mjr45

E-tek has given you some great advice on painting your Z. I did mine last year with single stage urethane and got lots of orange peel which required lots and lots of sanding and re-coating. I believe the big issue with my paint job was poorly performing compressors I had 2 2.5hp 21 gal. compressors hooked in tandem doing about 9.1 cfm at 90 psi. Using a good HVLP gun I ran out of air pretty fast, my gun was rated at 4CFM at 40 psi so it should have worked but obviously didn't, I now have a much much better compressor does 17-18 CFM at 90 psi. So the point of all this is to make sure you have the right amount of air for the gun you are using and to use the correct tip size for your paint and primer. Have fun, its a learning experience.

Jenny I feel your pain, I have the same issues of poor cold idle and low vacuum, been messing with this for 6 months and still no resolution. Keep working at it, it will all come together.

Wish I'd had a rotisserie, would have made mine a lot easier. Its a bitch trying to weld lying on your back with the car just on stands, guess thats why my welds look like crap, that and just learning how to weld.

Yup, patina.

That is way cool.

Air cleaner cool, tail light bezel not cool. IMO.

Even though the 280 didn't come with stripes, I like them on mine, but to each his own.

I might have to look at that San Mateo car myself. My 280 is almost done so I need another project, my wife doesn't think so, but what does she know!

Walk away, look for a better car, the rust issues that you see are only half the problems you'll find. A car thats running when you get there tells me there are other issues that may be hidden. Just my 2 cents.

Wish I had 2 keys, I have one each for the ignition, doors and rear hatch. The local locksmith's wanted $100-125 per lock to re-key all the locks to one key! My ignition key also comes out in the Run position, but I haven't had any issues, yet.

Wade, you're right again. It sounds like from his first post that the car starts, dies after a few seconds, won't restart until a few minutes goes by then starts and dies.

Anybody tried the Dorman lower door hinge as a replacement part?

I've had my driver door off TWICE and tried both methods, the door alignment gets jacked up no matter how you do it.

A fuel filter can get clogged in a few seconds if there is crude in the line or old fuel in the tank, regular changing the filter is just part of routine maintainence. I change mine about every 6 months, it is after all a 30 year old car and I haven't yet dropped the tank and had it cleaned out, a project for this summer. I still think you a fuel problem, it fires up so that sorta rules out the ignition, but a new rotor and dizzy cap will only run a few bucks so it wouldn't hurt to change them.

Dump the fuel, put on a new fuel filter, plugs and dizzy rotor, then try it. It sounds like its running out of fuel after it starts, then has to build pressure back into the system before it starts again.

I agree with you Willoughby, and your cleaning solution sounds good, I'll have to try that next time I'm fixing wiring problems. Several times I've had to solder short (2-3") pieces of correct gauge wire to make connections work. Granted the wire color is not the same in some cases, but anyone tearing it apart at a later date should be able to see whats what.

Captain, The harness had been untouched as it came from the factory, but due to age and heat you'll find a lot of the wiring has cracked and broken insulation exposing small areas with visible wires. The other thing I've thru out the car is the wiring connectors are corroded and if you replace them, you have to cut back the wire to find fresh copper or you can't solder or put in new connectors. The solder won't stick to the old wires very well, but then when it comes to soldering I do a pretty good job of welding.

Captain, I didn't take any pics of the harness unwrapped, it actually didn't occur to me until after I had re-wrapped it, sorry. Basically there are multiple harness's in the thing with wires branching out to the AFM, TPS, CSV, AAM, injectors, water temp sensor, water temp sending unit, thermotine, and the gizmo (in the side of the thermostat housing) that senses water temp and makes some type of advancement adjustment which I have completely removed since the wires were toast and its not really necessary with a ZX dizzy.

Jan I was able to print up a 4 page copy from your attachment that I enlarged and printed, taped the pages together and viola' a decent color wiring diagram.

Thanks for all the input, tomorrow I'll clean up the ground to body from the battery - terminal. that'll let me know for sure there is a good ground. Thanks again.

I believe the temp sensor was the culprit, the bullet connectors had several spots where the insulation was broken and bare wire was visible, the wire at the connectors was also very slightly exposed and nasty looking, so I put in new ones on the temp sensor and the thermotine and hopefully that will fix the issue, we'll see. The AFM has the ground ring in place and there is the wire to - battery in place which I'll double check later today. I am amazed at the knowledge of the members here and always get answers to my sometimes silly questions. Thanks to all of you. You can sorta see the battery connections in this pic. This was before I unwrapped the FI harness. Jan do you know how I can get a large copy of the your wiring diagram, my computer will only print it on 8.5X11?

Jan, thanks for the info, and yes on my 75 there is the large black ground wire to the batt neg post which is probably the EFI ground. Wish I had that diagram a couple of weeks ago when I was redoing my interior electrical stuff, it would have made things easier to read.

I've stripped the EFI harness completely and haven't found any ground wire, however the ring clamp that holds the harness to the top of manifold I believe acts as the ground but I have no idea how, if that clamp is removed won't start, if its in place it'll start. I also replaced the bullet connectors to the temp sensor and thermotine, the insulation was cracked and broken close to the connectors. There were also a red and green wire in the harness to the temp sender that had been cut off and just bare ends which I also wrapped with electrical tape to give some insulation. After all the above, I touched, shook, squeezed, flipped about all the wires and no problem. I hope that its fixed, we'll see.

75 280Z with EFI, new EFI connectors all around, injectors, CSV, thermotine, temp sensor, AFM, TPS, AAM also new thermotine switch, temp sensor, CSV and AAM. Today while tinkering I found out that if I touch the EFI harness wires to the thermotine, temp sensor, the temp sender or CSV, the engine dies. There is no ground wire that I can find on the EFI harness. The engine runs fine as long as you don't touch any of the wires I mentioned. Since I'm basically not very good with electrical stuff I'm lost.:tapemouth

No offense meant, but I've never seen any number like that painted onto a Z.