ZHoob2004

I contacted him to do a rear quarter replacement for which he quoted $200-300, but instead we decided to have him just pull and patch the panel that's already there plus some other miscellaneous welding. He's only doing the metalwork, no paint or filler. I haven't got the car back yet, so I can't say anything about the quality of work at this moment. I think he's going to do a good job. The welding on his projects in his garage looked excellent, and he seemed to know what he was talking about.

Craigslist can be a decent source for semi-pro welders. I just dropped my z off at a guy I found that way and I can't imagine he'd want more than a few hundred for that repair.

Either look up a diagram or measure it out (or just plug it in and see what happens). IIRC either one can be used as power or ground, but reversing them will reverse the direction of the sensor (making megasquirt think the throttle is closed when it's wot and vice versa)

I haven't decided yet. I kind of want to build my own (because I hate myself) but I'm having trouble finding a way to buy wire for less than the cost of a painless harness. Really I just don't like the painless fuse block and want to go with my own setup, but I would love their labeled circuits...

I'm in almost the same state and I'm taking the opportunity to replace (and simplify) the electrical system. I wasn't going to go so far as to put mesh under the cowl (it'll interfere with the washer nozzles and I don't want it visible) but instead I was going to make a screen sock that I can put over the air inlet to do the same job. I may make a pair of magnetic screens to put over the fresh air inlets as well to keep the foliage out of the cabin. Another mod I'm planning is to remove the factory heater valve and replace it with a vintage air servo heater valve, then figure out some way to control that using the stock heater controls. https://www.jegs.com/i/Vintage-Air/960/461171/10002/-1

Add some heat. Heat the spindle pin until it's red hot, then let it cool down. Should tap right out after that. The diff mount is interesting. It looks like the mount was tearing/tore through completely so they wrapped it in cable (and used longer bolts?) to solid mount the nose of the diff. You might want to switch to a RT style top mount since your oem mount is probably gone.

The wires broke off on mine, so I ended up using one similar to this (I think it's supposed to be for an F100 or something) https://www.napaonline.com/en/p/ECHIH200 Basically any large-ish capacitor will work. It's not expressly necessary for the car to function, but as mentioned it helps to clean up electrical noise and reduces interference in the tach and radio.

Your eyes can tell you if a fuse is bad, but they can't tell you if a fuse is good. Use an ohmmeter in continuity check to make sure. That fuse could be 40+ years old and simply come detached inside one of the caps.

I've never done it myself, but word on the street is you can dissolve steel bolts out of aluminum heads with an alum/water solution. It'll take a day or so to work, but should leave you with perfect factory threads and none of the headache of drilling.

The dash lights are on the same circuit as the marker lights, tail lights, and front running lights. All of these pass through the combination switch and out a single (rather small) wire in one of the connectors. On my car, that pin on the connector is heavily corroded and the whole thing gets pretty hot due to all the current. For troubleshooting, figure out what all doesn't work and trace the power from the source.

Could be the regulator or it could be the check valve in the fuel pump. I'm not knowledgeable enough to advise beyond this point.

The maxima has been FWD since 1984, so the differential won't be any use to you.

More than zero. Look at the gauge before you turn the key, then again when it's running. You want as little difference as possible between them.

For clarity with my comment about heat absorbed by fuel, I'm assuming that all fuel is vaporized and/or burned due to chamber heat/pressure by the time it reaches the exhaust port. Essentially, more fuel should always lead to lower EGT (from which we infer chamber temperature), and where the fuel enters the system shouldn't really matter as far as heat absorption. At the same time, entry point and atomization do have effects on power and efficiency, where it is most often relevant. Another angle on this: when running water/meth injection, does it really matter where in the intake tract it's being injected? My understanding was it's the phase change that's responsible for the cooling effect (AC for your combustion chambers), and there's plenty of heat/pressure change for this to occur. Another, another angle: if it doesn't run cool enough there's always water/meth injection

I haven't done any research on this, and I'm probably not thinking very well, but does it really matter where/how the fuel is added as far as the strength of the cooling effect? If we have the same mass of fuel, at the same temperature, vaporizing/burning, assuming the same EGT, shouldn't it have absorbed the exact same amount of energy?

I can't really give a fair judgement of how they're holding up as I've only got a few thousand miles on the car since I put them in. I'm hoping to have the refresh on the car done with a built motor by the end of the year, so maybe next year I'll have an idea of whether or not they're adequate.

It's usually not a big deal what parts or chemicals smell like, but this was significant enough that it left a serious impression on me. It was like an entire pack of cigarettes blended into burning tires and then compacted down into these two motor mounts. I could smell it from outside the rockauto box, to the point that I made sure not to open it inside.

I can confirm that. I used the cheapest mounts available on rockauto (I think they were $5 each). No real problems, but they're SAE on one side, metric on the other, they had a very strong smell straight out of the box, and I had to persuade the locating pins into their proper places. I haven't noticed any issues with excessive engine movement, but I'll have to follow up on that when I get my motor back to stock power or beyond.

Measure the top and bottom pin. the resistance between these two should not change when the throttle blade is moved. Essentially what you have with a tps is a resistor between the two outside pins and a movable center tap on that resistor (the center pin). The total resistance should not change, but how it is divided by that center tap will change as the wiper is moved along. If you want to get (somewhat) technical, the TPS is acting as a voltage divider, and is dividing the 5v reference voltage to a smaller percentage of that, which the ECM reads and uses to calculate its position. Extra side note not really related to the function: I wouldn't use that particular tps because the clip is broken, so the harness won't necessarily stay connected and could lead to some troubleshooting headaches for a pretty dumb reason.

It looks like with the early s13 engines, nissan used a tps with two plugs (the one you have separate). The plug attached to the body is (allegedly) a multi-position switch that triggers at different throttle positions for automatic transmission kickdown. The pigtail hanging off of it is the potentiometer (variable resistor) that can be used to calculate throttle position, which was used for EFI calculations (and is used for megasquirt). I don't recognize the one attached to your throttle body (maybe it's an aftermarket unit for manual transmission only), but you can find out by measuring the resistance with an ohmmeter. A throttle position sensor looks like this Measure ohms between the center terminal and either of the side terminals (probably). as you rotate the sensor, the resistance should gradually change in a consistent, predictable way. If it does, it's a TPS and you can use it. If instead of gradually changing, the resistance goes from zero to open circuit (or vice versa), it's a throttle position switch, like used on the l series motors, and that won't work for what you want.

Sounds like the starter is gone. As above, try a few gentle taps on the starter (don't want to break the permanent magnets), or try replacing it. Direct drive starters are $30 on rockauto, or you can spend a bit more and get a gear reduction starter for a 280zx (no real reason to). If you do get a replacement, be sure to get the one that matches your transmission (auto/manual are different)

Sounds like they actually do some inspection up there. Here they just look under the hood to make sure you have an engine. My EGR and evap were completely disconnected just like yours. If you just want to pass, I think you can just plug the egr valve into any port on the intake manifold and follow the diagram for the evap can. I'm not really sure about the "BPT valve." I'm pretty sure it has something to do with when EGR kicks in, but I don't know if it will have a negative effect on performance or emissions, but it'll probably get you past the visual just like that.

What did emissions fail you on? I have to do Arizona emissions (Tucson) and had no real problems with my 280z with all emissions removed. I failed the second time, but that was because of the liquid oil coming out of the tail pipe... Post up your emissions sheet, that'll give us a better idea where to start

Better diagrams here http://atlanticz.ca/zclub/techtips/electrical.htm 1977 diagram (single large page - full color) http://www.atlanticz.ca/zclub/techtips/wiringdiagrams/F77ZCAR-WIRING1.pdf On the 77 diagram, I only see one speaker (upper right area), so I'm curious if the factory system is mono. I'll try and take a look at my stereo Saturday, but it's a 77, has a period aftermarket stereo, and is completely apart, so I don't know how much help I'll be.

From your first thread: Get rid of the filter by the pump. It's not stock, and causes more problems than it prevents. Autozone has a fuel pressure test kit you can borrow (it's a pretty large deposit) and you can put it inline before the fuel rail and make sure you're getting fuel to your injectors. Back to the basics: fuel, air, spark.