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There are a couple of things that can help determine if it's a californian car. 1. The Californian model had an egr valve at the back of the inlet manifold. Fed models didn't get the egr until August 76. 2. The wires coming out of the distributor will be Green and a red wire. Fed models have an extra brown wire, making it 3 wires in total. 3. The Californian TIU will have 5 wires going to it and the early Californian model will have 6 wires. Fed models have a dual timing system and have 7 wires. All the TIU's up to August 77 wiil work in the Californian car, just need to play with the wiring bit.

A can of air duster for cleaning computers will work, walmart or office max.

The P.A.P. is interesting. The thick ink is typical of the salvage yards paint pen. I wouldn't be surprised if the car has had the dying problem for years, causing it to get moved on to owner after owner. The problem is almost like a module problem but not quite, as EuroDat says. Easy to get misdirected. Based on the whole story and all of the work that was done to get it tuned right, and the fact that it does run well when it runs, but it still dies randomly, if it was my car and I had a spare ECU to try that's what I'd do next. The problem-solving path followed isn't exactly the factory path but that is Nissan's last resort - replace ECU. Next time it dies, if your left leg is flexible enough, kick the kick panel that the ECU is hiding behind and see if that gets it going again. People have said that whatever loses connection in the ECU can be be "fixed" by beating/tapping/kicking the ECU. Won't hurt it, the electronics inside are not today's super-tiny sensitive type, they're big clunky pieces.

I may be waaaay off on this, but I used to buy used parts from P.A.P in Atlanta. Porsche Audi Parts is what it stood for. That was 20 years ago and he had tons of crashed sports cars.

That is the TIU on the passengers side of the vehicle. It is the correct type for a californian car. E12-12 is the correct type number. Its the type with 5 wires. The very early 75 280Z had the E12-9 TIU and they had 6 wires, the extra being an extra Black/White stripe power wire. Do you think there is something wrong with it? They generally cause trouble when they are hot (about 15-30 minutes running), but you have had problems just after starting and still coldish. So much going on in this thread I lost track a bit. You can test it the next time it plays up by spraying freon on the TIU to force cool it and see if it starts.

Unfortunately, brake shoe quality has taken a big dive since the banning of Asbestos. Asbestos was the perfect material for brake shoes ( and clutch discs ) due to it's thermal and friction properties. It was the " Just right " bowl of porridge. Since the banning of asbestos, brake shoe manufacturers have had to go to other materials to act as a " filler ". The result being that some filler materials ( such as Kevlar ) are too hard and result in noise and excessive wear on the drums. Shoes with carbon as a binder, create a lot of dust and again can be noisy. It's getting very hard to find quality brake shoes for Vinatge cars these days. You can still get custom shoes made, usually by specialty manufacturers for Trucking and Industrial use. But the places are not as plentiful as they once were and sizes may be limited. If you can find a good semi-metallic lining for your shoes, that may be one way to go. https://www.google.ca/search?q=Custom+brake+shoe+relining&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&gws_rd=cr&ei=_XE6VsHUAcaqogSRgKnoAQ BTW.. the glazing on the shoes and dust will have to be removed. The dust can cause a lot of noise and can be very abrasive. You may have to machine the drums depending on the severity of grooving. Unfortunately, with today's brake shoe materials, it is common for the dust accumulation and drum grooving to return in fairly short order. Easily in 10K miles. It may be time to consider a disc brake conversion....