the car down into 4th and got on it to pass a semi then it started sputtering going back and forth between power/no power until finally I was stuck coasting onto the side of the freeway. Electrical seemed to all work, was still getting spark, thought maybe my fuel line/filter got hit by something and was leaking, they were fine. My gauge on the rail was showing fuel pressure, but I could not get the car to start. After messing with it for a bit I realized I hadn't turned the headlights/parking lights back off. I turned those off and kept messing around. I disconnected the battery for a bit. I finally was about to give up, but tried cranking it some more and finally after some pulsing the pedal it started, but was sputtering then died. I did this probably two more times, then finally it was idling, but not the best. I was able to rev it up fine, so I tried to get back on the freeway and as soon as I got on the throttle the car bogged down and started acting up again, but didn't die. I then tried again and just going easier on it I got up to speed, got to the next exit, turned around and started heading back with what seemed like no problem. Made the whole trip back plus going further to home with no issues. When I got close to home I got on the car hard again to see and was having no issues. The only difference I did on the drive back was not turn on the parking/headlights. It was bright enough out that I didn't need them. The way I was previously heading was getting dark/stormy. I have a Walbro 255lph pump or at least it's supposed to be. I bought it through ebay and I'm not really sure if it's an actual Walbro. The only other thoughts I have is maybe a wiring issue, I was finding later when I drove it back to where I stored the car at night that there were some fuses in the fuse box that were getting pretty hot, I'm not sure which ones as it was dark and I couldn't tell. Also one of the connectors that goes to the parking/headlight switch gets pretty warm when running with the parking lights on. I'm not sure if these could cause a problem and cause things to freak out? I've only really had twice now where the car freaked out and both were when I was driving with lights on. The other time was at night at for a moment the tach freaked out but the car seemed to keep running fine. I didn't really drive that much longer after as I was almost home anyway. Also my Brake light on the Speedometer never turns off, I'm not exactly sure how to get that to turn off. Also when sitting at a stop with the turn signal on I notice that brake light will go dimmer/brighter with the blinker as well as the voltmeter will bounce with the blinker. I don't know if this is normal? I'm running the HID kit from the group buy so that's going through relays and everything so that I wouldn't think be causing a problem. A few years back I had the gas tank completely cleaned, blasted, and refinished. I'm also running a filter before the fuel pump. I need to pull that and check to see if that's getting clogged, I wouldn't think it is, but you never know. Any suggestions on where to start? Or any more info you guys need? I'm running an L28ET with a P90 head, N/A "A" Cam, 1988 Z31 N/A ECU modified with Nistune so I can run the larger stock O2 sensor. 78' 5-speed tranny, ACT Street clutch, Fidanza Aluminum flywheel, etc.

Hey guys I need a set of hinges for the 280Z. Was going to try and rebuild the driver's side, but the stop arm that contacts the door roller is completely worn down. PM or e-mail: duowing@mail.com Thanks!

I haven't read this thread in entirety so I don't know if it was mentioned, but could you technically take the S12+8 Toyota Calipers meant for the solid rotors, grind out that gap and fit the larger vented rotors? Unfortunately I purchased the earlier ones for the solid rotors before I saw this thread.