I'm working on completely rewiring my Z using one of the Painless harnesses. Since these don't come with provisions for the rear defroster, I was just going to use one of the spare circuits to power it. I measured the resistance of the traces and got about 29 ohms which would give a current draw of about half an amp and about 5 watts of heating. My question is, do you think this would be enough heat for the defroster to function properly, or is the resistance of my defroster too high and in need of refurb? 

 

I appreciate the help on this one!

As your resistance is about 29 ohms.. that's too high.. It should be lower then 10 ohms.. my 280zx of 44 years old has around 5-6 ohms..

(and it has 1 line broken and i know the spot.. repair with silverglue.. is jobnr10232..😒)

I'm sure you have multiple interruptions in your lines (look with a magnifying glass and you will see the spots were it's broken!)

Use some silver glue (Little is enough) and put it on with a very small pointy brush.. careful!

Silverglue is very expensive as it contains a lot of silver and it conducts electricity very well! You can buy it in a few grams container.. anyway.. we can here in the Netherlands. 😏

Also ...  Look into the servicemanual(s) on this site!