fisheric

A guy not too far from where I live has what he describes as a 1981 280zx turbo with a 5 speed manual transmission. Now as far as I know from searching these discrepancies are confusing me: 1) the 1981 280zxt didn't come with a 5 speed 2) every year of 280zx came in some shade of gold except 1981 (according to xeons130.com's color chart) 3) in the dash board where my 280zx has a turbo gauge, his has a battery voltage meter. 4) his car has a turbo hood scoop, but it kinda looks brownish (was there a gold/brownish two-tone paint job?) 5) his car has different rims (are these the 1982 rims?) and here is da pic other info: the vehicle was in a wreck which could explain a different hood. also the pics of the roof kinda look like the same color as the hood. my goal is to get the transmission from this car for my car.

what can happen is if something gets disconnected or shorts out the car will freak and default to 1250rpm idle as a way to compensate. it is in the haynes manual in the troubleshooting section under high idle. try disconnecting the afm and then reconnecting it. or maybe disconnecting the negative battery cable. this might reset it?

thanks, i had searched for "5 speed swap" and read through all 8 pages. There is alot of good information in there.

Tony do you have a link to the specific shifter you bought?

Hi everyone. I have an 81zxt stock with the 3 speed auto. I have found a local guy who has an 81 zxt with a 5 and he will sell me the car for $525. I want to buy the car and swap the transmissions so that I can gain most importantly a good cruising speed on the free way with better gas mileage and better acceleration. The guy who is selling this car, for his elderly friend, says it has 300,000 miles on and that besides a leak in the exhaust manifold the car runs fine. I asked him if was rebuilt and he said to his knowledge his elderly friend had never rebuild it. If in fact he is telling the truth and the engine or transmission has never been rebuilt would they still be any good? I guess what I am asking is "Is there a point where it is no longer worth rebuilding a transmission? And If there is has this transmission reached that level?"

mom'sZ You know what you are talking about for sure. Yea I know alotta guys around here dont have the zxt but I know that alot of the members have the zxt's turbo engine. Im almost positive this is the case because during the summer here in Sacramento we had warm weather all week and then one night it got pretty cold and that was the first time it did it all season. I don't understand which hose you are talking about. I do know that I didn't replace any hoses bigger than the fuel line. Could you be more specific as to which hose you are talking about? where does the other end connect to? where would the intake leak from? I tried to get them off but they were stuck so I eventually gave up I definately will. As you can see I've been a member of the board for awhile and I dont know if I ever posted before yesterday. I was able to solve my earlier problem by using the serch feature. I understand the importance of putting up all correct or useful information for the sake of the community. Sorry for posting such a long reply with so many questions. Just if you get the time to answer id appreciate it. Should I start my own thread? I only posted here because it originally sounded to me like we were perhaps suffering from the ailment(s)

I am having the same problem. The car has always had this problem since I bought it. This summer I replaced all the vacuum hoses and did a full tune up and it was running really well. And not doing it at all. When I bought it (81 zxt) the owner who is a friend told me it was the egr valve and that he tried to find one and couldn't buy it anywhere. I ordered one from black dragon. This didn't fix the problem but when the car was acting this way if i disconnected the tube to the egr the car would run fine. later i could reconnect it and it was fine again. and just like you after it was warm it would be fine, however sometimes when the car is having this problem and it last more than 30 minutes i notice that the temperature gauge is reading only half what it should (about quarter way instead of half) i've tried everything to fix this and cant. except adjusting the mass air flow sensor. i've been afraid of adjusting it incorrectly. is you car Fuel INJ? Please post if you figure this one out because I am out of ideas. Oh and one time the car was doing this pretty bad and I changed the spark plugs which were only a few weeks old and the problem went away and the temperature was back into the range it should be. dont know if I knocked something while I was in there or if plugs somehow did something.