MrChefur

Thank you! That's one of the reasons I picked this out of the 5 or 6 other Z cars I looked at. This one had the straightest body and least rust by far. I've yet to even find pitting, just surface rust. I scored on this thing. Here's when I first got the car: Yanking the motor and trans. These two spots are the worst rust in the whole car by miles. Nothing else in the car comes close. Paint on the bottom half of the car: But time was not so kind to the top half:

Thank you! Next on the list is rebuilding the rear end, since I've completely redone the front. After that is paint. I'll post pictures later, but the paint inside of the car is flawless and I'm gonna paint the outside to match. It's a real pain, isn't it? Haha. I've got 8 of them on my bench now.

Hey again everyone! After getting tons of help from the great people on this forum and making a lot of mistakes, my 78 280z is finally back on the road (legal this time!). I'm gonna type up more when I get home, but here's some pictures to tide you over until then.

Finally got the car passed smog today! After a whole lot of trouble including the cam sprocket coming off and bending my valves, the car is finally legal! I'm gonna start a "build" (if you can call it that) thread sometime soon. Thanks again for everyone's help.

You're right - it was. I misunderstood and thought you meant the other ground cable going onto the intake manifold, to the right side in my pictures. My bad.

For anybody that finds this thread and has the same issues: I fixed the oil consumption by replacing the oil rings, although I could have reused them by seating them correctly. I fixed the injectors not pulsing (well, everyone else told me what to do and I turned the wrench) in this thread:

I cannot say how grateful I am for everyone's help. That was it. I cleaned that ground and it fired right up after getting all the air out of the fuel lines. @Zed Head, I'm definitely going to do like you suggested and check everything now. I'd rather not have this again. Thank you so much everybody, I hope you all have a very merry Christmas.

Thank you for the great suggestions again guys. I don't know what happened, but suddenly I'm not getting spark anymore and I can no longer manually fire injectors by grounding. Something is seriously wrong and I'm tearing my hair out. Just for fun, here's some pictures of my connections. Maybe someone can tell me if something is blatantly wrong here. edit: forgot to mention I unplugged the condensor before the teardown because of some issues I don't remember. The car ran with it unplugged.

Stock type ignition system with an aftermarket coil. I don't think that's my issue though, seeing as it ran before my teardown and gives good spark. I also got a new ignition relay in today which changed nothing.

Yeah, it clicks pretty loud. I suspected it before so I made an improvised relay with some switches, but got the same result. I'll be sure to check the coolant temp sensor readings later tonight. If memory serves, they came back fine, but since I didn't write it down I'll have to check again. How would I determine the quality of the pin 1 voltage?

The intake manifold is grounded. I'm not certain about the fusible link though. My car has a 2 spade connector on a wire coming from the positive terminal to 2 fusible links and into the harness. I checked continuity and it seemed like it's working properly, but I cleaned the connections just to be sure.

Is that not the tests 1-9(a-d)? They're labeled as control unit ground circuits, that's from the Bible.

Sorry, missed a few details. No it doesn't stay running, just burns what's left and dies. It's a 1978. Here's my previous thread: http://www.classiczcars.com/topic/58265-rebuilt-engine-idle-problems-running-rich/

Hey everyone! I'm starting a new thread since my "help me!" thread got too long and isn't getting any attention now. Long story short, I'm not getting pulses to my injectors. I've been working on this problem for 2 weeks and I can't seem to get it. The car ran before I tore it down to replace oil control rings 4 months ago, so it's not likely a component failed. I'm thinking I put something together wrong. If I disconnect the ECU connector and ground each injector's pins, they audibly fire. If I manually fire them a few times the car will start afterwards for a few seconds from the leftover fuel, so I know it's not a fuel pump or clogged injector issue. The car will start from starting fluid. My noid light also doesn't show any pulses. Here's the results of the EFI Bible tests: 1-9(a-d): Control Unit Ground Circuit #1: continuity from pins 5, 16, 17, and 35 to ground. Pass 2-(1): Ignition Coil Trigger Input Circuit: pin 1 to ground reads 12.5v. Pass 2-(2): Control Unit Power Input Circuit: pin 10 to ground reads 12.5v. Pass 2-3(a-f): Injectors. All read battery voltage. Pass Pin 1 to ignition coil negative reads continuity Tachometer jumps while cranking I also tested my dropping resistors and they both pass the FSM tests. What could be causing this? I am at my wit's end here. Thanks for reading.

Thanks! Yeah, it certainly wasn't a simple task. Anyways, now that I've got the engine bay all buttoned up and back together, I've naturally encountered another problem. I'm not getting any fuel into my combustion chambers. I'm also not entirely sure that I'm getting injector pulse. When I hook up a test light to an injector, it gets bright with the key in the "on" position. When I move the key to "start", the light gets dimmer and kinda pulsates as the engine cranks over. I'm not sure if it's supposed to flicker on and off or get dimmer and brighter. Another thing: when I'm cranking the engine, the fuel pump doesn't run. If I disconnect the starter, the fuel pump will run. But when the starter is plugged in, the fuel pump doesn't run. Also, I disconnected the fuel rail and, when the fuel pump does run, gas comes out the "in" line and "return" line just fine. I did the EFI tests from the FSM (same as the ones in the EFI Bible, just applicable to the 78 instead of the 75) and all passed except test 2-2 for the "power line circuit" at ECU plug 10. That connects to the "Electronic Fuel Injection Main Relay". I pulled the 6 pin connector relay in the engine bay and tore it down. One of the pins had been tweaked, making it so that the rocker arm couldn't move. I fixed it and put it back together. It now passes the test, but I still have the same issue. I read a few similar posts that suspected the ignition relay, but I pulled it out and tore it down and nothing appears to be wrong. I'm going to be checking all of the fuel pump related relays tomorrow, but any input on how to proceed would be greatly appreciated.

I wound up taking the timing cover off. Turns out I actually did spring the tensioner, but it wedged back in in such a way that it looked and felt like it wasn't sprung. Oh well. On the plus side, I got to replace a few gaskets that were made entirely of RTV with some real gaskets. Now to get the damned oil pan with it's 2 million bolts back on.

I tried that (with that exact craftsman screwdriver, haha) but didn't give it much effort. I'll give it another shot.

Yay, yet another setback! I managed to just barely spring the timing chain tensioner, just enough to be about 1/8" too short to put the cam sprocket back on. Guess I get to learn what's under the timing cover now.

I think I've found the problem. I tore down the motor and my rings were fine, just installed improperly. The center part of the oil control rings had the ends overlapping instead of butted against each other. I just put it (mostly) back together tonight, I'm gonna fire it up sometime soon and see if that did it.

My sense of smell is pretty darn good, to the point of annoyance so I think I'm good there. The exhaust smells like raw gas, but there's also a little of the smell of burning oil. Kinda like an old VW motor I think? I disconnected the battery and checked pin 13 at the ECU connector side. It's roughly 90 degrees here and the car has been baking in the sun all morning. It gave a resistance of 1430 Ohms which looks about right. I grabbed another multimeter to be sure from your comment about "cheap meters", and the other one read 1480 Ohms so I think we're good there. I checked fuel pressure previously and it gave 35 PSI at idle and it goes up a little at WOT. The vaccuum hose looked fine but I replaced it with a newer section before. AFM internals are stock, glue blob is intact. I'm pretty damn stumped on this. I'm taking it to the family mechanic today to see what he thinks. Who knows, maybe I've got some tunnel vision going on.\ Thanks yet again for your help!

Fully warmed up in the video. Both coolant and oil have no signs of head gasket failure, compression is also fine.

Alright, here's a video of what it's doing. Blowing a little bit of white smoke on idle, then solid black when I press the throttle. It's not burning coolant, the head gasket is fine. https://youtu.be/Pt9ZTYuSSOE

Haha, I sure do have a lot. I didn't post it, but battery and alternator are both solid. Alright, thanks. I checked again (gonna need a new valve cover gasket with all this pulling off and putting back on, lol) and the notches line up just fine. Scratch that off the list.

Had. I put the valve cover back on to run the engine. I didn't think to check the notch and groove, I just looked at where the black chain link was lined up. I'll add that to the check list as well.

Something else I noticed: When I had the valve cover off, I noticed the timing chain was set to the 3 position on the cam sprocket. Could that have anything to do with all the issues I've had?