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I've had my '73 240z for a couple of years and its always run pretty decent, but it overheats in city driving. Last fall I was driving and hit some rush hour and it got pretty hot (about 3/4 of the gauge). After a while I got out of traffic and it started to cool down some, but about a mile from my house it started running really rough and 1/4 mile from my house it died completely. I coasted downhill to my house and pushed it into the garage. It wouldn't start, but I was so tired of the overheating I took the radiator out and got it rodded out. I also installed a fan shroud. After I got all that put back together, I've been trying to get it started, and it just won't start. I took the coil wire off of the distributor and held it next to the valve cover while my daughter cranked the starter. I expected a spark to jump across to the valve cover, but there was no spark. Doesn't that automatically mean the coil is bad. When it WAS running, it would hesitate when it hit 3500-4000 rpm. Doesn't that indicate a bad coil, too? I went and got a "IC70" coil from NAPA today. That's what their computer spit out as a replacement. Its a little skinnier than the old coil, but I tried it anyway. I don't get the coil-to-valve cover spark with this new coil either! What else can I try?

Hi everyone! So over the past year and a half I have torn my 1974 260z with an L28 and flat top carbs down to it's rusty britches and done my best to get her nice and shiny. This is my first project car, so I probably have no idea what i'm talking about. However, I have not been able to get the car to start and I am pretty stumped, even though the car ran when I bought it. FYI, I did disassemble the engine, clean it up, refresh it with new timing stuffs etc, and put it back together citing the FSM almost religiously. I also have been wiring the car myself using the speedway 22 circuit harness + some custom over engineering bits. So far: Brand new battery Engine turns over Spark plugs have spark plugs are 1-5-3-6-2-4 CCW on the distributor, with 1 on the radiator side and on the cap spot with the extra line. fuel pressure somewhere between 4 and 5 psi (my gauge is cheap) https://photos.app.goo.gl/GuQMgZK5M82v27q36 I can get the engine to spit with starter fluid, but won't get past sputtering. My guess is there might be an issue with the carbs, but I have no idea how to proceed with debugging. Also, is it normal to be able to crank over the engine by hand when the spark plugs are in it? I don't remember being able to do this when I first put the engine back together. Thanks!

Good evening guys, So I'm back for more help. It's almost time to drive my 240z for the first time, but the clutch is stuck to the flywheel. You might remember me. I'm the guy who bought the 72 with a seized engine(that I got unstuck). I'm here because the engine has a really hard time running when engine cold. It's about 60 degrees in Chicago now . So it will start and revs to about 2500 for 2 seconds and shut off, try again and again the same thing. Over and over and over again for about 5 minutes. I'm messing with the throttle the whole time. After a few minutes of that , it runs and idle great! Other that a slight bog when I blip off idle. Sorry for the long story, just want to give some background. Thanks in advance guys

For some background I have a '71 Datsun 240z and have made a few modifications to it so far - replace solenoid, new plug wires, new spark plugs, cleaned the carbs. it worked fine until the engine sat for awhile. I put on a new valve cover and a new exhaust. since then I can't get the thing to start. Now every time I try to start it it'll sound for about 2 seconds like its going off of starter fluid then cut out, totally unresponsive to the throttle. it'll only do this for the first go around and after that i can crank for days and nothing happens. This makes me think its a fuel/spark issue because its getting flooded so it only happens the first time, however, since this problem started happening i've tried the following. - checked the fuel to the carbs. i took off the hose and cranked the engine and got a lot of fuel coming out - i made sure that the plug wires corresponded correctly with TDC and that the firing order was all correct - got a new battery - got new spark plugs - cranked it with a $^!# ton of start fluid. I havent adjusted the timing but i'm guessing it should be fine if it was fine before and I never took out the distributor. any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Found this today. Thought I'd share.

Hey guys, i have a 75 280z, and it's taken me about 2 months of spinning my wheels to finally get on here and ask about this problem. I've looked at everything i can think of in the car. my fuel pump will not pump gas into the engine, it's not getting any power. i've checked the connections, and gone through as much of the harness as i can get to at the moment. and i haven't been able to find any problems, i replaced the pump to no avail. (i tested the old one and it definitely was faulty anyway) but i was wondering what else i should check to find the problem. this car has been my dream car for a long time, and i really want to get the thing up and running. any help would be appreciated.

Hello everyone, I have a 78 280z 2+2 with a 4 speed. I recently had issues with the engine that made it run rich enough to gas up the oil and it wouldn't run without flooring it basically. I had the AFM adjusted leaner, the cold start disconnected, and had it running well and one day it did this. so we swapped the engine out of my dad's 80 280zx because he wants a SBC in his. I had to move my temp sensor to the thermostat like on the old engine, use my distributor and replace the temp gauge sending unit, along with a few other swaps to configure the cooling and the vacuum to work right. The engine ran GREAT in his car, and we just put his AFM into it with the engine. we couldn't get it to start, so we did a ton of simple checks like plugs, wires, etc. figured out the firing order was wrong on the dist cap and after we got it right it started up and ran rough. we checked the timing and got it running smoother, but the next day we went to start it and now it won't start at all. it gets fairly close but only if the timing is really retarded, and the pops thinks it's loading up with too much fuel. any ideas on why? it's getting to be really annoying sharing 2 vehicles with 3 people when I have my car licensed and it's not running... any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks everyone who takes the time to read my novel thread.

i just got through a complete rebuild. i tried the first startup, and at first, it seemed like the car wasn't reacting to the key turning, other than the lights coming on. then i could hear a small clunking noise every time i turned the key, coming from under the dash near the fuse box. we ran a wire directly from the battery to the starter, and it turns over like mad, but won't start up. any ideas? update: there is definitely fuel coming up at least as high as the fuel lines over the manifolds.

:disappoin I was warned and worried about fouled/contaminated fuel so I wanted to do a lot more fuel-prep work than just drain and refill the gas tank. I pulled the gas tank, got it cleaned at a local shop who gave it a Castic acid bath for a day, got it back last week but haven't reinstalled it yet. Blew all the bad gas out of both the feed and return lines with an air compressor (the feed line between the fuel damper and the fuel filter; the return line between the fuel rail and the fuel tank). The fuel in the feed line had some black flakes in it, the fuel in the return line had a bit of thick white junk similar to a jelly but otherwise the decade old gas looked clean and new in color. Changed the fuel filter, changed the oil and oil filter, drained and replaced coolant, replaced a bad fuel hose, replaced the leaky bypass hose(s) (why I stopped running it long ago in the first place), got some 93 octane gas with some gumout fuel system cleaner in it, and here I am. I have a 2-gallon fuel container sitting on a box right behind the fuel pump I'm feeding the fuel hose with gas. Incidentally, I have the rear of the car up on jack stands (using the proper jack stand points as instructed by the repair manual). The rear wheels and drums are off (bad break hoses and brake fitting nightmare but that's another story) and I don't think this has anything to do with why the car won't start. :stupid: The hole on the container was wide enough to put the return hose in there as well, I've already verified the fuel pump is pulling fuel at a good rate, and there is fuel coming out the return hose when I'm cranking the engine. I verified there is spark in #2 and #3 cylinders by using a test light. I hooked the negative alligator clip up to ground and stuck the needle up against the metal contact inside the rubber boot of the spark plug wire and when someone else was cranking the engine I could see sparks in there. The cranking is really healthy sounding. Not too fast, not too slow, just like I remember it when it was running. It just won't fire up. I lifted the distributor cap to inspect inside. There was a bit of corrosion on the rotor head and contact points. Nothing to keep the car from starting I would think. I cleaned them up and put the cap back on. I felt air pulling into the air filter housing when the car was cranking. I know these are rudimentary checks I'm doing but I'm afraid I don't know much. Most of what I know about my Z I've learned in the past three weeks just reading the repair manual and hobbying away on it. Suffice it to say removing the fuel tank was a challenge for me, especially the venting vapor lines, but I succeeded at it without breaking anything. Not looking forward to putting the tank back on. I presumed it would be running by the time I got to that point. Anyway, I read elsewhere on the site that vacuum hoses can prevent the car from starting. There are some small rubber hoses around the distributor I observed today that were cracked and hardened and didn't seat together that good. I'm not sure why the timing would be off, it's only sat in the garage for 10 years. Not sure how to check for a bad timing chain or even set the timing. I see the adjustment screw on the distributor and I see the two little plates with the lines on them, and that they're offset from each other by a certain angle. If the rotor head spins counter-clockwise, the little bit of white corrosion on it would have been closer to the leading edge of the head rather than the trailing edge (relative to the middle of the rotor head). I presume this would signify a more "advanced" timing than "retarded" timing. Which is what I figured already anyway: The car is advanced and I'm retarded, it's okay, it doesn't mean that life is unbearable. I pulled the spark plugs out last night. They were all blackened on the electrodes and the insulators. I lightly sanded them and wiped them all clean and checked their gaps with a feeler gauge I bought. Not really sure how tight the fit is supposed to be but they all seemed to be gapped around 0.8mm. Anyway the car should be getting fuel as the pump draws the fuel out of the container nicely and I have fuel coming out the return hose. Doesn't mean the injectors are good but I don't know how to check the injectors and wouldn't they go bad one at a time? Would two or three bad injectors keep the motor from starting? I have spark inside the spark plug wires by using my test light probe grounded to the (-) battery terminal, but that doesn't mean it's a "good enough" spark. I haven't done a compression check. Seems self explanatory enough to put a compression gauge into the spark plug holes and check the cylinder compression but I don't know if this is a likely culprit of why it won't start at all. Seems implausible to me that it would prevent the car from starting when it ran very well the last time it ran a decade ago. Anyway, any general wisdom of what/how to check next, or most-likely-culprit information would be greatly appreciated. :stupid: Thank you in advance! Shawn