HowlerMonkey

The air flow meter has a microswitch in some year 280z cars. (don't remember if 1977 has it). You can test for that by holding the flap of the airflow meter open while the key is turned and see if you have power to the pump. A jumper there will ensure fuel pump operation whenever the key is turned.....unless you are keen on removing the entire injection harness to clean up the bay which will require jumpering and splicing elsewhere.

Taking the cover off is pretty harsh and could net you a lot more work than you are interested in doing. If you really want to do it properly, the cover must come off. Remember that there are those two small bolts going downward from the head into the cover and the ones coming up from the pan. I'll venture a guess the water pump is leaking. If it is but the cover is not leaking between it and the block, a hack solution could be threading the cover itself with a top and using a larger bolt as well as drilling the water pump hole for that bolt larger and using a shorter bolt to hold it to cover.........again....provided the cover is not leaking. You also cannot let the tap bottom out on the bolt or it will put force trying to spread the cover and block apart.....causing a leak. I'd only recommend this if you're stranded somewhere far from home but I once had to do this to get my only source of transportation on the road so I could get to work and it ended up lasting lasted 4 years. Again....only if there are no leaks between the front cover and the block since high pressure does pass from cover to block and could fail the gasket.

The only thing that is different if the cam is truly 180 degrees out is the distributor shaft. If it is a couple of links on either side of 180 out or perfectly timed, there may be valve bending already. Once the engine turns a few revolutions, the color of the links mean nothing. My suggestion has far less risk of catastrophic cam mistiming and subsequent valve bending than "fixing it right".....especially when applying to someone with not a whole lot of experience.

You're talking about doing this without removing the timing cover?

When I find a "cam 180 degrees out" I just reclock the distributor shaft 180 degrees out and start driving right away.

That is funny....I've heard of that too. What's amazing is those cheater engines ran fine with an obvious difference in compression in one cylinder. It kind of makes you wonder why you would spend the time CC'ing combustion chambers after seeing that.

I would change the oil with normal diff. oil for a short time and then change to synthetic. Nothing like two quick oil changes to get rid of dirt.

The difference in ecus is that the 1981 uses an external dropping resistor pack on the harness while the 1982 and 1983 have the resistors in the ecu. The crank reference signalling should be the same. You have a 90 tooth pulley with a sensor that has two poles spaced halfway between two peaks which causes 180 pulses per crank revolution and a different pole for the 120 degree pulse. It's really 3 sensors with two of them outputting on the same wire and the other having it's own output. Sadly....the crank sensor won't allow you to upgrade to the Z31 system because it requires a longer duration on one of the 120 degree peaks to identify cylinder #1.

Ah....relief valve. Still haven't found one that isn't melted internally.......well.....I did find one about 4 years ago but I left it on the car when it went to the crusher....doh!

They might hit the steering column and the passenger side will probably hit the crossmember where it meets the engine mount.

All it takes is one good misfire event on some spark plugs to wet it enough that it refuses to fire until replaced.....or thoroughly cleaned in one of those sandblaster type spark plug cleaners. Not sure why but I've run into some plugs that never again fire correctly after being wet fouled. Really shouldn't happen but I've seen it. You can put a long screwdriver against you #4 injector and see if it is firing by comparing it's noise with the others. At that time, you can wiggle the connector on the injector as well.

Love the old school bikes. Those white bikes are just screaming for one of these....unless you only race it and rules are against a two speed hub. I spent a decade racing all that tried to pass me on the bike trails on the virginia side of washington DC. riding an old Miele mountain bike with 2.0 size tires (cheater ridge in center) and then would bring out the skinny tire bike to track down whoever beat me more than once on the mountain bike. The bike paths there are some of the best I have ever seen for summer, spring, and fall but the winter months were better spent mountain biking on the muddy trails of bull run.

It should work since the crank reference is the same signal. If you are absolutely sure the ecu is a 1982 or later, then you will have to go to that 8 lug connector where the dropping resistors plug into the harness (1 in and 6 separate resisted out) and bypass them. I just made a six into one with 7 male spade connectors and plugged that into the female plug on the harness. Use a meter to determine which is the 12 volt input.

I've heard loose torque convertor bolts make that exact same sound but that is rare. That sounds like a lot more than 750rpms in that video....more like 1,100. For rod knock diagnosis you cannot use a constant rpm....just tip into it a couple of times slightly and see if the character changes.

Never do that. Your alternator diodes will thank you.

That engine looks like it has been sitting out in the elements for 9 years uncovered.

Temp sensor near spark plug 5.

He had a large air bubble in the system that does not allow warm water to get to the thermostat before part of the engine get hot enough to boil water. Had he not drained it after the first time it happened and just waited for it to cool and refilled the car, it would not have happened again.......unless most or all of the coolant shot out of the car. I expect this every time I fill a L engine cooling system and have worked a system that works 100% of the time. I fill it, start it and let it run for a couple of minutes and completely ignore the stone cold reading on the gauge. Then I turn it off and wait 10 minutes for conduction to get the entire engine (and the thermostat) the same temp. as the rest of the engine. If it wasn't warm enough to open the thermostat such that I saw flow through the radiator......I would do it again. If done right, you will come back out a few minutes later, start the car and suddenly see the level drop drastically in the radiator that you thought was full. At that point....add coolant as it runs until full and check the gauge and for flow. If you see no flow after a couple of minutes....turn it back off, wait a few minutes, and restart and watch for flow. At this point you will see flow momentarily at startup since the entire engine is now warm enough to keep the thermostat open.....until the cool water comes in and closes it. It sounds like a long and drawn out process but, since I have started doing this, I have never again suffered the sadness of wondering if I hurt a brand new engine I labored hours over to make perfect. Conduction is your friend.

A maxima diesel is much cooler than the sum total of it's parts....especially if you plop a turbo on it.

Strange that nobody has mentioned what nissan did in the later L28s. They used a dual port barb on the rear of the head with an extra nipple facing forward and add a T fitting into the middle of the long hose. The only pic I could find shows they system but someone has bypassed the heater core. It is a bypass that does the "looping" while allowing heater core to be part of the system.....but in parallel of the looping. It is my guess that nissan wanted the "loopback" effect when the car was started cold so the temperature would stay consistent throughout the engine as it warmed up before the thermostat opened and then the thermostatic piece in the T fitting would stop the "looping"......at least until you turned on the heater. Either way.....most every one i've seen was melted internally into a plastic blob.

If you're not running pcv to a vacuum source, a little filter on the valve cover could become fouled with oil and effectly clog causing high crankcase pressure. It should go to a catch can sort of device that allows the oil vapor that ends up liquifying in the piping to pool in a low point and have the filter at the highest point so it doesn't receive liquid oil to the element.

From that video the car is lean. Of course the car in the video could be dead cold but, if it is actually warmed up, I would get a resistor from radio shack that is the same resistence as the sensor would send on a fully warmed up car and then run it. If it is still lean, bring up the speed until it starts breaking up and push open the flap on the airflow meter just slightly and see if it clears up. If so, you might only need to loosen the spring....if you've played with it already......if not leave spring tension where it is. Your mentioning the wiper being a bit off and fixing it. It still could be off in the direction of lean in that only a very small amount of movment has a big effect on tip in mixture. Also......the bypass port...........has that been fooled with or is the plug still in. If not, you can actually see the screw through the slot just a little and can get an idea of how much authority you have with it.

In that video, you only have 5 cylinders running. I would use a screwdriver to listen to the injectors and see if you can hear one that doesn't sound like it's firing. It's also possible the spark plug in that cylinder has gas fouled and won't fire. I would start it, turn it off after a few seconds of running at idle, and pull plugs. If you find one that is wet, clean it off and swap it with another cylinder. It's safer to pull injector connectors than spark plug wires while it is running to see which cylinder is not firing but not always the best test.

The maxima version of the 4n71b is not nearly as strong as the z31 300zx turbo version or the mistubishi or RX-7 versions. I would only take the bellhousing and flexplate from the maxima versions. Also....I'm not sure on the convertor dimensions from V-6 applications to L6 applications. Probably the same but you never know. The turbo cars had a higher stall speed convertor which made the car more peppy and didn't impact highway mileage since you would be in lockup anyway.

The 1984 4n71b (L4n71b) are hydraulic lockup. Anything that is E4n71b uses an electronic tranny controller. The flexplate for the 4n71b is different than the flexplate for the 3n71b so, to fit most 4n71b to a L28, you would need a first generation maxima flexplate and bellhousing.