Just bought a 1983 280zx turbo. Car was setting for 2 years on a lot. It would not start after replacing the battery, so started doing some troubleshooting. Found that 5 of 6 plugs were fouled out. After replacing the plugs, the car now runs. It idles pretty well, but is sluggish when given the gas to speed up. I have 2 questions:

3 of the injectors are green and 3 are brown. does this mean that 3 are turbo and 3 are not?

The turbocharger does not give a positive boost like it should. The manifold gauge goes from negitive pressure to about 0 at best. I can spin the turbo by hand and it turned with very little drag. Is this normal? Could an exhaust restriction cause the turbo not to spool up?

P. S. I called an injector shop about flow testing the batch of injectors I have. They want 25 a piece to test. (ouch!)

Glad to be part of the Classic Zcar Club. This is so neat!:classic:

Does the turbo have any shaft movement? up and down ?

Is the air cleaner clean ? any cracks in the throttle body boots?

Have you done a compression test ?

280zx Fever, Thanks for wanting to help. Turbo shaft does not have any detectable movement up, down,side to side, or in and out. I'm reaching into the air intake side to test.

Air cleaner is new, checked the throttle body boots and they look fine. Forgot to mention, the compression test showed 150 lbs + or - maybe 3 lbs on all 6.

I have read other posts where the color of the injectors was the way to identify if they were turbo or not. This raised a major question in my mind. There would be no way this engine would run right if the injectors were of two different types.

Hope your weather is better than ours. Ice everywhere!

Hey Zcar people, I really need some help with my problems. See my post "mixed injectors" Thanks

Dan,

Can't help you about the turbo but $25 EACH seems rather high for testing. I had mine checked and cleaned for around $50 total. And that was for 7 injectors (don't forget about the cold-start injector). Did that quote include labour for removing and replacing them? If so, get a price without labour. They're a breeze to remove and replace. If you can't find anybody cheaper you could always test them yourself..

1/ Remove spark plugs.

2/ Remove the high tension wire from the coil AND the distributor (you don't want any possibility of sparking.

2/ Remove 1 injector at a time and adjust it so that it will squirt into a clear plastic 2 Litre pop bottle.

3/ Turn the engine over for 10 seconds and observe the flow pattern. If there is a noticable difference among the 7 then they need cleaning or replacing. If the squirt/flow patterns are similar and all are squirting around the same amount then I don't think this is your problem, even if they are not a matched set.

Does the car run differently at start-up vs warmed up? Possible thermotine switch or cold start injector issues?

Same crappy performance regardless of engine temp? Compression is fine. So, maybe timing, airleaks, bad gas? Car sat for 2 years, did you change/purge gas tank and lines, change gas filter? Did you pull the dizzy cap and check for accumulated dirt and crap?

Cheers

Peter

p.s. I got $^!# arse lucky with my '83. It sat outside in a sand quarry for 6 years. When I went to look at it for the first time I happened to have a spare battery and a can of quick start with me.

As I intended to use it strictly for spare parts I thought "what the hell" and hooked up the battery to see if it would roll over. It turned over real easy and ran fine as long as I kept squirting quick start into the intake.

Went home, got a fuel pump (off a '78) and an air tank (2 flats), went back and ended up driving it home. Even got into a race on the way back with an '82 2+2, but thats another story

Thanks Peter, Will take your advise and do some checking.

Found a good used set of turbo injectors on ebay. Going to swap them out to eliminate the mixed set.