JDM280ZX

Yeah definitely has very weak spark. Compressions are all good and even, getting plenty of fuel and injectors seem to be firing

Hmm definitely helpful, still having weak spark and no sign of the car wanting to come to life.... almost saying screw it and getting a standalone ecu and individual coil setup on it..... food for thought I guess

The old coil was definitely not the right one, had an external ignitor on it and the ignition module on the distributor had been hacked open and hotwired into the ignitor to bypass it. That's why I went and replace everything back to factory to try and find out why it wouldn't start. Before replacing everything I wasn't getting any spark at all. Now I'm getting very weak spark, so been wondering if maybe the coil has too high of a resistance at 3ohms. I see in the FSM for a 2.8L with electronic distributor they say to use a 0.84 to 1.2ohm coil

Yeah I was thinking the same thing too, after further research today it seems to be a condenser and not related to the issues I'm currently having. Bugger back to the drawing board. Hoping its something to do with the coil, been doing some research into the one I was sold and cant seem to find if it is designed to be used with an external resistor or not. Car won't even attempt to fire. Pulled a plug out and earthed it to the engine then turned car over and was visibly very weak. I bought the car as an abandoned project with everything completely stripped from the engine bay, with there not being too many 2.0L 280zx cars I can't find much info if I've set it up right.

Coil is receiving 12.4V (same as battery voltage) when ignition is on so would've thought this means no ballast resistor. However have found this that bolts onto the coil bracket and has a power lead to it from the same wire as the coil +12V source. Unsure on where the other end of it goes to though.

Yeah I have a 81 280zx with the L20A 2.0L 6 cylinder. I haven't looked into if it runs a ballast resistor or not actually, with have to do some research into that. I checked resistance across the coil windings and seems to be 3ohms, that was the coil that my local parts store said was to fit the vehicle.

That would be awesome, been struggling to get mine running and after checking spark today found it was very weak. Has new ignition unit, rotor, cap, leads, plugs and coil so hoping ive just got the wrong one.

I also seem to have this style distributor on my 280zx with a L20A from factory. Found that electronic dizzy rx7 use the same J105 ignition module. Wondering if anyone knows correct coil resistance to use with these dizzys? Sorry to be late to the party on this one