Captain_Zeros

Gee, I've got a gas tank or two that could use a good cleaning out :cheeky:

Maybe a little off topic, but the one time I ever had reverse rotation and puking smoke out the carbs was when I accidentally clocked my dizzy 180 degrees out like an idiot... then again it wouldn't run at all that way. It seems like it runs pretty well for the first 40 seconds or so of that video, so I'm real curious what the issue is. Do you have a different distributor/ignition-module(points even?) you could try? It might be confirmation bias but whenever I hear about HEI ignition modules there is a problem involved (then again nobody ever complains that their ignition is working perfectly either.)

If you've already checked everything then I'm down to grasping at straws, but what method did you use to adjust your float levels? On my Z I had far more luck adjusting with the sightglass method using a piece of clear tubing than trying to use the "hold the lid outside of the car and blow through a tube and move stuff around with a ruler" method. It's also possible you have a fat vacuum leak at the carb gaskets or the throttle shaft, I guess.

Looks pretty good, I can't tell if it's the angle or the lighting, but this area looks noticeably wavy to me and draws my eye

if it'll start easily on ether, then it should have spark and compression, leaving it as a fuel issue. Check the fuel filter in the fuel pump by the gas tank too (assuming it's still in the stock configuration back there), if it's clogged up that'll be an obstruction. I'd also consider seeing if it'll run out of a gas can to temporarily rule out crap in the gas tank/lines/etc if the car has been sitting, and it sounds like it has. That's a pretty interesting intake setup, I'm a little suspicious of it. The flat top carbs are known for being pretty mediocre, and one is designed to feed half an engine naturally aspirated. I have my doubts that one could adequately feed a whole engine with a turbo effectively.

Have you considered replacing your tach?

Nope, axle splines are different. It's a damn shame. Beta Motorsports makes a stub axle with subaru splines though, looks like wolf creek is selling them now. $500, but I guess that's still probably cheaper than hunting down an OS Giken LSD. Tranny & Rear Diff Parts Edit: Or you can have custom axles made.

I'm installing one right now on my '73 240z with r180 using the urethane top bumper and a stock lower mount if any curious parties want to see anything specific in the process, but I'm not bothering to document the whole thing because it has been done before a few times. I'm using the one from TechnoVersions and I swear it fits better than most of the gloves I own, the difference between being able to test fit it and not was scrubbing off the thin layer of road grime on the underbody.

Battery minus is the same ground as chassis ground, coil minus is not as you've found out. That's why they call it learning! A second or so of shorting on the coil probably won't kill it, but I'd go ahead and check the resistance if your meter can check ohms because it's easy to do and will give you one more piece of information. Testing Your Ignition Coil - Coil Resistance Test - How To Test Your Ignition Coil With an Ohmeter My 240Z has a ZX dizzy/coil/alternator in it too, so I have a grasp of how those bits work, but my car doesn't have an ECU so I haven't bothered to learn about 280z factory ignition :stupid: I have a thought in the back of my head, you said "distributor and alternator are both new upgrades/swap (new 280zx parts wired in)", did this problem start before or after you put in the new parts? Are they new manufactured parts or are they used parts?

Ok so, how were you measuring voltage at the coil? The coil is just that, coils of wire, the "plus" and the "minus" terminals are attached together inside the coil so if you're trying to measure it in-situ in the car, both are going to have power because the power is flowing through the coil through the meter to ground and that will show up as voltage. When your volt-meter isn't provided a path to ground current won't flow (if the ignition module is operating properly) unless the distributor's reluctor wheel is the right place to fire off the coil. Also, shorting the negative coil to chassis ground is generally not a very good idea. Automotive coils are designed to pulse very short periods to ground through either the points or through the electronic ignition module then off again, leaving a coil shorted to ground can overheat it and cause it to fail prematurely. Edit: how you really want to test the coil is by removing it from the car and measuring the resistance between the terminals as specified in the factory service manual to see if it's internally shorted out or not. Also go ahead and clean up and snug down all your connections in the area. It's possible your ignition module is going bad and that's causing a failure to spark, but unless you have a spare known-good one to swap in I'd go ahead and check everything else first.

Oh yeah, my car is only set up that way because I've yet to get a temperature sensor in a convenient temperature range and thread size yet. My fans are always-on for the sake of temporary convenience only, as that beats the mechanical fan with a thrashed fan clutch that I pulled out.

Yep! Downflow. For the visual learners: My car ran dead-center in the middle of the gauge on the hottest days with a 3 core 280zx radiator, and now that I have a dual electric fan assembly (out of a late 90s altima, $18 at the junkyard woo woo!) it runs about 1/3 of the gauge rock solid on 80 degree days, still haven't had a good 90 or 100+ yet here in Seattle since I did the swap though. (granted I have both fans wired to low speed, flick the switch over to dual high speed and I've got a hurricane under the hood) Other relevant data, I've got hood vents that actually exhaust visible wavy hot air, so I've got even more cooling airflow than most folks anyways: Sometimes I wonder if I'm the only guy out there with an early Z that actually runs cold

Looks like a confirm. This is a snipped out of the 1983 280zx factory manual, it looks like at the very least '83 zx turbos had hydraulic lifters that look like what you've got, and I found at least one google hit for somebody who swapped them out for solid lifters using a timesert threaded insert that fit the large hydraulic lifter hole on the outside and a junkyard earlier z solid adjustable lifter on the inside threads. Beware of capslock: http://www.cardomain.com/ride/3839420/1981-nissan-280zx/page-6/ I also found another forum mentioning that they've seen P90 heads with hydraulic lifters and P90A heads with solid lifters, so sometimes it can be a bit of a crapshoot of what lifters a given head might have circa 1983. What this means for practical purposes, is that your valves are (or should be) self adjusting with oil pressure. If the lifters stick in the up position, however, they can cause valve float just like too-tight solid lifters and will need servicing.

Interesting. Some googling tells me some late model 280zxs had hydraulic lifters, maybe this is that?

About 1/3 of a gauge warmer than my car runs, but I've got a 3 row 280zx radiator and now dual electric fans.

Just make sure you leave the end of the rope outside the engine, preferably tied to something that doesn't fit through a spark plug hole (like a big washer, or the firewall) :stupid:

I hate to be "that guy" but..... did you try setting the time to the specified correct value? More timing doesn't always mean more power.

Whoops! That's the spindle.

2 is the steering knuckle or knuckle arm, 3 is just an o-ring. (If I were to hazard a guess, I'd bet it's called "knuckle o-ring")

Sorry to go off on a tangent... but... Looking through my '74 PDF it seems to confirm the opposite: 1974 FSM page BE-33: On page BE-37 in the '74 book it also states "this tachometer is a voltage trigger type" (as opposed to the current trigger early tachs) except they seem to have recycled the old 4 wire art. Hmmm..... Also, all things considered, my tach has the early 7k redline face and from pulling it apart it didn't seem to be face-swapped from what I could tell, nor was there wiring harness in place for a four wire tach, leading me to believe the 3 wire tach was a mid-year '73 change at least on some cars. Late 73s have all kinds of little undocumented features in the electrical systems. (which is why I make a point of having a '72 FSM and a '74 FSM laying around at all times :cheeky:) Edit: my car is a June '73 build date, if that is relevant to anybody in the future (or present) reading this thread

it's just a roughly 2" by 1" piece of sheet steel with a 90 degree bend in it and a hole drilled in it that fits the big end of the flex hose. It'd be pretty trivial to fabricate with hand tools.

A standard 1973 manual transmission distributor has a single male terminal here next to the condenser (which is towards the engine block when installed): If it's an automatic transmission dual points distributor, it'll have a second connector, but I haven't messed with one of those myself. If it has a big black box hanging off the side with a couple connectors, it's a later model distributor with (only very) slightly more involved wiring

My '73 transmission took more than the FSM dictated, but I can't remember the actual amount. I went with the tried and true "Put more in until it pukes out the fill hole" method and I wanna say it took less than 2 quarts.

Straight outta the 1973 240z factory service manual! Always make sure you do your conversion factors right, lest you end up like the Gimli Glider

Actually my '73 240Z has a ground triggered three wire tach. Late 240Zs your mileage may vary with build date.