kuro

Hi all, (story time)

I recently bought a 280z, I have all these dreams and aspirations, lol.

My husband and I have been working on it. I have posts on other forums, but I've been watching this forum and you guys seem to be very active here. I need active. I need help, lol.

Anyway, so far here's my story.

I sold my rx8, which was in top condition to buy my project Z. I found a seller on one of forums who lived in Florida. Messaged/talked back and forth, but I never was able to get out there to actually see the car. Either way, I bought it.

When the car got here, it was in about the condition I expected it to be in. But it also held some surprises that I was not aware of (even though I asked specifically about them).

While I was trying to get a shipping company to pick up the car, the previous owner decides to tell me that the car has no brakes. No e-brake and no brakes PERIOD.

He managed to connect the e-brake for me before the driver got there - they would not transport it without the brakes being in somewhat working condition, for obvious reasons.

The car has already undergone a rear disc conversion (280zx), but something was wrong.

Well that was the first thing we decided to take a look at.
Turns out the placement of the calipers along with the e-brake bracket (probably not the correct term) caused the e-brake bracket to hit the brake hose and tear it open on both sides of the car. As the suspension traveled upward, the bracket landed perfectly on the brake hose. That's probably not the ideal situation when installing calipers. So we flipped the calipers to the opposite sides of the car (which I believe based on reading conversion instructions, is the way it's supposed to be installed). Now the bracket is not pointing upwards towards the brake hose.

We replaced the master brake cylinder also since we couldn't get breaks bled even after everything was kosher. The brakes "felt" right at the time, but I had not taken it out to test them yet.

We found that the oil pan was covered in oil that has leaked out of it for who knows how long. There were missing bolts and the gasket was bad. We replaced the gasket last week and so far it's been dry (at least it seems like it).

The car idles very rough, dies sometimes, hesitates on acceleration.

So we did some more "fixes" today. But nothing helped.

The brakes ended up still problematic. We found that the front passenger side caliper had a seized piston. It was a $%^# but after letting it soak in PB Blaster overnight it finally loosened up and came out. We cleaned it up and smoothed it out and it worked fine after that.

Took the car out for a drive to make sure everything was good. But it wasn't, the brakes are still not right. You really have to push on that pedal to stop the car, and when you do it kinda rolls to a stop. Ugh.

We set that aside to look into the rough idle problem.

We replaced cracked vacuum hoses, made sure all connections were good. Last week we replaced the fuel injectors with the correct ones, the previous owner had 280zx injectors (browns). Replaced spark plugs, and air filter.

We replaced the PCV valve and also replaced the fuel filter, both didn't look too bad although the hose connected to the PCV valve had some sludge in it.

The boot on the exit side of the AFM is torn in a couple of places, but at least now I know what to do to check the AFM (besides getting a new AFM-to-Throttle body boot).

We did a compression test and I think we've got a good reason for the rough idle/hesitation, etc.. Here's the results (dry/wet).

Dry
1 - 135
2 - 152
3 - 120
4 - 145
5 - 160
6 - 130

Wet
1 - 145
2 - 157
3 - 125
4 - 160
5 - 170
6 - 140


Sorry for the long intro post, but I wanted to throw it all out there......

Any advice or help is appreciated!!!!!!

Christine

skittle

Looks like your rings in #1, #3 are bad. What part of the world do you live in?

Best bet is if you live near a Zclub people there can help you out.

Go to www.xenons30.com/reference and download the free FSM (factory Service Manual) and the EFI bible.

I'm on here rarely but I'm on Zcar more often and you can PM me about any questions you have. I go by skittle on Zcar as well.

kuro

Thanks Skittle, I'm in Illinois... I have the reference, I'll take a look, still dealing with a brake issue also... I'll check out the other forum also.

theramz

If the brakes are that bad you need to purge the entire system before you reinstall refurbished calipers. The rear bleeders must point up. Some swaps require that you run the ebrake cables criss cross to make up the length. It's easier to help if you post pics of the system you have.