Chris83zxt

I used a GM flex fuel sensor with my MS3 setup and have maps at 0% ethanol and 85%. You can blend the maps based on the % of ethanol in the fuel. I replaced all of the fuel line in the engine bay with e85 friendly stuff. I haven't done anything to the tank or the backend-of-the-car hoses and what not. I make sure that if it's going to be sitting for a long period of time it's got low-ethanol fuel in it. As calZ states you can bump up your timing and potentially your boost when running e85. My table slides up to +3 timing at 85%. I haven't put the MS-controller boost solenoid on yet so that's not something that's controlled by MS, but I don't feel comfortable running pump gas over 15psi on my setup. I'd feel comfortable up to 18-20 psi on E85.

Day 2: 8/10 I had had to dump the car on the street outside my house the day before since my driveway is at a not insignificant incline and backing a tow dolly is an art I never intend to try mastering. I visited Harbor Freight and got their 1,500lb electric winch and a length of extra metal tow line. I got some concrete anchors at Home Depot. After work I installed the winch at the back of my garage and before long (and with the help of an additional tow strap which made the 3 piece tow line just long enough) I had Burninator pulled up into the garage. I did enough troubleshooting to figure out that the starter was shot. Day 3: 8/11 I bought a reman starter from Autozone and installed it. Did enough troubleshooting to find out there was no fuel. Did a compression test. All cylinders 145-155 psi (I think my Harbor Freight compression tester reads a little low). Day 4: 8/12 Messed with the fuel pump, verified that it is the pump itself that's not running. Day 6: 8/14 Ordered a Holley 12-170 to replace the Walbro 255 on my ZX. Mine is set up for E85 (GM Sensor) but running it through the 255 was always a double risk (pump not supported for E85, potential fuel starvation at high boost due to the additional amount needed). Burninator will get the Walbro.

I acquired a non-running shed 1980 280zx last Sunday (8/9). I already have a 1983 turbo 280zx w/ sequential MS3, holset hy35, vacuum that sucks money into the abyss, etc. I haven't decided whether I'm going to use the new acquisition as a slow resto project since I'm pretty much done with mine, or prep it for 24 Hours of Lemons racing. I'm leaning toward the latter at the moment. The acquisition came about in a very round-about way. I troll craigslist for Datsuns near me and this was the first 280zx that had even popped up this year. The owner didn't have a price but mentioned trading for a daily driver. He helpfully included several photos so I could see that it didn't appear to be ate up with rust. One of my employees had been in the process of trying to move-in with her boyfriend for a couple of months and they were in the final stages of planning the move. Boyfriend had a 2004 VW Jetta 1.8 turbo that had quit running right for him multiple times and he was tired of paying people to fix it for him. He had gotten himself a Nissan Versa and parked the Jetta. Girlfriend had set an ultimatum for him to do something with the car because he sure as heck wasn't going to move it to their new place. At first he had offered it up for sale to some of his friends for $500, and girlfriend had made the same offer to me. I passed because I wasn't really in the market for a boring project car. Friends passed too. Finally it was down to one week before the move and Girlfriend told me they would be willing to sell it for $300 because otherwise he was going to donate it to NPR. This was about 1 week after the 280zx ad had hit craigslist (I had nibbled on the hook by asking the guy if he had a price in mind, and he had just responded that he hadn't really thought about it. He was serious about wanting a DD). I emailed him what info I knew about the Jetta and asked if that was something he'd be interested in as a DD, he said it would be. I went ahead and acquired the Jetta and drove it home, barely making it because it was running so rough. I got it home at about 7PM on a Friday night and had it running right by 8PM and took it on a 275 mile trip that night to help some family with a move the next day. Owner and I couldn't come up with a time we could actually meet for two weeks, during which time I was fixing all the little stuff wrong with the Jetta. We finally arranged a successful meeting on 8/8, he really liked the Jetta, I liked what I saw of the s130 well enough, so we agreed to the deal. I went back the next day with a tow dolly and brought 'Burninator' home. Once I get started posting pictures you'll probably see how I chose the name for the car. I'm amazed it hasn't caught on fire and burnt to the ground yet. I've found some interesting wiring choices within. I'm mostly doing a build thread here in case I do decide to go with 24 Hours of Lemons route. I do not plan on rushing through anything. If the car is destined for that the earliest I would deploy it would be next year sometime. For what it's worth, by all accounts the chassis and motor have about 145k on them (way less than either component in mine). I'll come back and post pictures when I have my phone with me.

There's some diagrams out there that show how you can make your own circuit using a diode and a automotive relay and it works for s130's. I drove my stock tach that way for the past 7 years. It recently quit and I decided instead of troubleshooting the circuit (which was a bit redneck the way I installed it initially) I would just get one of the diyautotune tach adapters.

Ask and thou shalt receive. Now that I've had a chance to poke around under the hood -- holy hell, this thing is a fire waiting to happen. The wiring under there looks worse than my 280 did the afternoon I threw the MS3 into it and got it running (which was just a lot of wires running on top of the motor with wirenuts). Mystery wires coming off the positive terminal running into the crack between the fender and the door (one of which is black, nice). Ground strap replaced with a big red wire. The fusable links cut and wired directly onto the positive terminal. So the dash is tan and digital. This is a 1980. The glove box cover is black. The top panel of the doors are black and the bottom 2 red. The trim pieces are mostly red with some black. This car has a lot of personality. I wasn't sure if I was getting it to possibly make it nice or to prep for a 24 hours of lemons 'race' car.

tir33d: Do you have the larger ducts in your hood because it helps with cooling or for aero? Or both?

So I've found a pretty solid, not running S130 out in a storage building that I'm about to acquire. It's some weird burnt orange color with spots of chalky fade and bits of surface rust. I couldn't put my hand through the floor pans so that's good. Anyway, I didn't notice a whole heck of a lot about the interior outside of it being red and the seats being in surprisingly good shape, but I did check out the dash. It looks to be mint. No cracks, not even any swollen spots. How can this be? My 1983 which has old guys flirting with me at stop lights (according to my wife) every time I take it out doesn't even have a nice dash like this (I tried to do resto work on it once but ultimately failed). How is there still an S130 on the planet with a perfect dash and, more importantly, what should I do (or not do) to keep it that way? Is it some freak of nature that is impervious to damage like Bruce Willis's Unbreakable character, or is it actually waiting to spiderweb into a million cracks the next time it's breathed on?

I stumbled upon this a couple of weeks ago (just after setting an appointment with an exhaust shop to do a full custom exhaust). I went ahead and ordered it to save the guy some time (he seemed skeptical as to the fitment of a 3" system). It came in Monday, I had it installed yesterday. With the included muffler it is QUIET. I was afraid it was going to sound like a semi automatic fart cannon, but it's very subdued. Just a little deeper tone than the stock turbo exhaust note. I really like it. https://www.cxracing.com/CB-280ZX

I took at look at the AZZcar oil pan and I noticed it only states support up through 78'. Are there steering components in the way in 79+ that keeps it from working in a ZX?

What's your custom rear brake solution? I'm going to be doing a big brake upgrade for the front soon and haven't found much in the way of solutions for the rear. I don't know if AZC is still doing business--they haven't responded to my email from earlier this week.

Haven't driven my car much in the past few years, more of a garage queen at the moment, but when I hydrolocked my turbo block I swapped an NA into it. I've been running it on 16 lbs of boost out of a Holset HY35 w/ a sequential MS3 setup. Haven't dynod it but based on peak fuel consumption I think it's making about 360whp. No major problems in a few thousand miles since the swap.

Did you get a set? I found mine last weekend when organizing my garage.

I pulled/put together my l28et w/ t5 attached a couple of years ago into my 83. Just took a lot of tilting and wiggling. It would have been a lot more difficult doing it solo without a crank leveler on my hoist.

Nope, though I was just thinking about this earlier this morning. The car now has a turbo'd NA motor, the MS3 install is still working great. My turbo motor was a victim of hydrolock :| Since swapping out to the NA and getting everything running and re-tuned in late 2014 I haven't had a lot of free time to tinker with it. I think I'll be picking it back up over the winter though and getting a knock sensor working will be one of my goals.

I used the 'toyota' style DIY tach adapter to get the stock ZX tach working with my MS3. There's a diagram for the wiring somewhere on the MS forums. About $5 in parts and some soldering.