Hi guys. Ive been reading this and a few other forums for about a year now, basically since i bought my 79 280zx. I've been through almost the entire car starting with the chts looking for the culprit to my slight rich condition (black plugs and tiny puff of black smoke). I've tinkered with the afm by moving a few teeth lean and that worked for the richness but a few days ago i read the thread on rebuilding the afm, so i reset the teeth back to stock and i moved the little circuit board up a little bit so that the sweeper arm was on a good part of the carbon trace. the rich condition seems to be gone. no more smoke and the plugs are nice and tan colored. my concern and the reason for my post is this... From a dead takeoff it feels like the car has almost zero power until i get it up to about 3k rpms. after that it feels better. Ive tried to adjust the tps by bending the little switches inside before i did a lot of research (my bad there). I think i understand the basic principal of it though. I have the idle contact set to break at the slightest touch of the throttle but when i try to bend the WOT contact to around 34 degrees throttle the engine sputters if the tps contacts aren't touching either the idle or the WOT connections. Ive been thru the FSM a bunch of times while trying to get timing and everything else correct but it doesn't really go into much detail concerning the tps and timing. I set the timing to 10 degrees btdc but that was also with the tps and vacuum advance connected... The FSM doesnt say whether to leave the advance hooked up or to cap it off when adjusting timing. Sorry for the novel iv'e writen here lol but im stumped... My mom had a 2+2 when i was about 17 and i remember it picked up a lot better than mine does Any help would be greatly appreciated!

 

I'm not sure about everything you've tried, but I'm almost positive you're supposed to "de-vacuum" the dizzy when you're adjusting it. this will give you a more accurate (not yet advanced) reading. check that vacuum advance even works as well. The FSM should explain how to do this. Also, expect the car to run rich until it's warmed up.

 

The advance does work but the diaphragm leaks ever so slightly. I pulled the advance line and the tps plug and set the timing to 10 degrees and it seems to be peppy off the line now, well better anyway. Are there any gains with running the timing a little higher? Likes 15 degrees maybe?