Hi my name is Rondal and late last year I purchased a 1981 280ZX with the intention of getting back into “the game” after a 5 year break. I found what I thought was a decent starter car for 800.00 on Craigslist and purchased it and drove it home. After really getting into the car I decided that the chassis was to far gone and decided to start looking again. So, I sold it and bought this:

This is a 1982 280ZX-T. I found it in Atlanta and went back and forth with the young lady for almost a year(which the car sat by the way). I drove down to look at it and while it was rough looking it started right up and the “usual” rust places were pretty solid, It even has a whole spare tire well!! The frame rails will probably need to be replaced since like most of these cars people thought they were actual “rails” and jacked the car up with them, they are not rusted through however.
She told me that the car didn’t have any brakes so I couldn’t drive it so I talked her down a little more a bought it. I made a call to Atlanta Racing ,a shop in Decatur Ga. that specializes in Z’s, and had them go pick it up so they could take a look at the brakes. This is where the story takes a bad turn; she was right, it didn’t have any brakes. She didn’t tell me that she continued to drive the car while the master cylinder was going bad which led to 4 ruined rotors, 4 ruined brake lines and 2 seized calipers! Well since he was doing all that I had him go ahead and replace the ball joints and wheel bearings and cv boots and align the front end. I now had almost twice what I paid for the car in the front end and brakes.
I asked the guy when he called me to tell me it was ready if he thought I could drive it back to NC and he said “The best way to find out about an old Z or ZX is to drive it!” So the wife and I went down, spent a nice evening in Atlanta, and headed out the next day back to NC. The car had a little hesitation when you first took off but once you got past 2000rpm it smoothed out and pulled hard. It didn’t take long to figure out the exhaust system had a pretty serious leak somewhere (or a lot of where’s) but other than that it ran flawlessly the whole 4 hour drive home. I told the wife before we left, “I’m going to stay around 50/55mph” but ended up cruising 60/70mph since it was so smooth.
Here are some shots of the car;




So far I’ve cleaned it up and started going through the interior.



The seats are from a Honda Del Sol and actually seem to fit fairly well. I still have enough head room and they don’t touch the door when its closed…I still have to decide on a material to have them recovered but since the factory seats were toast I figured I would go ahead and throw them in.
I plan on getting the inside squared away and then replace the suspension and then figure out where I am engine wise. I plan on sticking with the L28E-T until it gives up and then I will look at either an RB swap or an LS swap.

 

looks like a great find. I'm curious about those seats, were they hard to get in? I've heard the Del Sols are usually an easier install. Do you remember the year?

 

Not sure how great it is yet but thanks anyway! ) All the Del Sol Seats are the same regradless of year. What I did was use the factory Del Sol rails...bolt the inside foot down and then measure and cut small square "feet" to bolt to the seat and then the factory mounting point. They are not that far off and my seats are rock solid.

 

Welcome to the club! Brake calipers often seize on these cars so you've replaced one of the major maintaince expenses (generally speaking of course) so if you are keeping the car for a while it's not money wasted.

I like the analog gauges - I swap my digital ones out for the analogs.

If it's a new to you car I would change the battery cables, vac lines and from the sounds of it rebuild your AFM. I always replace the EFI harness connectors and run a ground from the battery to the ECU then from the ECU to the intake manifold where the majority of the sensors are. All stuff that's easy to do by yourself. That gets rid of a lot of bugs that plauge the old S130. I also replace all the fluids - brakes, clutch, tranny, diff and oil.

 

Thanks FF...i'll have to print that off and follow those suggestions. I just got it back today, had a set of injectors sent off to RC Engineering and they cleaned, balanced and whatever else they do. Replaced them, the plugs and had a Palnet fuel rail installed. Still has the stumble and feels like it "falls off" around the top end.

 

Did you replace the plugs with the NGKs? Does your coil get hot? I suspect it's still the fuel and not the spark (eg the AFM and not the ignition) that is causing the problems....

 

Sadly i haven't changed the plugs/wires yet...so i should go NGK and not some kind of iridium or platnium?

 

It's probably the AFM so I'd focus on that first. Check the FSM at XenonS130 and go through the trouble shooting section and meter it out at the ECU connector (I should just copy and past this stuff - the last thread I replied on was the same thing lol). Make sure your connectors are good.

I spend way too much time reading and researching but here's the condensed version. Of all the mods to the L series engines and hundreds of different plugs you can run it turns out that from stock to heavily modified the best plugs..... are the ones Nissan recomends for the car. The only time you change them up is the temperature range for high compression or turbo cars by going to a colder plug.

New wires never hurt - they wear out but they can still look fine. I really like the Magnecore wires. More expensive but very very good. I don't have any real life data but I suspect other than sending the most spark energy to the plugs they probably would easily outlast any other brands...

 

Who makes the wires that Motorsports carries? I will probably go ahead and just do wires, plugs, distributor cap etc....

 

Do Beck/Arnley for the cap, rotor and such. And do NGK for the wires and plugs. Absolutely the best in my opinion. And they work great in my '82 n/a. Which they should work great in a Turbo. Good luck.

Oh and nice find man.

 

IIRC they are Taylors which are a decent brand. If you are getting the regular ones they are pretty cheap but if you are getting the Taylor Hi-Pro I would buy the Magnecor wires instead.

MSA has good pricing on tune up kits (cap, rotor and plugs and they are the proper NGK BPRE6 plugs).

 

I'll check that Motorsport tune up next Friday. I would order tonight but just spent some $$$ on stuff for the AR so wife is really being sensitive about $$. )