cozye

only buy a vacuum advance dashpot after you have hooked up a mighty vac, put 18" of vacuum on it and observed correct advance.

The best way to check your vacuum advance is to use a vacuum pump. I don't know that you could suck on it hard enough. If you want to get real technical, you should do it while the car is running, vacuum line plugged off, hook up mighty vac to distributor, and use a timing light to see how much vacuum advance you are getting. then with the vacuum advance all the way advanced, start to rev your motor and check the mechanical advance. You should be able to check your total advance this way and rule out any mechanical or vacuum advance issues. Keep in mind that your vacuum test on the advance might work fine, but the dashpot on the side of the distributor could be leaking or not working either which would cause your vacuum advance not to work. If you are real careful, you can disassemble the advance mechanism, and clean it real well which will make it as good as new. I did this on mine, but it's tricky and I'd advise taking pictures because it's easy to get disoriented and not remember how to put the pieces back together.

You should be getting about 20mpg, if you aren't, its not running right. I would not go the injector cleaning route. I did this, and it was a huge waste of money. Yes, they did a flow test and one of them flows better now, however I still have leaking injectors once they get hot (they said they fixed that, but they have no way to test if their leaking at 300 degrees. I've got a box of new injectors that are going on.

I must admit, I am a bit jealous of the great riding you west coast guys have. That's a great excuse!

and if you haven't done so already, order this http://www.summitracing.com/parts/SUM-800160/SuggestedParts/?prefilter=1 and a 3/8 inch T fitting listed in the accessories.

fwiw, if it's popping through the intake as you suggested earlier, it's running lean, not rich. Pull the plugs and post a pic of them and that should confirm it.

Mine doesn't have it and runs fine. my BCDD still works though, and when properly adjusted does slow the rpm drop a little.

I'm interested

The car will run decently without the TPS connected, if you want to rule that out you can just unplug it. If you are giving it a bunch of throttle without the TPS, it will be lean so just use partial throttle when trying it out. IT will give you something to do while you are waiting on your fuel pressure gauge.

dont do anything else until you put a fuel pressure gauge on it. almost ALL of the EFI problems are related to fuel delivery, and perfect pressure is the key. A rusty gas tank, clogged filter, faltering pump, faulty fuel pressure regulator, etc.. can all cause your problem. There are lots of other causes too, but you can't even begin to go down those paths until the fuel delivery is 100% tested and verified.

If you find a section of a part that hasn't had much weather (like the underside of the license plate light), it's a dark metallic gray. I wouldn't call the sheen a matt or flat finish. It's not a high gloss as I mentioned previously, but if you wax a section that hasn't weathered much, it's some where between a low gloss and satin finish. I believe originally they were just a painted plastic part, evident by the finish wearing off on many of the sharp edges and sanding reveals a lighter grey or tan plastic underneath. Every example I've found of panels is weathered, faded, and most of the metallic worn off. Also, I don't think its the same finish as what the 240's had on them. On the 280, the mirror, license plate frame, license plate light, and tail light panels all have this metallic finish on them. My 280 had been garaged for 30 years, I believe the plastics hadn't degraded as much as many I've seen. I tried to go with more of a subdued sheen on my first attempt, but I couldn't get it consistent. I had to redo one of the panels do to a little separation in the coating, so I decided to go full glossy. Below is a pic of when I first painted it, it's the same color but the photo shows more of the metallic that gives it the gray look.

I used Duplicolor "Perfect Match" Universal Metallic black, then 4 or 5 coats of the clear per instructions. I wet sanded with 1500 a few days later, then used a fine cut polishing compound and rubbed out by hand. Since the panels are plastic, I wet sanded with 600 first, then used the duplicolor adhesion promotor recommended for plastics first. They are probably a bit shinier than original, but the metallic black is very close from what I can tell. If you could do a "semi gloss" finish, it would be closer to original i think. For my purposes, the glossy works just fine for me.

I just picked up the MSA replacement seat foam inserts. I'm still waiting on my seat covers, however I can tell you that I'm impressed by the quality of the MSA inserts. They are very dense, heavy and nice feeling. The molding is top notch. I'll reserve final verdict for when I get the covers in and try it out, however I think it's going to work very well.

Found some black metallic that is real close to the 280z original tail light panel color. I've been cleaning these up, refinishing the screws, cleaning up the chrome, and repainting the plastic panels for a couple of weeks off and on. The last step was a quick color sand with 1500 and some fine cut buffing compound. I'm pretty happy with how they turned out, however one of my chrome bezels is a bit faded. It will do until I find another.

Yeah, I'm watching ebay, there are a few out there but they are worse than the one I've got. The one I've got isn't that bad, it's just next to the passenger side it looks worse because the passenger side is very nice chrome.

^^, yes, sorry if that wasn't clear. I was merely pointing out that any oil would be fine. No whales oil or expensive shock oil needed. Motor oil or tranny fluid would work just fine.

Just the chrome bezel. It screws to the finisher panel. My lights, lenses, and finisher panels are all good.

I was wondering if anyone had a nice drivers side tail light bezel they could part with? My passenger side is beautiful. The drivers side chrome has worn off enough that it's pretty dull compared to the other side. I know it's a long shot, but if I could find a drivers side that has good shiny chrome, I'd be a happy camper.

When using cartridges, it's not important what type of oil is used. The reason for the specific light weight oil with the original struts is that they weren't self contained catridges like the replacements, the oil in the strut housing was used for the valving in the actual strut. In that scenario, different weight oils have a drastic affect on the damping rate of the shock, and the oil must maintain it's viscosity through a wide range of temperatures so that damping is linear.

And Sarah, if you decide to hack your ECU, let me know how it works out and where you end up

I second Sarah's assessment of using the AFM spring for adjustment. I tried this on my car as well, and while it did make the car run very good at lower RPM's and speeds, there was so little spring pressure that at the higher RPM and throttle openings the car fell very flat and did not work well at all. I suspect this is due to the significant change needed to bring the air fuel ratio back left the spring with so little tension, the flap swings open too easily and not linear like designed. I'm sure if you are only moving 3 or 4 teeth, its fine, but the change needed was too drastic for the AFM to handle. I tried several times to dial it in using the AFM (needed about 12 teeth), and it never worked anywhere near as well as just dialing up the water temp circuit. I played with this for a couple of months. And Sarah, don't forget that the AFM temp sensor richens the mixture up a bit at cold temps, what was it like 62 degrees ? That may explain your slight warm weather change.

It may be a moot point as MSA can't deliver the kits for the foreseeable future. I've got a black dragon kit in a box, I've heard that it's decent with some exception of the door weatherstrip. I'll find out in a few weeks.

#7 is the fast idle for AC, comes off the magnet valve. Since you don't have that, you can remove that whole piece and clean up the manifold. I can't remember #2 and my car is at the painter.

very nice

really good advice grnsky. This is pretty much what I've done. I did a bit bigger "sections", but the same basic concept. I did all the suspension at once, all the brakes at once, etc.. When I got to the body, I did one section at a time. I'm 9 months in and many thousands of dollars spent. Car is at the painter right now getting sprayed. Once I get it back, interior will be going in and it should start coming together nicely.