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Can't seem to locate this bit of trivia. Background is that I recently adopted an abandoned 1984 300ZX that had been parked in a field for an undetermined length of time. During it's tenure it became a magnet for all sorts of little woodland creatures, who feasted on the under hood wiring harness. I have repaired the missing/destroyed wires and now have a drive-able car. BUT...no reading on the temp gauge. The wire to the sensor is either missing or hiding somewhere, so if I could persuade one of you to go take a look under your hood and tell me what color wire I'm looking for, I would appreciate it. Heck, I'll even put you on my Christmas list.
It sounds like you have an interesting project going. You should make a thread for it, i'm sure myself and others would be interested in following your progress. As for the temp sensor wire on my car it's a brown wire with a black cover on it and it comes off the main passenger side engine harness. The temp sensor itself is hiding down there on the lower intake manifold (barely visible to the right of the injector in the center of the image), sometimes people confuse the injector blower fan sensor on the driver side lower intake for the coolant gauge probe.
In addition to my being hopelessly color blind, some previous owner has thoughtfully spray bombed everything under the hood gloss black. Everything. So far, all the electrical components are working, except for the headlight harnesses, which will have to be rewired because they have been eaten, The tach does not seem to work, nor two of the three odometers (right side trip odo is okay, but unreadable. Speedo was acting like it was possessed, but decided to behave itself after a few miles.
As far as the driving experience, it is tight and seems to have a well sorted suspension. No rattles or squeaks even on rough roads. However, it does seem awfully slow to rev and accelerate. I am thinking fuel delivery may be the problem. Changed the filter, but no joy. I will have to acquire a fuel pressure meter and/or just replace the fuel pump as prophylaxis.
Well, at any rate there aren't many wires towards the end of that harness so you're bound to find something not connected/chewed in half. As far as the tach goes i'd check somewhere around the coil. Digital or Analog?
If you don't have any literature the ultimate advice is to buy/download the FSM and Haynes manuals. They should be able to help you solve all your problems, except the color blindness. lol
Oh, and regarding the slow acceleration have you checked the diagnostic lights on the ECU?
Check the tpswitch for spread out contacts ,pull it off ,drill the head of the rivet in back ,then the case will still stay on. Frt contact is idle the back for full power
of course many condition can cause poor performance
Update: Not knowing the history of this rig, I went ahead and replaced the timing belt et al. Good thing, too because the tensioner pulley bearing was on the way out. cooling system looked good, and everything went back together relatively easily. I'm pretty much done with the wiring repair, the last of which was the power wires to the headlights, so now I'm all street legal. I got lazy and took the thing to a local jiffy-lube type place, where they declined to change oil in the trans (which I knew was bad because I saw it when I changed the "O" ring on the speedo drive gear. They did manage to thoughtfully break off my driver side seat back and try to tell me it was like that when I brought it in. Reminds me of why I started working on my own cars in the first place finally got access to the lift and took care of it. Fill plug is a pain, but the reverse sleeve cover is easy to remove and refilling with a hand pump solved the problem.
Anyway, that was just the excuse I needed to get the seats reupholstered, so they are now at the shop, waiting to be made beautiful (found some neat cashmere weave in "close enough" gray and tan). Original cloth interior was kind of dull looking anyway. Still have not solved the tach problem or located the wire to the temp gauge. I found a factory airbox and replaced the lame home brew cone filter set up, hoping that might help out with the ongoing acceleration issue. Nope. Still tops out at around 85 mph. New fuel filter, pressure tested good and a couple of bottles of some pricey injector cleaner, but still no movement on that front. I'll put some more miles on it when the seats come back, so maybe that will help.
Another niggling problem is that the numbers on the two trip odometers are completely unreadable due to fading or divine punishment or something. I ended up buying a salvage instrument cluster and hope to be able to swap the offending parts without making matters worse.
New problem: battery is going completely dead after sitting a few days. First brand new unit was replaced by Oreilley's, but the replacement is doing the same thing. Security system has been disabled since the first battery, so I don't think that could be it.
Fun problem: distributor cap arc and shocks the **** out of whoever happens to touch it while engine is running. All the ignition stuff is new. Anyone have an idea why that might be?
Also funny is that my wife claimed this car as her very own as soon as it showed up on the wrecker, but I never see her around when there's dirty work at hand.
More updates as they occur. I'll remember to take pics in the future.
11-13-2017, 11:22 AM
finally got access to the lift and took care of it. Fill plug is a pain, but the reverse sleeve cover is easy to remove and refilling with a hand pump solved the problem.
