Metro

Chelle is a member here and posts every now and then about her car. So not exactly new, but nice to see again.

MS uses an absolute gauage. With the car not running, it should read around 90-100kpa or 14.7psi depending on your elevation.

Sounds like what I went through. You will need to check the spark signal from MS. First of all, if you are using the FIDLE output, make sure you have a 5volt power source connected to the fidle output. Hook up a small LED to the FIDLE wire, when you turn MS on you should see the LED turn on. When you start cranking, you should see the light flicker. I had a lot of problems with the FIDLE method, because for some reason it was getting 1.2volts off of something else. Basically, it had two power sources on FIDLE and for whatever reason, the HEI module didn't like the signal it was getting - even though the LED came on and flickered like it should. So I used D14 (the fuel LED) to power the spark. You can read about it on MSnS's site. You don't need to do exactly what it says, because the instructions are for a HEI7.

I'm running 24s, but my car has had many little problems over the last month, a different version is the least of my worries. I'm not sure what's been changed anyway, might not matter very much to me.

I spent $400 on a very rusty and nasty looking 81, but it had a good motor with about 100k miles on it. Judging by the plates, it had sat for at least 7 years before I picked it up. So far the motor runs like a champ, I haven't bothered opening it up yet.

I put heatshrink wrap on and then soldered all the wires together. Looks much cleaner and more professional this way, IMO.

There's a bunch of posts on this, for example, this one.

I don't know when, I haven't been following it very much, but I think it's still a long way off. If you were holding out for UMS, MSnS-Extra has a lot (all?) of the features regular UMS will have. You can find more info about UMS's development on the MS forums.

Yeah, I know what you're talking about. Search and ye shall find.

Man, once you drive a L28et with no exhaust, it spoils you. It sounds so good when you get on it you can like feel the power in the sound.

I don't know how nice it is, but good ol MSA sells the fairlady emblems for $50 each. I could have swore VB sold the fairlady emblems too, but I don't see it in their catalog. I don't think anyone sells the 432r emblems anywhere, if you did find one it would probably be OEM and expensive.

I haven't driven it a lot with MS since I've hooked it up, but all summer I had it hooked up that way with the stock electronics. Been working fine so far.

Until I started driving my Z, I had never been pulled over for anything. The first month I started driving it, I was pulled over twice in the span of two weeks for nothing - rolling through an empty intersection and dirty license plate (??). They didn't give me any crap and I was 19 at the time. The second cop mentioned he had a 77z 280z, so I'm sure he just wanted to check out my car.

As far as Southern Oregon goes, there's a huge housing bubble going on in the Rogue Valley. Prices of houses have been pretty crazy for the last few years. But other than that it, it's a pretty decent place and you can autocross on a go-cart track in Medford

You can use a USB adapter if you need to. You just have to change a setting in the megasquirt.ini file to fix it. I had to use a USB adaptor for a while and couldn't save any page with more than a few settings (like the VE table). I did what they said and it worked perfectly after that. Search the forums on http://www.msefi.com for more info.

I'm using it and I don't have water hooked up to it. MS doesn't need to control it (I'm not sure if you would even want it to). You need to hook it up to a power source that's on while the car is running. As the metal heats up, it straightens out and closes the spring-loaded door, lowering the idle.

The 240z, 260z, and 280z are nearly identical externally aside from blinker placement and bumpers. If it has turn signals under the front bumper it's a 240z or early 260z. If it has blinkers in the grill and big *** bumpers, it's a late 260z or 280z.

I have mine in the j-pipe just before the throttle body. I would have put it in the cold-start hole too, but I didn't want to mess with aluminum shavings in the manifold.

Hmm, can't really comment on drivability, I had mucho problems with the stock efi (I think I fried the ignition transistor) and went to MS after only two months. It does seem to idle smoother and throttle response seems better. I'll definitely be raising it to 10psi, I have the grainger installed, but I haven't adjusted it. I don't have an intercooler yet, so I probably can't go much more than 10.

Well I'll post a few more updates from what I've learned. It's normal (or at least it works fine) when the FIDLE has power when the key is on run. So if you had a LED hooked up, it would light up when the ignition is on run. Basically my problem was, there were two sources supplying power to the FIDLE wire. Something on the MS board is giving it ~1.2 volts and then there was the 5 volts I supplied it. I still don't understand why that wouldn't work this way, I guess the HEI module just didn't like the signal. Yeah I saw some post from you about the holset turbos a while back. I've never met any of the hybridz guys around here, but there's like 4 or 5 on this board. As for my car, it's going to be back in paint jail soon to fix the damage from when I got rear ended last month. I'll definitely be hitting the drag strip this spring and hopefully I'll have MS tuned by then.

Well, I disconnected the resistor that connected the 5volt to the FIDLE output and voila, sparks again. So now I need to find where something is touching to give it power or disable all the mods for the VB921 ignitor I'm not using.

Ok, after playing with it some more it would seem that there is something wrong with the signal. It looks like HEI module won't spark if there's a constant voltage applied. So something is wrong with the FIDLE circuit - it grounds out the 5volt signal which is the opposite of what the HEI module is expecting. Problem is, I have no idea where to look to fix this, I think I'll hit the MS forums now.

Man, I'm really starting to wish I had gone with a carbed v8.. I don't know what it is with this motor, but it'll run great, then horrible, then great. There's always something going wrong I've had the car running with MSnS-E for about 3 months now. I've had various problems with it, but I was able to diagnose and fix it without any problems. A few days it was hard to start, just sputter and die. Then it wouldn't start at all and after a few checks, found it was spark related. MS was also slow to turn on after the key was turned, so I reflashed MS and reloaded my settings - solved that problem. I was hoping the spark problem was related to that, but no such luck so I continued on. My setup: Relatively stock 81 L28et MSnS-E - v3 pcb with all the goodies '76 VR Distributor MSD Blaster coil New GM HEI module New plug wires New NGK plugs Checked the coil and HEI module by running a wire directly from the coil to the battery. Touched the G pin on the HEI module to power and watched the coil spark. I also made sure the coil was getting 12 volts when cranking. Next thing to check would be the signal from MS, so I hooked up a LED to the FIDLE output at the HEI module. I have it wired up exactly like moby, getting power from the TPS reference. The LED turned on when MS turned on (correct?) and it flickered like it should when I cranked the motor. DMM read 4.83 volts and dropped slightly when cranking. All the sensors readings in MS look fine, so I'm really stumped. Everything I can think to check with the ignition checks out fine. Honestly, I don't expect anyone to find an answer for this. It has to be something crazy or something incredibly stupid I've missed.

Um, Speed has been playing F1 for 10 years, going on 11 years now. You might miss the races because they're aired live and rarely replayed at normal times. Most the european races are around 2-4am Saturday night for me. They also play the 2nd practice and all the qualifying live (more or less). I've only been watching the WRC on Speed for 3 years now, so I don't know if they used to air the stages as they happened or if they always did the recap show after the rally was over. Their coverage of Rolex, ALMS and various other american road racing series is pretty good. But I totally agree, all the nascar shows suck and I don't exactly hate watching nascar.

I only owned a '81 280zx for about a month (pulled the motor), but if I remember correctly, you have to use the key to open it. The keyhole is right above the license plate. If the shocks are good, the hatch will popup when you turn the key, otherwise, you have to turn the key and lift the hatch.