Zed Head

The factory-style steel shims that fit behind the pad will do the job. I had a set of pads that would not stop squealing until the shims were installed. Grease, the spray-on goo, chamfering the pad edges, none of it worked. Only the shims. You can get them at RockAuto for $1-4. "Brake Pad Shim Kit". I feel like a Debbie Downer..

Nice setup, thanks for sharing. My header theory is that the mass of the bulky stock exhaust manifold casting retains enough heat energy from running to overheat the injectors after the engine is shut off. The manifold gets much hotter than the head and the coolant can't pull all of the heat out before the engine is shut down. Headers don't have that mass so don't transfer as much heat energy. But, as is typical for problem-solving, adding in the vented hood, we have three variables changed. So no clear answer. Good to know there might be a solution out there though. I'm leaning to headers as a solution.

Well, there's one data point for purging the fuel rail, maybe. What brand of injector are you using? And, do you have the stock exhaust manifold or headers? I have another theory about where the heat comes from. A good poll would probably shed some light on the heat soak problem.

That would be for a dedicated ground wire for the distributor body. The 280Z's have a wire that attaches to one of the distributor mounting screws for the same purpose. It just guarantees good grounding in the case of gaskets and sealing materials isolating the distributor body from ground at the mounting surface. The ZX FSM shows the screw being used for ground for test procedures. If you still have the black ground wire to the mounting screw for your 280Z setup then you don't need it. I check my grounds with an ohm-meter myself, to be sure I have minimum resistance, even if they're connected correctly.

I don't think that the USB port needs a protective cap. I can see inside my computer's USB ports right now. The world is full of open USB ports. Sounds like you have some options though. Good luck.

I've tried the same fix. Results were temporary.

You could easily modify the cigarette lighter unit. The two electrodes, one on the side and one in the center, just connect directly to the battery, there's no resistors or other electronic gizmos. Either cut the electrodes out or just connect directly to them, hidden behind a face plate. You could even tap off of the lighter circuit for power.

Seems like you're not really sure that the oil is coming out of the "hole". More that the spark plug well is filling up and overflowing. If the oil is coming from inside the cylinder you would expect the spark plug to be fouled or dirtier than the others. Have you pulled the plug and compared? The only oil passage in that area is the one straight passage from the block up to the cam shaft towers. It's drilled so it's straight and I think that you can see the outline of it's location on the outside of the block. It runs between 3 and 4. If a large timesert was used maybe it is possible that they nicked the passage. You might be able to pull the timesert and replace it with another but with better sealing. If the oil was coming from the passage between the block and head the spark plug well would not fill up. It's not uncommon for the head gasket to leak there. BUT, the simplest thought is that the timesert is standing "proud" of the head, with a poor sealing surface for the spark plug base, and you have a compression leak. Fuel and oil vapors, and combustion byproducts are leaking out and condensing, filling the well and dripping down the block. Pull the plug and check the plug sealing surface of the head.

So you have a straight-shot fuel rail. Do you have the hot start/heat soak problem?

I had the same problem with all new parts. I ended up replacing all three parts again over time and also considered the cap. I haven't checked recently to see if the issue is gone for good. I seem to recall that the master cylinder seal showed a small amount of wear which may have contributed the particles that caused the color, but I didn't find anything significant anywhere. In the polymer world one way to make materials cheaper is to add filler. Some seal maker out there has probably loaded their formulation with carbon black and it's leaching out. That was my best guess at the time. Which brand of parts are you using? For the record. Maybe we can identify the bad actor.

The lighter 240Z might be fine with a 3.54. My heavy 280Z wasn't that bad with a 3.54 and a 1980 5 speed, the 3.9 was just better. Weight matters.

That's a good point about sweeping the full rail with new cool fuel. If I did not have air cooling on individual injectors solving my own problem, I'd probably go out and modify a rail to see what happened. Interested in what you find with fuel pressure. If it works, there are several people making aluminum stock fuel rails that will take more modern injectors. What brand of FPR did you order? The Aeromotive FPR's leak down rapidly (seconds) when the pump is off. Poor FPR for daily usage, their design is for high flow for high HP.

There seems to be a "I only have five wires" virus going around, it's very strange. I've never seen so many common threads. Search around this forum and the internet and you'll find more "five wire" threads. I haven't seen any of the problems resolved yet. Your best path might be to use the wiring diagram and a meter to figure out what the five wires that you have do and see if you can find a regulator that will get the job done.

The description of "3 degrees as if you were turning" implies that the wheel is pivoting easily in its normal turning motion. But maybe you really mean it moves back and forth. A broken TC rod or missing rear bushing will let the wheel do that. The control arm (transverse link) bushings will hold the wheel in its location when sitting still but it will be easily moved. Reach down and grab the TC rod and give it a yank. It shouldn't move at all. Check the nut and bushings. I drove about 4 miles to my house after my TC rod end broke. It's not a car-stopper.

You might have made the common mistake of adjusting things you weren't sure about without recording where the starting point was. Now you can't go back to where things were before you rebuilt the carbs and installed the points. You really need to start from scratch on both now. Borrow a timing light (and dwell meter if you can) and set the timing correctly, then tune the carburetors. There is most likely no single magic thing that you can do to get the engine running right. At least the engine runs so that you can be in tuning mode instead of troubleshooting.

Can't edit for some reason... Here's something that I've wanted to try by finding a different set of injectors, but maybe you can do it with tuning - run at a higher fuel pressure. The 36 psi standard didn't last long before everyone went to 45 psi or higher. I've wondered if there was another reason besides better atomization to do that.

I have a potentiometer on my coolant temperature circuit (installed specifically for the hot start issue, but later used for general tuning) and I've found that it helps to crank up the fuel when hot start happens. But based on the results, I've also come to the conclusion that not all of the injectors are affected. To add more detail to my theory, 1 - 3 injectors, probably 1, 5 and 6, are getting too hot and lose metering ability. That's why the engine will start and run, because these engines run okay on three cylinders. So, any solution that adds fuel to all six cylinders will make three rich and three right, as opposed to three lean and three right. I found that adding fuel to all six would make things better but never get all six running right. Not trying to kill your motivation, I may be wrong and you might have a solution. But it's a rabbit hole.

Why would things change in the harness? Did they work before you removed the dash? Odds of something wrong in the harness are low. You can learn a lot sitting in the driver's seat with the cover off of the switches on the steering column and voltmeter in hand. Power comes in to the combo switch there from the fusible link, heads down to the fuse box, where it splits to left and right HL's (fuses), then comes back to the dimmer switch in the turn signal stalk. You can check power in to and out of the headlight switch from the top of the switch. The solder joints are exposed. You can probably unplug the dimmer switch and ground the head lights with a jumper to see if the dimmer switch is the problem. Or check for voltage at the dimmer switch plug. Check, check, turn light switch on, check. Don't forget the simple possibility of bad headlights also.

Use "Go Advanced" and insert the picture in to your reply.

There's only one b. Look underneath the FPR.

Potential power outage from the storm probably didn't help the stress level.

Does the steering wheel move when you do that? If not, not good.

As Eurodat said, you'll rarely see the 36 psi unless you open the throttle wide. The simplest check is to follow the FPR vacuum hose to where it attaches to the intake manifold and remove it from the vacuum nipple. Temporarily plug the hole in the manifold to avoid a high idle and start the engine. Then you should see 36-38 psi on the gauge. 25 psi at idle is very low, even with very good intake vacuum (implies 22 inches of vacuum) so you might have something weird going on. When you remove the vacuum hose check it for gasoline. If it smells like fuel or has liquid inside, that's a problem.

The middle muffler is for "drone" or resonance. It's actually called a resonator by some, although I think anti-resonator might be more technically correct. People that have drone hate it.

The "stub" is below the main rail and there is no surface tension to speak of to keep it from filling if fuel is in the rail. No reason for it to stay empty once the rail is primed. I think that the fuel probably sits and percolates in the injector body until enough vapor passes through it to cool it back down to where it's full of liquid. That's my theory and I have one experiment to support it, but not prove it. But your comment shows the difficulty in figuring out what's really happening. You can come up with a variety of possible causes. As far as cooling everything, yes that seems to work. The problem doesn't happen unless the engine is nice and hot. It's also been proposed that using a lower temperature thermostat to keep the engine block and components cooler will also mitigate the problem. But that has other effects that may or may not be desirable. It's a dilemma.