Zeddophile

If you can't move the timing back past 0 degrees, or even back past 10, you need to lift your distributor out, and rotate the shaft so that when you put it back in, the drive gear is engaged one tooth back (in reference to direction of rotation) from where it is now. Can be confusing, but when you do it, think about which way the rotor spins, how rotating the dizzy advances and retards the timing, and from there you should be able to logically follow which way to go to retard the timing.

In general that usually indicates ignition. One of the common characteristics of an ignition fault is that its only present under load. As an example, when I started controlling spark on my range rover, at between 4,000 and 4,500 it would act like it was hitting a rev limiter. The solution was to increase the minimum coil discharge time by 0.1 milliseconds. Of course, no matter what the problem seems to present itself as, it can always be something completely different. You've changed the points, and cleaned the plugs, but have you changed the condenser? This annoying little can has been known to cause all kinds of issues - its about a $5 part, so its cheap to try that. Its odd that the back 3 always run black, there must be a difference in the carbies? I'd start off with checking the float level in the carbies, and check for any crud floating around in them, make sure the damping fluid in the dashpots is at the correct level, then set the carbies up like so: Since the front one seems to be burning correctly at half a turn out, try it at one full turn out, then set the back one up so that it has the same amount of vacuum through it as the front one. Don't get stressed for the moment about the difference in them, just see if having them balanced makes an improvement. Since you say it runs better with the screws set to 2.5 turns, that suggests to me that it is too lean with the set screw at half a turn, but 2.5 may be too far in the other direction. Hence the suggestion to start with a single turn at the front, then balance the second one off the front. Even when rebuilt, you may well find that two carbies have different requirements for the mixture screws to turn out the same end result. I know you say it always used to burn half the plugs differently, but its quite possible that the adjustment has changed far enough out to make it unbalanced. For an example to show you what I mean, my alfa EFI setup ran very well the other week, to the point of extreme traction issues on the wet bitumen. After a little while though, it fouled number 1 spark plug with fuel. What I worked out, was though it felt smooth, the intake box I'd made up to feed the throttle bodies was actually starving number 1 of air. You had to really listen to the note under load to realise that in fact it was actually only running on 3 cylinders, and free revving it you couldn't tell at all. Removing the box and putting pod filters on each throttle gained a large amount of power, and much better running.

wow - the front of that would be really simple to do - just take a mold of the front gaurds, and extend the mounting lip in a couple of inches....

Here you go Van, sounds like a good job for you!

If the dashpots in SUs are the same as Strombergs, it will give you a flutter when revving it up. One of my mates bought an old range rover with the standard twin strommies on it that had been sitting for ages, and spent ages trying to work out what his 'misfire' was - put electronic ignition on it, and his boss was suggesting various ideas. Then he called me up, I went down and had a listen, and straight away asked him to give me some ATF - topped up the dashpots, and it ran perfectly straight away. In relation to the original post - if the car has been sitting for a while, and you still have the mechanical fuel pump, its quite likely that the fuel pump has gotten a bit stuck or airlocked. Had this problem with a mates carbied toyota sprinter, and the way I fixed it was to disconnect the outlet hose from the fuel pump, and then used an air nozzle off the compressor I have in my rangie to gently pressurise his fuel tank through the filler until fuel came out the pump outlet. Reconnected, and it started pretty much straight away. This was after tipping petrol down the carby a number of times trying to get it to prime the pump itself at engine speed. Just be careful not to put too much pressure at one go into the tank, as you can put a nice dent in it. Use a rag wrapped around the nozzle to seal the pressure into the tank. On the topic of air pressure, I've found many many uses for it since setting up an old A/C compressor in my rangie with a tank. On that same sprinter, one of us dropped a bolt down the engine pipe while replacing the head gasket. Couldn't reach it with a magnet or anything, as it'd gone round the bend and fetched up in the muffler. So, after trying a few things, I decided to try a random idea, and pressurised the tailpipe at the back of the car in the same way you do the tank, and had another bloke holding his hand over the exhaust where the manifold normally bolts on. Let it build up pressure for about 30 seconds, then told him to lift his hand away quickly, and presto - the bolt shot up out of the outlet about 2 feet in the air.

no bits really left off mine, just a grotty old auto diff and the EFI setup as far as I can remember.... Will probably find a few pieces laying around when a mate and I find ourselves a warehouse to set up in.... come to think of it, there's some windows stashed somewhere too.... :'

That would probably indicate the voltage regulator has packed up and gone on holiday... can't remember if thats separate on a Z alternator or not?

Ah well, nm. Have to keep an eye out.... I think I may have the bug again.

Are you hanging onto the white and red one with the whale tail, or are you selling that one too?

Could definitely be alternator, I've had a similar thing happen to me with a dead alternator on a carby car. EFI cars are more likely to just stop dead, but the only electricity required to run a carby car is the power to the coil, so when you have lights etc draining the battery and the alternator isn't charging, the voltage at the coil drops causing the coil not to charge fully between sparks, causing the misfires. Dead battery and lights dropping out before complete stoppage would back it up, so charge the battery up off a charger, then start the car and see what the alternator is putting out - should be absolute dead minimum of 13 volts at slow idle, and preferably in the 13.5 to 14 range, although some cars won't output that until the revs are brought up a bit.

Goddamn hitchhikers - they're everywhere, worse than trekkies! Hmmm.... wheres my towel?

Haha - Got a problem with too much weight in the back end in your bus Lurch? :P:P:P:P

Mayhem, which one is this? Got a couple of photos I could take a peek at? What exactly are you chucking in with it, beyond dash motor and tranny? For that sort of price having thoughts that are going to cost me a lot of money.... BTW, on a completely unrelated topic, whats a storage unit worth these days?

I'll give you some help - that 2+2 right front guard will go very nicely on the 2 seater Seriously though, looks like you may have picked up a pretty good deal there, it's just a bit of a pity they weren't both 2 seaters, as from the base of the windscreen back the bodies are different.

That was it, Nissanmatic. I was close! He keeps updating it - in the ad details it says last updated in october some time. Interesting. Anything more specific, just out of curiosity?

The air flow metre probably won't like it, being a 'flapper' type, I think it'd end up fully open pretty quick. You could probably swap one on off a big jag motor or maybe early range rover, I believe the plugs are the same, just the calibration is different. You'd need to swap the injectors, and work out carefully how much bigger than standard to go... Better off to junk the AFM, and run with some kind of aftermarket ECU, but obviously the $$$ then mount up, unless you have the patience and ability to assemble and install a megasquirt or similar. In all honesty, if you want to get away with supercharging it as cheap as possible, you'd actually probably be better off looking into blowing through the carbies.... I don't know how su's handle boost though, and wouldn't do it with flattops....

Woohoo! I'm loved!

I don't think the injectors sit high enough in the manifold for it to be an issue, but thats purely from memory. If it is an issue, half an hour with a round file and a vacuum cleaner should sort it anyway!

Scratch my earlier post, I just realised what the one on the left is - I assumed it was a datsun badge, cause I couldn't read it on the photos of my car, but its actually a badge that only automatic cars had. Can't remember exactly what it says, its whatever they were marketing their auto technology as at the time. Not Datsunmatic, but something of that nature.

The 280zx fuel injection probably won't give you much if anything over the SUs (if they are set up properly and in good nick), what it does do is improve driveability - Ie. cold starts and running, and probably economy. Again, if the SUs are in good nick, probably not that much difference, as the 280zx setup is just an early L jetronic - hence the reason its only really worth $200. If it was a better setup, I'd be asking more, and more people would be looking for it. Installation is pretty simple, two gaskets (intake and thermostat housing) and an hour or two of your time. The hard bit is putting the air filter in, as with the 280zx the air box is actually in front of the radiator, due to the location of the air flow metre. On mine, I had a piece of PVC plumbing pipe clamped into the hose and going through a hole next to the radiator (which already exists) and then a pod filter behind the grille. If however you want fuel injection for a decent power gain, you'd be better off fabricating something from scratch, which is what I've done with my 2.0 litre 4 cylinder alfa... I've pulled the twin 40mm Dellortos off it, and made some Suzuki GSXR 750 throttle bodies fit onto it, being run by a Megasquirt. Just ironing out final kinks at the moment, which I think is due to my stupid design for the airbox that feeds them starving number 1 cylinder of air (the idea was to save myself $400 on K&N air filters, but I think I'm going to end up putting indivual pods on it anyway ) However, this requires access to various equipment to fabricate stuff like this up, and the time and inclination, otherwise it becomes very expensive. I have access to cheap(ish) TIG welding and laser cutting, and a lathe etc at work, so my setup cost me $175 for the throttles (off ebay in the US), $270 for the ECU, about $350 in welding costs ($150 of which may turn out to be a waste if I end up with pods!), and maybe $150 worth of materials (aluminium, hose etc). I scavenged quite a few bits and pieces from various sources for free too (about 3 wiring looms died to make my ECU loom!), It also took many hours of thinking and fabricating etc, which would be a killer if you were paying someone else to do it. This is when some of the Jenvey/Efi Hardware setups start to look pretty good. Of course, if you were to fabricate a setup, you could just use a single falcon throttle body and make up a plenum with 6 runners. If you had access to a tig welder for free, getting the aluminium plates water cut for the side of the head and to bolt the throttle body to would probably be your major costs apart from the ecu. You could even possibly adapt an RB30 manifold or similar.

My 260 had a datsun badge on the left side of the boot, and a 260z badge on the right.....

Yeah, that is weird, did the same to me. Modified the original post to give the vehicle listing number instead..... Its a green auto 260 2 seater in southbank.

RB26s ARE twin turbo. The 2.6 RB only went in the GT-R, and it was always twin turbo. RB25s and RB20s came either NA or single turbo, but not the 26.

on http://www.carsales.com.au/ with the listing number 60129. Its been for sale for quite a few months now, and doesn't look in bad shape from the photos.... Are people just being put off by a combination of the auto, the kilometres and the price, or is there something more fundamentally wrong with it? Kind of getting tempted to wander back into Zed ownership here...

Come on Sulio! You should know your nissan engine codes by now! Not to mention the giveaway pictures of the exhaust manifold before the twins were put to bed.