HowlerMonkey

I've seen someone use ultra black rtv on the rubber boots over the tps harness and it caused the car to think the throttle was at idle all of the time because it conducts electricity.

Restricted exhaust maybe. Or........you have a sensor issue.

I mean the one you are talking about. The metal line that goes to the tranny..........it goes there for a reason.

How were the piston skirts? I bought an engine from someone here and found 5 and 6 had broken skirts. I had another engine.........a N/A f54 that a hurricane had filled with the cylinders with inches of water to the point that a crust of rust formed where the water level was the highest that I had to poke through just to see the piston tops. I knew that the rod bearings were new and that the rods had seen zero abuse so I used a 3 foot prybar and a big hammer to hammer them out putting dents into the pin bosses as I hammered them past the rusty bores. I figured I would only keep the rods and bearings. Once they came out, I looked and found no broken ring lands and decided to soak the piston/rod assemblies in carb cleaner which cleaned everything up and I spun the rings around until the grooves were spotless. I honed the turbo block that had the broken piston skirts and installed the n/a flattops and the engine is perfect.......no burning oil and perfect compression. I put it into my M30 infiniti and drive it every day.

That hardline goes directly to the vacuum modulator. If plugging the barb did no good, then there isn't a hole rubbed in the metal line or a bad diaphragm in the modulator. A bad modulator will usually foul out spark plug number six and the car will smoke badly at idle or decel.

If you didn't get oil pressure after cranking it a bit, your pump may have lost prime and won't pull from the pan.......or the pump is bad. When priming a car, I usually pull the oil pressure sender and see if oil comes out when cranking. If it doesn't in a pretty short time then it is most likely that no amount of cranking will get you flow. There are two ways to "prime" the pump. One is to remove it and turn it while filling one side with oil until you end up with both holes filled. Also....put a bit of oil down where the shaft goes in. Another way is to take off the filter (put back on the pressure sender) and stuff a hose connected to a funnel into the galley that extends forward from hole that feeds the filter (not the center hole). That's the one toward the front of the car of the center hole and if you look at it carefully, you can see how you would be able to stuff a soft clear hose of 1/2 inch outside diameter into it enough to get a good seal and have the other end attached to a funnel. Put a bit of oil into the funnel and hand crank the engine backwards (or have someone else lie on the ground and crank it from below) while you watch the oil. You should immediately see a column of oil being sucked down into the galley which leads from the pump output (remember cranking backwards makes the pump draw through that same galley). Once you've run about half a quart into it that way, you should be able to spin on the filter, crank the engine and get pressure right away. If not then your pump is bad like mine was.......or you have a leak between the pickup and pump or between pump and front cover drawing air rather than oil. After this method failed in a recent engine build, I tried another pump that had been laying around for 10 years, did the same prime routine and got immediate pressure.

One other possibility if the boots are open. A piece of gravel sitting on the rack "gear" grooves can bind when the pinion gear meets it.

If you turn on the A/C, at least one fan should come on. If you disconnect the coolant temp sensor, all fans should come on with key on. If you have access to a scan tool (not a code reader), then you can go to active test menu and command fans on. If you don't get fan operation with commanding fans on, then check whether fan relay is receiving the negative to trigger it. Another thing is that many chryslers command fan on only at a pretty significant temperature...........like about 230 degrees or so.........more than enough to boil water in a cooling system that doesn't build pressure. If your system does not build pressure from a leak or you are running it with the cap open, you may well could see it boiling.

Since the alternator ground should be just a ring terminal bolted to the body of the alternator, then it should be the same as engine ground. I believe the ground lift referenced at the other site has to do with grounding between body and engine. I always keep a set of jumper cables handy and clamp one to a bolt on the body and one to the engine and check if symptoms change or go away. While being a diagnostic specialist, I found at least 4 per week with a bad body ground out of 15 or so calls per day average.

Battery tipping over and touching positive terminal to the body or an a/c line will also do that. I repaired about 10 ecus a day for standard motor products and there were a lot of tipped batteries that burnt the zener diodes.

Did anybody put some sort of "stop leak" in the system? I remember GM had a bunch of front drive cars like the citation that would lock up the power steering from debris sticking in a valve.

Yep......no need to go much bigger than the turbo outlet size as long as your turns are not pinched badly. On my turbocharged maxima (L24e), I was able to only have to go 45 degrees rather than 90 on my downpipe.

I think the car either uses a time control system for the lights and power antenna or the power antenna itself has a timer that allows it to retract after the car is off. I seem to remember seeing power antenna drawing current while at Z shop of miami. Try unplugging it since it is relatively easy to access the connectors.

Good stuff.........I really want to use the radiator cooler since it is pretty good at dealing with tranny heat but I see people running what I have for years with no troubles........but I really want to moniter the heat of the tranny itself because I've already encountered (on a yacht) a temperature probe on a cooler line that read low because...................there was no flow....... and the bypass was in the transmission itself. Those filter assemblies sound great. I'll venture a bet they are 3.8 or 1/2 inch and used on diesel trucks? Never thought of looking at truck parts but maybe it needs looking into. Car is really peppy with the high stall speed and 3.9 but no top end to speak of so I may eventually build a 4n71b and go with 4.10 gears. I'll bet that will haul ass down the strip.

Doesn't the dome light circuit also support the power antenna? If not.....I think some 280zx have a dimmer timer.....might be mistaken though.

Just put it back together and it runs like new. I'm a little worried about driving a non-lockup 3n71b hard with only an auxiliary cooler running as the radiator was tainted by a failed later model tranny before I bought the car.. I flushed the tranny cooler portion of the radiator every day for about two weeks with all manner of chemicals and still had a random chunk come out when I blew air through so I guess a new radiator might be in the works if I my research on the magnefine filter doesn't give me confidence. One thing.......the cover (nissan tech's call it the guillotine). If you run the car without it on, you can hear the fluid hissing in the covertor or pump which makes you think something is wrong but......fitting the cover makes it disappear totally. I forgot about that.

Iridium and platinum plugs were installed by manufacturers so the cars could "certify" that their cars can go 100,000 miles without needing service to their emission control systems. Nothing more........there's no magic to them.

Check to see whether the vacuum line to the fuel pressure regulator actually applies vacuum/pressure to it. I had a car that did the exact same thing and found someone had pushed a ball bearing into the line to plug it.

I think I read a while back that there were harder and softer bearing material. The difference being engines destined for car or truck. I read it somewhere but it might not be true.

Unplug the ecu since the car powers those wires regardless of whether it is there. I would undo the wires that go from the transistor to the coil and see if you still get troubles. If so, then the transistor is fused. If you suspect troubles with the transistor or coil, you might want to go to a u-upull junkyard and get the coil/transistor setup from a VG30 car. Just make sure you snip off connectors as well. Also........this car can use a small unit that has both the condensor and resistor for tach in one tiny unit. It looks like a harness plug (small with 4 wires going to it) but it looks like a plug that goes nowhere but instead has a blank plugged into it. That blank is actually both the condensor and resistor. It sits in different areas but usually relatively near the coil. I used on from a 240sx because I already had a maxima coil/transistor setup. If you do find your parts bad and obtain the parts, PM me and I will check out my setup and tell you how I wired it.

I wasn't even using that wire to run my car. Is that possibly the a/c clutch wire?

Cylinders 1 and 2 will be happy with that geometry.

That is the proper order of wiring......at least from the connector on the power transistor and from there to the coil. It should run with only the connector plugged in. Try unplugging the rest for now. Try unhooking the wires from the power transistor to the coil and see if it still tries to burn the wire. If not, then the coil is shorted. If yes, then the power transistor is fused. Of course, this depends on where the wire is burning

What are you using for your coil? The 280zx turbo coil has power transistor usually mounted on the same assembly with two the signal from the black/white wire passing through the transistor and going to the positive side of the coil. It is easy to get the wiring between the transistor and the coil wrong. This wire also goes to a couple of other things like the auxiliary air control valve heater.

Backwards jump start is usually the culprit but I've seen that damage occur from a person who thought disconnecting the battery terminals while the car was running is a good way to test the alternator. A lifted body to engine ground can also cause crazy spikes and transients.