Pillar

Awesome, nice to find another local Z enthusiasts (I know they are around here, I just haven't really met any yet). My father was military. We moved here when I was a kid, and just never left.

You definitely have your work cut out for you, but the satisfaction you will have when you get it back on the road will be worth it. I just recently got my Z back on the road after purchasing it a year and a half ago also in a very disassembled state. Was a lot of hard work and a there is still plenty to do, but the felling of driving it for the first time was amazing. Out of curiosity, what part of VA are you in?

The interior panel that NewZed mentioned is definitely a place that can let fumes in. I would also check the tail light gaskets. Those dry out and leave big gaps that will allow fumes and water in. Car is looking nice though. I'd love to see some photos of the dash. I haven't seen one covered in alcantara before.

Just found my receipt for the hoses I bought to replace the old heater hoses under under the dash. Dayco part # B70873 for $6.99 Dayco part # A70001 for $5.99 Dayco part # B86050 for $10.99 All hoses were found off the shelf at AytoZone. I expect they can be found at any other major parts store. Two were exact matches and one just needed to be trimmed down about 6 inches or so on one end. I'll see about doing a write up for this job in the near future with photos of the hoses used and all, but for now, there are the part numbers. Thanks! Pillar

Welcome to the forum! For starters, it might help to know a bit more about the condition of the car as well as what your plans are for the car. Not trying to give you crap or anything, just a suggestion that will help other members be more helpful to you. For instance: is there rust? What kind of mods have been done to it? Do you plan to restore it to some degree, use it as a track car, or is it just a fun project for you to tinker on? Etc. Also there is a lot of great info here about RB swapped Z's as well as all aspects of the S30 chassis already. Take the time to brows or search through some of the posts to get a feel for what is already out there. Almost everything has been covered at one point or another, so asking general knowledge questions right away will often return replays like "use the search feature" from forum members. Not that these members are trying to give you crap or are purposefully trying to be unhelpful, but many get tired of rehashing the same exact topic over and over when a quick search of the forum would likely return the answers you seek. That being said; if searching the forum has not yielded the answers you need, then please ask. There are loads of knowledgable and helpful folks on here that would gladly help you out. Just be sure to give plenty of details about your question and/or issues to best facilitate the other members in giving you help. Again, not trying to criticize, just giving you some suggestions to help you have the best experience possible on the forum. Welcome! Pillar

No problem. Glad I could be of help Were you able to get some hoses? Black Dragon is a very good source for things like that. The reason I went through the local store is because it ended up being quite a bit cheaper than BD just because they were off-the-shelf pieces that needed some minor cuts to fit perfectly. I have not been able to find the part numbers (I should have just written them down when I bought them). I plan to go back to the parts store and find the hoses again just so I can post them up for future reference.

I just did this last month. There are two Phillips head screws holding that assembly (box that the copper wire goes to that you have circled in the phot) to the heater valve. The best way that I found was to remove the whole valve assembly (requires disconnecting all the heater hoses) then gently pull the whole assembly down and out from under the dash being careful not to kink the copper line. This's allows you to get a better angle on the two Phillips screws ( which are normally a bit tough to break loose). After that, you should have no problems pulling the core out. I would suggest replacing all of those hoses while you are down there as well as they often dry out and weep. Those hoses are hard to find direct replacements for at a reasonable price. What I did was go up to the local auto parts store (AutoZone, Advance, Oreilly, etc.) and ask to go through their heater hoses and find something that is close. I was able to find exact matches for two of them, and one that was close enough to trim and fit. I will see if I till have the part numbers for the ones I bought so you could just have them get you the same ones. I'm pretty sure still have the receipt somewhere. Hope that helps. Pillar

Can't wait to see the finished product. You are putting a lot of work into this and it is looking really good so far! I really like the idea for the turn signals up front.

That second video sounds like a bad misfire. Check the ignition components (plugs/wires/cap). I would also check the temperature switch. The early 280s ran a dual-pickup coil in the distributor (one for when the engine is cold and one for when it warms up). When the engine gets warm enough to trip the temperature switch, it trips a relay that changes the ignition timing in the distributor. If this is not working properly, then it could be using the "cold start" timing which will cause the engine to run rich and misfire at low rpms.

NewZed, you hit the nail on the head with the FPR. I disconnected the vacuum line and jumped the fuel pump, and sure enough I got a steady stream of gas out of the vacuum side. It is a brand new FPR, so it was pretty low on my list of potential problems, but once you said what you thought might be the issue, it clicked in my head immediately as making a lot of sense and sure enough you were right. Thank you very much!!! I am still going through and testing the rest of the fuel system just to be safe, and I plan to check the return line for blockages just in case something came loose in there and caused a pressure spike that blew out the diaphragm. I will be sure to post once I have it running. Again, thank you for the help! Cheers

Thanks for the ideas NewZed. I have gone over things so many times in my head that I feel it is getting all muddled up. It is nice to have a fresh mind to help me troubleshoot Good point on the FPR. The FPR is new, but I will still double check that. I did think that it could be that the pump is kicking on early due to the AFM Fuel circuit test I did, but I don't hear the pump kick on and fuel pressure does not go up with the key in the on position. The engine does not flood with the key in the on position either (at least not nearly as fast as cranking it). It only seems to flood when I crank the motor, but I will leave the key in the on position for a while and see if it floods after a longer period of time. When I do crank it, it floods quick enough that it won't start. The first time it flooded out it had started for just a few seconds and then cut of. About 10 seconds of cranking was enough to fill the manifold. I also hadn't though of testing the injector pigtails with the noid light while the key is in the on position and not cranking. I will try that as well. Thanks again! I will post my results.

Hello all! I know this is a lot to read, but I am trying to be thorough and give as much info as possible. If you don’t want to read it all, you can skip to the last few sections and get the general idea of my current issue that I need help with. Thanks in advance! First, a little about me/the car: I have worked on cars for about 13 years now. I don’t consider myself a pro, but I consider myself fairly knowledgeable when it comes to cars. I have rebuild motors, help friends restore cars, done motor swaps, and do all my own maintenance. However, I know that every car is different and comes with its own unique issues/methods, so there is always something to learn. I bought a 76 280Z about a year ago and have been slowly fixing it up. This is my first Z so I knew it was going to be a learning experience (which is what I wanted) and so far I feel that I have done quite well with it. It was in pieces when I got it. The previous owner had blown the head gasket and had decided to take the opportunity to throw in a Chevy V8. He got as far as striping everything out of the engine bay and then decided he wasn’t interested. Luckily all the parts were there (albeit in many many boxes) so I decided to jump on it. I picked it up for cheap since it was an unassembled puzzle that needed some work. I decided to rebuild the stock L28 and put everything back in. I have completely dissassembled, cleaned, and powdercoated the suspension. There was a little rust in the usual places, but I have gone and cut out/fixed all of that. The interior was mostly bare and I have been working to fix it up. I will be posting up some pictures of the work before/afters of what has been done so far. This is in no way a full restoration project. The goal a solid project car that will be fairly reliable and I can drive every day if I want. I am trying to keep it a budget build so I have been doing all of the work myself (aside from machining the block and head). I am in the final stages of getting it back on the road, but have run into a big issue. Before I get into the issue, let it be known that I have had the FSM and FI Bible for it since day one and have been over them many times throughout the build. I have done searches on the forums but have only found one other post that had similar problems and so far, doing what that person did to fix the issue has not solved the issue on my car. I have tested just about everything I can using the FSM and FI Bible (and I will go into some more detail about that), but have been unable to solve my issue and I am ready to farm this out to the Z community for any suggestions and advice. The problem is as follows: When I first got the motor back in and everything hooked up, it would start fine and idle decently, but had a bad misfire under acceleration and once warmed up real good, would occasionally sputter and die at idle. The severity of the rough idle/acceleration seemed to vary quite a bit over the coming weeks trying to diagnose and fix the issue. I adjusted the ignition timing and it seemed to help a little but it did not completely solve the issue. I installed a fuel pressure gauge in line (was planning on doing that anyways) and it shows normal pressure as described in the FSM. I pulled the plugs (which are new) and they were covered in soot, so I know that it was running very rich. I figured that it could be sticky injectors (the only thing aside from the pump that I didn’t change in the fuel system) so I went ahead and swapped them all out. I was able to get a new set of Bosch injectors on a closeout price so it wasn’t a big expense and probably would have needed to be done anyways since the car sat for over a year. Still ran rough. In the past month or so (I have a very busy schedule during the summer so progress has been a bit slow) I have accumulated only a few miles from taking it up and down the driveway and around the block once to test out whatever adjustments I made. Currently the car will not start (yeah I know, you’ve heard it many times before in the “my car wont start please help me!!!” posts). It all started when I last took it down the road for a test and then after the motor was good and warmed up I turned it off. When I went to crank it up again after about 2 minutes it started briefly for about 5 seconds and then died. I cranked it again to try to start it and would get nothing. I popped the hood to have a look and saw fluid pouring out from near the radiator. I thought “crap, busted the coolant system”. I go forward to have a look and realize that it is fuel pouring out of the intake filter. You can imagine my alarm when I realize I have a ton of gas pouring out of a hot engine! I let the car cool down and started the process of evacuating the fuel out of the cylinders/intake. The car will no longer start at all, it will just immediately flood. On to what I have done to try to fix the current flooding issue: I searched the forums for stuff like “fuel coming out of the air filter” and was only able to find one really closely similar post, found here: http://www.classiczcars.com/topic/43951-1978-280z-fuel-pouring-from-throttle-body/ Reading through this lead me to the common “bad CSV” issue. I have since blocked off the CSV entirely and yet it still floods. I have hooked up a set of noid lights and cranked the motor (with fuel pump unplugged of course) to test that the injectors were getting a pulse from the ECU instead of being stuck on, and they were all fine. I tested the AFM directly with a multimeter and it checks out. I tested the main connector to the ECU and everything checked out within the specs lain out in the FI Bible with one possible exception. The page for “Air Flow Meter Fuel Pump Contacts” (page 53, Test #1-(5)). It says when the AFM flap is at rest there should be no continuity, and that when it is open there should be continuity. What it doesn’t say is whether or not this test should be done with the key off, or in the on position (some test state to have the ignition in the on position, while others do not). When I run this test with the key off, it checks out fine. But when I run the test with the key in the on position, I get continuity all the time regardless of flap position. If I understand the system correctly, this circuit is what keeps the fuel pump running when the engine is running, and shuts it off when the engine stops running. So to me, I would think that this test should still have no continuity with the flap at rest and the key in the on position. Is this correct? If so, I feel that it might be that the AFM is bad, but when I test the AFM directly with the multimeter, it seems fine. I just don’t want to start replacing very expensive items to diagnose. Clearly something has changed after the first time it flooded out because that is all it will do now. I was thinking maybe the first time it flooded, gas got into either the AFM or TPS or something, and is causing a short or false signal and telling the ECU to pulse longer than it should, or pulse at the wrong time. I opened up the ECU and it looks perfect (no bulging components, no burns, clean as a whistle). Since the last time it flooded, I have dried everything out and completely disassembled and cleaned the BCDD (which was full of fuel). I did a compression test again and so far it looks like no mechanical damage has been done as a result of flooding the motor a few times. I cant find anything wrong (and it could be that I am missing something), but I am reluctant to keep trying to start it because of the clear risk of causing mechanical damage if it keeps flooding. Sorry again for the extremely long post, and thank you very much if you took the time to read through it all and reply. I tried to be thorough, but in my long post may have left something out. If so, I apologize and will add info as requested. Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated! TO RECAP: The engine used to run, but misfired and was running very rich. One day it flooded out to the point of fuel dumping out of the intake and now that is all it will do. I have tested the AFM and ECU harness and as far as I can tell it all seems to be pretty good. Parts that are new are the injectors, ignition coil, plugs, FPR, fuel filter. I get spark, and fuel pressure is good. I have blocked off the CSV entirely, so it is safe to say that it isn’t what is dumping fuel into the intake. ECU looks good and I have tested each injector plug with a noid light and am getting a pulse. It could still be that the ECU is sending a longer pulse than it should, but I don’t have an extra ECU around to see if there is a difference.

No problem. Good luck in you search. A road trip purchase sounds like an adventure for sure.

Tony-D is correct. 280Zs after 6-76 had a larger fuel tank so they switched to the 'space-saver' spare tires due to the raised rear. And of course the 5-speed wasnt offered until the 77 model year. I would suggest finding a pre 6-76 280Z and then swap in a 5-speed. Swapping in a 5-speed is relatively simple and is ideally the only way (that I know of) that you can get the exact combination that you want.

I agree with NewZed. Unless the previous owner swapped out the differential for something else (unlikely) then it already has an R200. 280Zs all had R200 differentials, but they were the open-diff variations. There is another R200 differential that is limited-slip, which is the one I assume you are referring too.The LSD R200 that most people go for is the one out of an 87-89 300ZX turbo.