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Please Help with my E12-80 Distributor Swap


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My 240z has been giving me trouble for way too long. At first I was having hesitations at highway speed or during aggressive acceleration. On reddit it was suggested that may have been a distributor issue. So I swapped out the points and cap and condensers and whatever else. Spark Plug wires swapped too. Still problems.

So I headed to the forums and decided that the distributor itself was the issue so I swapped it to an electronic distributor from a 280zx. Did some mild re-wiring, cut out the ballast (BW to GW and BW to terminal on coil) soldered and we were good to go or so I thought. It started up like a million bucks and drove off no problem. Go to get gas and Boom it leaves me stranded no spark.

I figured well it was an old coil maybe that was the issue, I change the coil to a NGK 240z coil. Starts up again great, go to get on the highway it dies I got nothing at the pedal. Cools down a bit we wiggle some wires it starts then we head off again, get home to check some stuff, no spark. Then I changed it to a new 1980 280zx NGK coil and swapped out the e12-92 module on the distributor to an e12-80 IC, Still no spark. I wired directly from my battery to my new coil skipping over the ignition. Still no spark. Re-did my negative battery terminal to my firewall and my negative to the engine/starter. Re-did the wiring between my coil and distributor and double/triple checked that I did it as per the wiring diagram. See here: https://imgur.com/gallery/G7adJPd

Wtf am I missing. The engine turns over so I know I got enough battery for that. I skipped the ignition and key so that cant be the issue. What am I missing here? Why can’t I get any spark? I’m so frustrated with this car right now. Any suggestions even dumb ones help.

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5 hours ago, brians240z said:

I would never have removed the ballast resistor from the circuit since both the 240z and 280zx uses it.  Here is a schematic that I came up with many years ago that worked for many years on my friends 1973 240z with a 1980 280zx distributor.

Z Tach wiring.pdf 2.14 MB · 0 downloads

 

The 280ZX does not use an external ballast resistor. The ballast resistor in the 240Z is put in place to give the points longevity. It cuts power to the coil when the ignition switch is in the on position. The ballast resistor is bypassed when the ignition switch is in the start position to give full coil power to the distributor for initial start up.

Edited by JohnH
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