HowlerMonkey

Tomorrow, Obama will unveil a "dramatic" plan on automotive emissions that may very well impact us here. I will be especially interested in whether they offer exemptions for older classic cars and what the definiton of "classic" will be. Hopefully, they will use the tailpipe test as the tell all rather than just disqualify a car because of it's year of manufacture since I will be running my l28et on an OBDII ecu soon.

The important sensor is the one who's harness gets in your way when replacing spark plugs. It's the one that tells the engine management system the coolant/head temperature. The connectors on these are similar to the injector connectors and are known to corrode (turn blue/green) very badly. If it's disconnected, you will get unbelievably rich running but corrosion can add to resistance which could cause the ecu to think the car is colder than it is and add fuel accordingly.

The re-animator of this thread did add new information that may benefit someone using the search function so all is cool.

Clogged strainer............but what parts of the tranny are clogging it may be the bigger concern. Usually a clogged strainer will allow you to turn off the car once it loses drive, and immediately restart and have drive........for a very short time.

I've rebuilt cracked turbos on my kitchen table and only replaced the bearings and piston ring type seal..........didn't replace seal on compressor side and ran that 280zx turbo as a daily driver for the about 4 years after that. I did it to run the car while I rebuilt a much better condition turbo but it never died so I left it alone and drove it 50,000 miles.

Just finished my l28et/3n71b in a infiniti M30 and drove it about a mile and then no drive in any gear. Coasted into parking lot and called wrecker. Started car out of curiousity and had drive just fine for about 400 yards and then no drive again. Turned it off and immediately restarted car and got drive for another 400 yards. At that point I knew it was debris coming up to clog the filter and then sinking back down until sucked up again. Opened up the tranny and found a mini-mountain of rear clutch particles in pan just under filter pickup hole. Took out and apart tranny and, other than the clutch frictions drying out from 5 years storage (twice) everything else specs out ok. It seems these trannies are bulletproof..........as long as you don't overheat them and end up with burnt fluid with abrasive chunks circulating to all the bearings. If you have a jatco automatic, best thing to do is turn it off at the first sign of trouble and there should be very little damage. The 280zx turbo tranny 3 speed 3n71b....... from front to back........has 4 clutch plates in the front (not the steels) 6 in the middle, and 7 in the rear (low/reverse clutch).....I think...will check later. Time to do some valve body mods now that it's out.

I grind the end of a box wrench thin so I can get full grip on the bolts/nuts.

Is this a round housing? If so, it has a heater coil in it acting on the bi-metal spring. This causes the choke to turn off sooner since it is usually only needed for the first few seconds of running rather than the 8 minutes it would take for conduction to heat the spring through the carb.

Bosch used to sell books on the technical and service aspects of every flavor of it's fuel injection systems. Not sure if they still do.

Put a timing light on it and see if the knock sound happens at the same speed as the flashes or twice that. If same speed, then it's top end. If twice that, it's bottom end. If it idles slow enough and is bottom end noise, sometimes you can use the light to determine which cylinder it is....sometimes.

Car and driver got a 15.2 quarter mile out of the 1981 280zx turbo automatic. The reason the time was better than the other magazines is because the driver at car and driver braketorqued it for around 3 seconds before he let it go while the other magazines just hit it. A lot of grand national drag tests by magazines were compromised the same way by guys who didn't bring up boost before leaving the line.

If spliced right, he will only add an inch of unshielded wire to the already 4+ inches that are already there in stock form. I don't see any problems with this and have done this many times with zero effect on signalling.

LOL........Nissan's original parts on these cars last forever. My last 280zx turbo had original hoses that were still good in 2005. The belts went in 2001 and the gates replacements lasted about 1 year each time I replaced them.

I was just identifying the flange for a US market 280zx but since you are overseas, that flange could be used on other cars I don't see here. It also could have been swapped over since my M30 (leopard) will have this flange on a R200 by the end of the day tomorrow even though it came with the round Z31 flange.

That looks to be one out of a 280zx turbo. The input flange is round on the Z31 and sports 10mm bolts while the 280zx turbo flange is has 10mm bolts but the pattern is rectangular. If it has 8mm bolts on a round flange, it could be out of a s12 200sx turbo or V-6. If it's 3.54, it's probably out of a 280zx turbo. I'm actually after one and will pull it tomorrow from a junkyard.

Any splice is better than a corroded wire. Just pull back the shielding and make sure it doesn't make contact with the center conductor. In stock form, you already have at least 4 inches of non-sheilded wire anyway.

Every molecule of that car is in it's proper place......amazing.

I would put two old plugs into the non-firing cylinders and run the car to get some heat into the setup. Just keep it running with your foot on the gas long enough to get it to operating temperature and shut it down. Let it sit for 1/2 hour then restart and shut down so you can check if those plugs are now wet. If they are, put in the two good/new plugs and see if you get all cylinders. Heat does better than most anything else when unsticking injectors.

The center and rearmost terminals should have continuity only at dead closed throttle. You should lose continuity with only the slightest movement of the throttle but let it move a few thousandths before you lose continuity or you could end up with it coming off and on a billion times per second with engine vibration. On the non turbos, you have three terminals and you get idle on the rearmost two and you also get "full throttle" coming in at about 3/4 to 7/8 of full throttle body opening. On the non-turbos the ecu only uses the idle. There are two microswitches inside it so you won't getting a change in resistence but rather on or off depending on throttle position.

Someone put a lot of loving care into putting that together.

The hole is there because throttle bodies and plates have a habit of building up deposits between them. If your car uses very slight throttle body opening rather than the hole, then the inevitable buildup will lower your idle over time by closing the gap between body and plate. On OBDII cars, I check out the percentage of idle control in the data list to determine of this has happened so I already know what I will find when I take off the piping to the throttle body. If the percentage is high, I know it is gummed up though I always do a visual before selling the throttle body service.

How about just switching over the manifolding, turbo, and lines over to the L24e? I did this and used my ghetto oil return mod to get turbo power without even removing the pan. Mine ran fine for 50,000 miles with stock engine management but it did have python injectors which are known to not be very exact and therefore could have flowed more than stock but I believe stock boost on used on the L24 won't blow up the engine or lean it out. This way the car is not tied up as you source parts to finish the L28. As far as the tranny is concerned.......I would stick with the fs5w71b tranny out of a non turbo 280zx since it shares the same driveshaft length and spline count with the 3n71b 3 speed and some 4 speeds..........some 4 speed autos have a thicker yoke, though.

The ecu case does not require a ground as I routinely run them while holding them in my hand.

I would say more ignition switch than most anything else. On your car you should be able to unscrew the two philips head screws that hold the switch to the locking assembly. These are on the opposite side of where the key is put in. There are a bunch of different ones concerning amount of pins and how far they turn which varies from year to year so you have to be careful if you are swapping them. Another possibility is that you have a ballast resistor that has blown open passing no voltage. It is there to keep lower the voltage that the points see to extend life and is usually bypassed when the key is in the start position. Since your car does start, I would disconnect the connector going to the starter solenoid and have somebody hold the key turned so you can figure out which wire going to the distributor has the +12volts and trace it back to where you should find the ballast resistor (if it is still there). It is white and is the size of a 1x1 piece of wood about 4 inches in length with a connector on each end. Once you find it, you should be able to use a test light and a have a friend turn the key so you can check whether the light lights up on both sides of the resistor. If it only lights on one side when the car is in the run position, then it is blown. It it only lights in the start position (both sides) then the switch is bad. My bet is the switch, though.

The E36 325IS is perfect..........and would make a front running Improved Touring S class race car since it seems they dominate that class.