bhermes

I guess I will fill up the tank this weekend. Then drive until empty or until it breaks down. What a shame, a weekend of driving the z. Has anyone had the hole in the pick up line and actually repaired the tank or is this a basic tank replacement at that point. I guess the cart before the horse but just preparing for the worst. Car sat empty for close to 15 years which is probably common for some of the cars out there. Plenty of rust in the tank when I dropped it. Wish me luck and if the car breaks down hopefully somewhere interesting.

Ok, I will check the other reading and carry starting fluid. Long story short about 30 days ago I drove the car from one house to another about 10 miles and the car wanted to die a few times or appeared to be struggling for gas. Did make it home. I was suspecting fuel pump issues but without going into long detail the car might have just been low on gas (should of had 4-5 gallons but I think someone was running the car daily for about 60 days prior to me getting the car back - a friend, cant really blame them). The car has sat for about 30 days and had trouble starting. I added about 1/2 gallon of gas and the car did start. I have since added 5 gallons and drove the car around the block with no issues. I was hoping for a little better weather before going for a long drive. I hope to get out a little more this weekend. The other possible problem may be a hole in the pickup line. I think I will see how much gas it takes to fill up and see how low I may have been. Thanks and I will reply in a few days.

This may be a dumb question, ok questions can not be dumb but the person asking may be. Where should I spray the starting fluid? Does 28 psi sound correct or is it not that telling?

A quick update. I have been having issues with my 76 280z leaving me stranded on the road about once a week. I suspected that I may have rust in my gas tank causing the issue. Initially confirmed by seeing brown specs in my fuel filter and confirmed after dropping my tank. I cleaned and re-coated my tank with red-Kote and re-installed. I replaced the fuel filter but did not replace my fuel pump. It was recently replaced and thought I may be able to save it. I hooked up a gauge after the filter and reading about 28psi pressure at idle and pretty consistent when I rev the engine. Also checked in gear but not yet during actual driving. I know there are a few posts but bare with me, again not a mechanic. Does the value sound correct. I have read posts about 36 psi and gauge pressure vs atmospheric pressure and so on. Can I assume with this reading that my fuel pump is acting properly. Thanks in advance. Trying to get ready for new paint job in a couple months but want to make sure the car is mechanically sound.

I have begun searching for the measurements but there are a lot of posts to look through. In the mean time if anyone remembers where the dimensional post may be please let me know. My school has both metal and wood shop. I teach engineering so I am not sure what all they have in the shop. I will check with them and see if they have a duplicating attachment.

Not sure if this is still active; however, I am going to attempt to make a couple knobs from bowling pins. I went to the local bowling ally and they were more than happy to give me a couple old pins. I teach at a high school that has a large machine shop. One of the students is going to make the knob as a class project. I do not have a sample of an old knob so I am going to wing it. Make to my liking the best I can. If successful I will let everyone know and who knows maybe I can make more.

Ok, I have been out of commission for a little while. Anyone out there have pioneer speakers TS-X11's they may want to part with. I know that this is a long shot but doesn't hurt to ask. Showing my age but trying to recreate my system from 1979. Long story but I have the radio from my car I owned in the late 70's early 80's and would like to get the system working.

Thanks and kind of understand what you are getting at. I will be doing the following two days after x-mas. - trying to determine what rpm's the car is actually running (runs best with gauge at 1100 rpms) - checking fuel pressure at variuos rpms - Performing yogurt cup test - and checking vacumm pressure for good measure I will report what I find. I am leaning toward the need for a new fuel pump or at least find the screen and clean out and possibly an issue with my fpr. I hope I can test and eleminate or prove these two parts first. I do have an issue also with the boot at the AFM.

I am confued a little on the fuel sending unit. Not sure if all models are the same but I am not sure how the sending unit being bad would cause fuel delivery issues. Again, I am not that knowledgeable, but I thought the sending unit just sent a signal to the fuel gauge. My fuel gauge does not read properly or at all. Appears to be stuck on half full. I did clean the sending unit and check and it appeared to be working at least the best I could tell. Had a little trouble getting consistant resistance readings. As far as the pick up line I guess it could still be clogged but when I blew air into the line I could hear air flow in the tank. I initially thought maybe the pick up line may have had a hole causing air to get sucked into the fuel system. No real reason for thinking this just one possible cause of my possible fuel delivery issues. Finally settled on a rusty tank and it was definitely rusty. Just a side note with qauges, my car was running 18 plus volts until I upgraded the alternator and rewired. Not sure if this may have played havic with my dash and particular my gauges. Probably will not be able to check vacumm pressures and rpms for a couple days. The x-mas thing may get in the way and I probably should begin shopping at some point. Thanks.

In regards to rust in tank lines, I blew air into all the lines coming from the tank and appeared to have good air flow through the tubes. Looked where I could. I took the line aft of the fuel filter and seemed to be getting good flow but not completely sure what good flow looks like. I am beginning to wonder if the FPR is bad. It just seems to be when I ask for high demand, acceleration, the car wants to die. Not really sure how the FPR works. The coil connection on the wire coming to the coil seems not tight. Is this common or is it normally difficult to connect and disconnect. I am concerned that with all the moving of the coil prior to me clamping it down may have caused the connection to spread out. Is there a good way to test? I think I need to start with the rpm and vacumm pressure checks and see where those are and then move onto something else if ok. Does this seem like the place to start? In regards to barrowing a dwell meter I will try but I really do not know anybody that works on their own car. Hang out in the wrong circles I guess. Thanks.

Where can I get a rpm/dwell meter like the one in the link above?

This looks great. I will begin to try after getting the instrumentation. Again bare with me but when they start throwing around abbreviations I struggle. A lot to learn and grew up a jock. Grew up driving a z back in the 80's and they were not old cars then (very little mantinance required). Just fast driving. Where is the FPR, I assume fuel pressure regulator. After the diagrams for the pressure gauges things get fuzzy. I will try the first part of this and see where things are. Can someone tell me exactly what the canister that the rpm gauge is connected to in above link does? How it works? My car would not start a few times and I noticed that the plug to the cannister was loose. The mounting for the cannister is striped. I added a clamp to tighten but not sure if ithe part is working correctly. What problems would this cause if it is intermitent. Thanks

Only reason I am concerned about the pump is that I had a lot of rust in the tank and noticed a lot at the inlet of the fuel filter. Aft of the fuel filter seemed clean. I replaced the filter regardless but not the pump. The car would run fine for about a week or two and then just shut down. I assumed that the pick up line in the tank was getting clogged with rust and therefore I coated the tank. The only other thing I attempted was to adjust the tps and clean the air filter. I am going to adjut the rpms back up and see if the car runs better. This is where my lack of mechanic knowledge becomes an issue. I would like to check my actual rpms but have no idea how to check the coil pulses? Any guidance would be great. Thanks.

I know that there are many posts on the topic of running lean and the fuel system. Just a quick note again to let everyone know that I am an extremely novice mechanic. I know that most of this stuff is in the FSM but when I read for the first time it might as well be in spanish. With a little help from this group and the FSM I can usually figure things out. So bare with me. I have had a little help in this area previously but could use a little refresher. I just recently completed dropping my tank and coating. Tank had some rust issues. Initial question, my car seems to idle best at 1000 rpms not 800. I have played around a little with the TPS. I know that the FSM stated that the idel speed should be 800 rpms. Any comments? Is it typical that the AFM's need to be modified. I am not sure if the cone shaped air filter would cause the AFM needing to be adjusted. The car probably needs a tune up. I have replaced the plugs, fuel filter, cleaned the air filter (cone style). Second question; I did not replace the fuel pump after recoating the tank and suspect it may be clogged/bad. It is a relatively new pump (less than 500 miles) but subjected to rust. I have been told that the inlet to the pump has a filter but not sure. I removed the inlet and really did not see a screen but not sure if I should remove the pump to inspect. If I remove I may just replace. I hate to replace parts that are not known to be bad. Do most after market pump have a removable filter in the inlet? The car during driving and acceleration what to die like it is not getting enough fuel. Last for this post, can someone give me a little guidance on checking for vaccumm leaks. Where does the gauge need to go. I saw some posts about checking down stream of something and that vacumm leaks would be more prevalent at idle than running. At the end of the day I may just have a fuel pump issue but hate to just blindly replace parts but it would be nice to rule this out. Thanks for your help in advance.

I would like to be able to take the two speakers and put or point them outside of the car. If I remember correctly when I owned my 280z back in 1980, showing my age, I had pioneer ts-x11's and it was nice to be able to sit outside the car and listen to the radio. I am thinking about building two seperate boxes for 6x9's and having a third box somewhat connecting the two so to give the look of the MSA. What are the MSA boxes made from or what should I use. Thanks.

Is the box spefically made for the 280z or is it seperate boxes for each speaker?

Need a little help. I am trying to talk my wife in getting me speakers for my 76 280 2+2 for x-mas. I am leaning towrad a box in the rear with 6x9's. Any suggestions. Also, have considered vintage pioneer speakers TS-x11's. I have a new retro radio. Comments?

6 pin connector on back of ignition switch not holding and mating tabs properly. Females connectors ar not mating securily to the tabs on the back of the switch. Not sure if the housing is supposed to hold the females or when mated to the tabs the housing just sits there. Will find out soon.

Repalced the filter and let the car idle for a little while. I then rev'd the enginer up and down between idle and 4000 rpms. Seemed good but every now and then I would get a little hesitation. Mystery may have been solved. When I bought the car it did not have an ignition switch. I have since added one; however, I noticed a lot of wire splicing just after the switch. Today as I was running the car I tapped the spliced wires and the car wanted to shut off. Same thing each time that I tapped on the wires. Need to get into a little further but guessing this is the final piece of the puzzle. Will confirm and close out this post. Gas seems to be running clean with no rust and no red kote. Thanks to all who posted and commented it has been a very valuable thread at least for me.

Well, looked at the engine area filter again. Took off completely and observed fuel on inlet side and fuel on outlet side. Fuel coming into the filter seemed extremely clean while fuel coming out of the filter was dirty and had some small rusty looking flakes. Hopefully a new filter will solve the problem. Also hooked the filter back up minus the line to the injectors and appeared to be getting decent flow but again a little dirty. Is there something I can run through the fuel system that might help things; i.e., fuel injector cleaner?

Good and Bad news. The car finally started. Not sure exactly what caused it to start. I took line aft of engine bay filter off at rail side and had no fuel flowing. I had about 2 gallons of gas in the tank. The car was on a slight uphill back to front elevation. I added a couple more gallons and moved the car where the front was lower than the back. The car started and idle good. I let idle for about 10-15 minutes and decided to drive on the road. Over about a mile stretch the car tried to die 3 times as the fuel damand increased. I am suspected the fuel pump and fuel filter (both have only about 500 miles on them but that is probably 500 miles of rusty gas. My other thought is a hole in the pick up line in the tank. Any thoughts? I am going to again check flow after the fuel filter to see what the flow looks like. One of the posts talked about a filter at the inlet of the pump. I assume this is part of the pump. A little confused on if this is clogged what to do.

Sorry if you get this twice not sure what happened. I think I found the problem. I added a short line from the tank to the G3 filter and used the existing line and put from the G3 to the pump. I think the G3 to the pump fuel line is pinched causing fuel delivery issues. I moved it a bit and seemed to get some flow. Charging battery and will try to start soon. I am a little affraid to cut the exisiting fuel line in case I decide to remove the G3 filter later. A few questions; is it hard to find replacement fuel lines if I need the original tank to pump line, how often will I need to replace the G3 filter, and is anyone concerned that the G3 filter is adding additional load on the pump or rest of system?

I think I found the problem. I added a short piece of fuel line from the tank to the G3 filter and then used the existing fuel line from the G3 to the pump. I think the line from the G3 to the pump is pinched causing an issue with getting fuel into the systme. Not sure but will confirm soon. I am a little affraid to alter the fuel line in case for some reason I decide to remove the G3 filter later. Any concerns with the G3 filter adding additional pressure requirements on the pump or system? How often is the G3 needing replacement for those that have added in this application? Is this fuel line difficult to get if I need a new one?

Going to look at G3 filter this morning and then aft of the filter that is in the engine bay to see if I am getting fuel. Before dropping the tank the car was running ok. It broke down as usuall, about once a week, and I assumed that this was the rust in the tank. Waited about 1 hour and the car started but did not run well. Appeared to be struggling for gas. After about 2-3 miles apparently the rust particle(s) broke free and the car ran fine. Drove another 1/4 mile to the house and thats when I decided and started to remove the tank. So I am assuming at this point it is a fuel delivery issue. When these cars run out of gas are the normally difficult to restart? Should I be priminmg something to help get it started. Again bare with me I have never been a mechanic but bought the car to learn what I could.

I am having trouble getting the car to start up.. It tried a few times but no luck. Any suggestions?