Jennys280Z

Wow that is very good ideas and thanks for the conversions. I remember that you can just take the fraction in inches, multiply times 25.4 and get metric mm's! I just spent over an hour digging through drawers trying to find a good metric straight edge and realize I don't even have one. But I do have a tape measure in metric so I'm saved! yippee;)

Gosh I'm the same. Just short trips, combined with my loose alternator belt. Actually, right before it started backfiring and really running bad, I started it only to back it out, then shut it off. Then started it again to pull it forward then shut it off. So that was two REALLY quick trips for sure hehe I have a little charger I can recharge my battery before I run it again. I'll have to tighten my belt and then see how the battery holds a charge. It's still under warranty until summer so at least that's a bit of good news for me for a change. I'll pass on the clamps as I should be able to find some hoses that fit good enough. Thanks for your help torker!! You're right I might want to look at my plugs too.

Thanks everyone! I want to do everything I can to save this AFM before having to replace it and I'm really pretty upset about this. I hate how my manuals really don't have a good exploded drawing of my AFM and all the parts named for me. Even when you guys say "front cover" I feel like I can't be 100% sure. I took a few photos of the underside of my AFM by sinking my camera down under it, because I can't see under there no matter which way I try to look, and it's a long stretch from the bottom-up even if I jacked up my car and got underneath (which I don't like doing, and like to have at least 2-3 reasons to do it before I do ). I see a big black plug under there which I guess is a main connector I should clean...I have some newbie questions and I'm scared to touch my AFM already because of what the mechanic said so please help me! Is that the big plug I need to disconnect and clean? If so how does it come off? It looks like it just pulls straight off but I'm scared to tug on it until someone tells me how. And even if it comes off easily enough, is it keyed so it's easy to plug back in? It looks like it will be impossible to plug back in without being able to see what I'm doing and I don't think my my arm is long enough to plug it back in from the bottom if that's what is best! Also if you look at the upper left bolt (blurry) in the photo of the bottom of the AFM there is a single wire that is connected to that bolt (possibly with a ring-type end on it). Is this a ground? And if you look at the top of my AFM, right under the front cover there is a bolt there, and another wire connected to that (is that also a ground?). sblake01 thank you and I'm going to try to clean the Potentiometer like you said, and the AFM connectors too. I got some Dexoxit delivered today (I just found it at the door yaay!)! I have a newbie question about that too though that I hope you or anyone can answer for me. The cover (the black plastic cover) has some red stuff that looks like it's sealing it closed and you can see it on the photo. Does the cover just come straight off with a little pull from my hand? I don't see anything else holding it on there and again, I know how sensitive this AFM is and I don't want to put ANY kind of force on it that isn't correct/productive. And then once I have the cover off, how do I put it back on? Should I get some of that red stuff to put around the edges to seal it up again before I put the cover back on? The potentiometer looks complicated to me from the drawing of it I see in my EFI Bible and I wouldn't know what to look for to check if something is wrong so I'll just clean it with the Deoxit spray only and let it dry. Then after cleaning of course I'll make sure my battery is a solid 12.6V again from charging like you said as that might have an effect on my resistance values. Tonight I'm at least going to clean some other connectors that I've recently located/loosened: Oil pressure sensor (always read low on my gauge), Thermotime, Coolant Temp sensor, Firewall ground, EFI powers, EFI ground, bullet connectors, fuse box connectors...a few more I am forgetting. I'm not going to clean or spray anything on my ECU pins or connectors because they look so nice and clean already. Unless I can be sure I won't hurt anything by spraying Deoxit on it. Sorry I'm so wordy tonight! Someone please help! Thank you guys sblake01, Zed Head, WingZr0 and everyone else in advance!

Hi everyone! Well I did my little circuit tests tonight from my ECU's 35-pin harness connector and made a table on my clipboard to record the results. A few things on it look good but unfortunately a few also look very bad. I was hoping a few of the wizardly Z people around here could offer some sage wisdom about my results, from your experience, or whatever you'd like to say that's most likely stuff I don't know! I ran all the tests that overlapped with the symptoms I've experienced with my car recently, namely loss of power, backfiring and/or afterburning. Tests were run at approximately 50 degrees F. I don't know how to do a table in HTML off the top of my head so I'll try to type it manually in this format: Test # (according to 1976 FSM and 1975 EFI Bible), Reading, and Expected Value 1-(1), 0.7 Ohms, Continuity 1-(2), skipped 1-(3a), 226 Ohms, 180 Ohms 1-(3b), 199 Ohms, Continuity 1-(3c), 125.9 Ohms, 100 Ohms 1-(4), 3960 Ohms, 3250-4150 Ohms 1-(6), 4290 Ohms, 3250-4150 Ohms 1-(8), 68.7 Ohms, Continuity 2-(1), 10.67V, Battery Voltage 2-(2), 10.88V, Battery Voltage 2-(3a), 10.87V, Battery Voltage 2-(3b), 10.87V, Battery Voltage 2-(3c), 10.86V, Battery Voltage 2-(3d), 10.86V, Battery Voltage 2-(3e), 10.85V, Battery Voltage 2-(3f), 10.84V, Battery Voltage Battery Voltage between posts after tests completed: 11.23V So it seems that my Air Flow Meter is in trouble, doesn't it? OH NOOOO :paranoid: And I don't think that 68.7 Ohms is exactly "Continuity" in 1-(8) either. sigh I would guess that everything else looks fine, aside from the undercharged battery, I hope all my injectors are getting a healthy % (~96.7%) of that voltage and I would presume they are. I've never opened up my AFM and touched the little valve in it before so I won't really know how it's supposed to feel when it feels right. Or the throttle body's either for that matter. Hope to hear from you guys soon on what you would do if you were me at this point. Or what you would do if you were you! hehe Thank you!

Hi Torker, I hope you're right and it is the battery! (aside from my alternator belt grrrrr!) I knew my batt had a drain and that was one of the reasons why I didn't drive my car more often the past few months, and I would usually use a portable starter/charger to charge it up before starting it and driving it; though the last four times I've driven it, I did not do that, and it ran progressively worse. After running my ECU tests tonight, it's testing at 11.15V between the posts. Since that's >1.5V less than what I want, I suspect my voltage while running will be approximately the same difference. And perhaps ~12.2V isn't enough for my car to run good. At least, granted that the charging isn't working well, the alternator belt is probably slipping. I guess you think that some of their standard sized vacuum hoses at NAPA (1/8", 1/4", 3/8", or 5/16") will be close enough to the metric sizes. That sounds right as vacuum isn't that major of a deal but I also don't want fitment issues if I can help it. Some people talked about twis-ties or something to fasten the ends tight. Do you know something I could use like that to do a really good job?

Hey Zed Head, nope I don't have 33-36 or any other California stuff that I know of. I wonder if some mechanic removed my vacuum switching valve/piping on purpose? And having a transmission that expected this wouldn't mind the lack of it? This car was worked on at one point by an SCCA racer who brought the car back running remarkably well from a tuneup one day. I knew absolutely nothing about cars at the time but we were wondering how the car felt so fast. He scolded my b/f when we picked the car up to "not mess with the AFM" for some reason, though my b/f never messed with anything under the hood as he didn't know anything about cars either He would resent me saying that so I ought to be fair...he knew a lot more than I did, I'm sure... One reason I'm suspicious now about who did what to this car while working on it in the past is my alternator. I noticed my fan belt (crank + fan + alternator belt) is loose. I can move it about 1.5" with my thumb instead of the 0.5" I'm supposed to. My battery is only getting 11.51V between the posts with the car not running. I wonder if any of this could affect how my car is running (no power, rough), if there is weaker than normal voltage in the system from the battery. So I looked at the bottom of my alternator where there's supposed to be two bolts holding it in place and there is only one bolt (the front one is missing) and unfortunately the rear bolt is seized/glued. I suspect if both bolts were present this might not have gotten so seized over the years in the first place. I had my neighbor try to break it loose for me and the socket got stuck on the bolt head! I had to get a mallet and hammer it off. The 12mm bolt is now rounded. The simplest thing to do and I can't even do it now. :mad: The belt slips in my hand just from pulling on it too so I'm surprised I didn't hear it whining before while running/driving the car. I doused the bolt in WD-40 but at this point my only recourse might be to jack it up and try to use a vice grip or failing that, take it to a garage and have someone else do it. sigh Before my car started running bad I took the fan belt off my A/C compressor. I don't suppose how it's possible this could make my car run badly but nothing surprises me anymore. If anything I thought I'd get a bit better gas mileage and a couple horsepower from doing it but i got backfires and no power instead. Anyhoo my clutch master cylinder was like...empty too. I filled it up (the liquid is dark now--has stuff floating in it). I never checked it after the years the car was just sitting. It's things like this that make me feel so stupid sometimes. I guess I just have to learn, the hard way if necessary. Thanks for your help! Jen

Except for a Z that isn't running great, and this time, I mean suck in a bad way. :kiss: For people who don't like reading my long-winded questions, my quick & dirty issue is trying to size these vacuum hoses so I can replace them. Okay now I'm going to sound authoritative: In the L28's piping there are three sizes of vacuum hoses. Small, medium and large. Looking at the "Fig. ET-1 L28 engine system piping" I attached, an example of a large hose would be #32, the 3-way connector to rocker cover rubber hose. An example of a medium hose would be #4, the Canister purge line. An example of a small hose would be #51, the 3-way connector to throttle chamber vacuum hose. I am pretty sure these hoses are sized by their inner diameters, and I have to suppose they are metric sizes (like everything else on my car, right?) Does anyone have the sizes of these hoses? Yup, I know what you're thinking, I could just pull them off and take them to a parts store, but NAPA doesn't have metric sizes, and I don't know if standard sizes are interchangeable enough to be an option, nor what the proper substitutes would be, even if they were! The hoses seem fragile on my car and the vacuum hose to my distributor is cracked at the t-junction and the others on that little t-junction seem to be barely hanging on. Not sure if this would effect how my baby runs, but replacing most of these hoses is a job I want to do anyway so might as well get it over with in these cold months when I don't drive much anyway! I looked all over the forum at other threads and couldn't find this information anywhere. I Googled, even searched other Z-car forums and the best I got was a thread about this where someone was answered with a private message. Whats all the secrecy about? I don't belong to that website and I want to stay here and that thread was ancient anyway and...ok ok I'll stop ranting now Also I'm really curious about something that doesn't make sense about my car. I have a non-California manual transmission 280Z (I know stuff too, see?), and the double-asterisk part numbers on the diagram (#13-16) are supposed to be for "Non-California Manual Transmission models only". Well that's my car and I don't have ANY of those parts on my engine. BUT, the little picture at the upper left corner of the diagram (#5, 50, and 51) I DO have on my car even though they are for "All except Non-California manual transmission models". So I'm wondering what the discrepancy is. Is the wording in the manual printed wrong? I have to admit, some of the English in here sounds somewhat roughly-translated from Japanese, domo arrigato. Or, is some weird history of my car the culprit? I know the history of my car though. The original owner was a teacher in Georgia and the 2nd owner was my ex b/f so I know this isn't some California car that got de-California-ed. And one more curious thing. I read in Tom Monroe's book on L-engines that an easy way to check the PCV system is to start the engine and while it's idling, remove the oil-filler cap and hold a piece of paper over the hole to see if it gets sucked down into the hole. If there is suction then your PCV valve is working and unobstructed and you're good to go! Mine sucked on the piece of paper so my PCV system is good. But my Z has been idling crappily and running crappily lately, and I promise that when I took off the oil filler cap my idle speed seemed to increase and run better. I read a few people say on this forum that when you take the oil filler cap off, the engine should almost stall out?! (if your vacuum plumbing is good n tight?) Why wouldn't mr Monroe mention that in his book? (because he doesn't know I'm a NOOB I guess) and how come my car didn't start to sputter and die, but actually seemed to idle a little better (it sounded to me like a healthy 800RPM than the shaky 600-700RPM I was getting) than before I opened the filler cap?

ECU plug came off easily, and as described on this thread, when I removed the ECU unit itself. Thanks to everyone for their help here!

Thanks so much FastWoman! Yup, y'all made a consensus on what to do and I'm confident on how to do it now! One of my issues is that I don't push or pull (or whatever) on things hard enough and it's NOT because I'm a girl it's because I just don't want to break it. :laugh:

Thanks Idaho Kidd! Yup I'm thinking that making it more flexible by pulling it off is best based on how tight it felt last night when I was pulling on it! Aww I almost got lost thinking there were metal retainers on my ECU! Yes there are retainer clips there! I pulled them out with my little slot screwdriver tonight and the connectors slide right off! Thank you! I am SO glad I didn't just start pulling on them like a NOOB (I mean, like ME! ) Oh I am wondering why I didn't mention what year my Z is anywhere...it's a 1976, and on my little plate it says it was manufactured in 11/75 Thank you for your help! I love this site!

Hi Zed Head! Yup, Guitar Center carries Deoxit D5. None of the Radio Shacks carried it though. They all had their own Radio Shack brand of contact cleaner instead. I ordered the D5 online, though I have to wait for shipping, I'll avoid a very long drive and save some money for my time. But so many people say so many good things about the Deoxit product, now including you, I decided to order and wait for the good stuff! Thanks for helping me with the ECU connector. I still don't want to pull on it too hard but I'll look at it again this weekend. I understand though what you mean by having to pull on the harness. It was tight when I was trying to swivel it off, and that was another reason that caused me to think that it might come straight off instead. At this point I'm probably going to just take the whole ECU out so I don't have to pull on the harness. Hopefully doing that won't dumbfound me when I get under the dash and look at it again. I'm assuming that all the connections to the ECU are at the front (the harness plug) and there's nothing behind it that will keep it from coming out (other than bolts). Again thanks for your answer. The way you worded it was easy for me to understand :)

Thanks Tyler! I love this forum already. Even just randomly reading many threads for something I wasn't looking for can give me insight I didn't previously have. Yup, the ECU plug has to be pulled out-and-down! It still seems scary to me to pull it like that. I don't know how I can do that without bending anything but I guess if the little pins are short enough... Well I ddin't leave the car sitting for a year exactly. I drove it more often when the weather was warmer, and even then only for fun, but I filled the tank up about a year ago, and only used about 80+% of that tankful driving around for a year. I just didn't drive it very much but for little 5-mile jogs around town(I use my uber-reliable Toyota Camry for daily/groceries ) A friend inspected my cap and rotor a year ago and appear to be in great shape, I checked the condition/gaps on the plugs myself a year ago and they were also in great shape. I replaced the fuel filter too a year ago. I almost got inside Autozone tonite to buy their CRC (probably good stuff because I read that Boeing authorized using it on their aircraft) but I wheeled into the parking lot on the way home at about 8:59 and the door was locked (they close at 9:00 ) so I just ordered some Deoxit from a vendor on Amazon who sells it for only $12.99 a can. I got a vacuum gauge too (yippee!) that I'm planning to hook up to the intake manifold in place of the brake booster...which leads me to probably the next question I needed help with... http://www.amazon.com/CLEANERS-LUBRICANTS-CAIG-BRAND-SPRAY-Solution/dp/B00006LVEU/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1264741430&sr=8-1 http://www.amazon.com/Equus-3620-Vacuum-Gauge/dp/B000EW0KPY/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=automotive&qid=1264741453&sr=8-2-catcorr I want to replace all the vacuum hoses in my hood but I don't know what size hoses to get. I would guess everything on here is metric sizes. I suppose there's a standard size hose that would be close enough to work but I dunno. THANK you for your help!! :classic:

Hi all! I'm new to this board and actually have spent several weeks here before signing up just reading/searching posts and trying to gain knowledge. A few years ago (July 2008 or so) I become the happy (well lately NOT happy) owner of a 280Z that was garaged and not-driven for many years. Well it's been an experience since then...lots to do! It was running fine until a week or so ago when I started it and it began backfiring horribly, and idling rough, and running rough (no power:disappoin) I realized the gas in the tank was a year old so I drained it and added 6 gallons of fresh 93 octane. The backfiring stopped but it is still running rough (though somewhat intermittently), still seems to have no power (like it's missing or not firing on all cylinders), and so I wonder what's wrong. I started to inspect the connectors all around the car (the famous ones as I've read about here and elsewhere) and the first one I started with (the EFI power connector from the battery), the brittle plastic clip that locks the connector shut broke as soon as I pressed it with my thumb! SOOOO I realized before I start touching/fumbling with fragile/brittle connectors in ways they're not meant to be handled, I thought I better start asking professionals for some help on how to disconnect them the right way. It isn't clear to me intuitively how to take off connectors like the water temp and thermotime sensor, AFM connector, etc. I think I've got the fusible links, firewall ground, EFI ground, and EFI power connectors figured out though! But, I'm not even going to pull on those until I have some 'Electrical Contact Cleaner', and then I'm torn between getting some cheap CRC down at the Autozone or splurging on a little can of Deoxit, which I have to order online apparently and wait for shipping. So to make things easier on myself (supposedly ) and on the car especially (haha) I unbolted the cover to my ECU as soon as I realized that all the circuits to all of the sensors/etc can be tested from the ECU (yaaaay!!!) BUT, I can't tell exactly how to remove the 35 pin plug from the ECU unit. I see there is a little metal clip to press and that releases the top end of the plug, and it comes out with a bit of pulling. But the bottom end of the plug seems stuck (there is a little plastic clip there on the bottom end of the plug, and it wraps around a little metal bar, like a hinge on a door). What I want to do is pull the plug straight off because I don't want to bend any pins but it only seems to want to swivel out from the top! So how do I get this plug off? Do I just keep pulling at the top so it swivels at the top (pivots at the bottom hinge) and then lift it up and out after the plug clears the unit? Or should I use a slot screwdriver and press that plastic clip up so the bottom of the plug can pop out with the top? (Already tried that and it didn't budge ) So for now I just pushed the plug back in, and almost started throwing things, but cried instead. Anyhoo, please be gentle with me! Yep I'm a newbie but that doesn't mean that I'm not just as passionate about my car (and smart in general) as you guys! Everyone has to start somewhere and I can't live on manuals forever (dying to troubleshoot my car!) Thanks guys! Jen