Zed Head

180 is normal for the Nissan L6. Your thermostat and radiator should be the controlling factor there, not your tune. Some people use exhaust gas temperature as a tuning aid. But not engine temperature. Actually, you should be waiting until the engine gets to operating temperature before doing any fine tuning, not watching it go up and down. Your injectors are almost 600 cc/min. That's way high. Most people shooting for high horsepower with their turbo engines use 440cc/min injectors. Supra injectors are common. Makes you wonder if the PO was building a drag strip car. Have you checked specs on the turbo? It might be overkill also. Cam specs? Compression ratio? Make sure the engine has a thermostat also. Race guys like to run without one, but their true purpose is to heat the engine up, then maintain that temperature. Could be why your engine temps don't stabilize. Not uncommon to pop the thermostat cover and find nothing in there.

An AFR of 18 is super lean. Coughing (unburnt fuel) would only come from a lean misfire. Your injectors should allow 525 HP. Doubt that your turbo'ed L6 is going to get there (no offense). Going too big on the injectors makes controlling idle AFR's difficult, because they squirt too much at the lowest controllable open durations. You could probably go to a smaller injector and get better tuning control. The stock 280ZX turbo injectors only flowed 25 lbs/hr (265 cc/min). Your choice is a bit exuberant. https://www.rceng.com/technical.aspx

One area that I seem to remember that could be a deal-killer is the shafts themselves. If I recall right, the needle bearings ride directly on the shaft. So if they die and get ground up they can damage the shaft. Eurodat probably knows for sure. I think that if you had a needle bearing problem the gear involved would rock or move perpendicular to the shaft. Might give everything a good wiggle while you're measuring clearances.

Have you determined the source of the grinding noise yet? If some major part is broken you might be planning to fix the unfixable.

I would disconnect the VR and the alternator and see if the short stays. Then count the horse teeth. Just kidding SteveJ... Obscure philosophy reference....

Try disconnecting the Pertronix unit. It could be shorted. Fits the initial "rev" symptom, I think.

Like site said, the links only line up occasionally. They are there for installation only. First time. Once the chain moves they're not useful anymore. It's very common for the old ZX distributors to have broken parts inside. Also very common for people to use the wrong pedestal/base when they swap to a ZX distributor. Take the distributor apart and you might find that it needs work. If it doesn't now it probably will later. They're not very durable.

The cam sprocket notch position, in your picture, relative to the groove, looks like the chain has some wear but not enough to adjust the sprocket. It looks okay. The cam timing has nothing to do with distributor shaft position. They are two totally separate timing operations. The drive quill, connected to the oil pump shaft, is what determines where the distributor's range of adjustment is. You have to relocate the oil pump drive shaft to change that. If you're only getting 8 degrees of advance mechanism movement there's something jammed up inside your distributor. The advance mechanism doesn't care where the starting point is. A typical distributor in good condition will move about 16 to 22 degrees from the starting point, just on centrifugal motion. So if you start at 15 you should easily see 30 degrees at above 3000 RPM. The upper limit varies, usually around 2500 - 3000 RPM. The vacuum advance is separate from the centrifugal advance. Seems like you might just have a bunch of small things to work on.

I think that you could put your coolant sensor on a switch and use it to generate the excess fuel. Whether or not the engine would restart is another problem though....

Is this you at 6:40? Kidding. Skynyrd's from Florida, I know. Y'all got a mystique down there though....

Not the greatest picture, and i can't remember which gear is which but do they look like these? One of them is 5th. Can't hurt, wherever they came from. Did you check the adapter plate bearings? Those are the ones that seem to get destroyed most often. @Dave WM

That's a good looking piece of pipe work and the price doesn't seem terrible. Nice thick flanges. Make sure to check the inner diameter of the premuffler so you don't add a restriction. It's odd but the factory premuffler is smaller diameter than the pipes connecting to it. Don't know why, don't know if it matters.

Do you mean 5/8" bolts in place of the proper pins? There was a whole thread about the 5/8" bolt on another forum. At the end of it, people were grinding notches in the bolt for the lock pin, essentially making a factory pin. It's good to know if the spindle pin supply dries up but there's no benefit to the 5/8" bolt over the pin. Use a torch on the casting and the pin will be easier to remove. The hole will expand.

I seem to recall seeing those. I can check my blown up 5 speed parts later.

I found a drawing in the 1976 FSM. The early FSM's don't have it. It's not very descriptive either, but it seems to show that it should be about 4-5 mm below the surface of the crankshaft flange. It's poor draftsmanship I think, the lines are misaligned. <Edit - actually, it seems to just show that the side of the bushing should be fully supported. The line is to where the rounded edge starts. Still, doubt that it's that critical. Just make sure the shaft isn't jammed.> But, it's probably not that critical, even though they specify a half mm range. You could look at the wear mark on the nose of the transmission shaft to see where it used to ride. If you have extra room on the nose of the shaft for the bushing it will work. You don't want to jam the transmission shaft though. I had one that wouldn't go in far enough and had to break it out with a chisel. The next one went in easy, but I got it from a different store.

You didn't mention the source below. If you liked what you had before, and you're not looking for a big project then just rebuilding it to factory specs would be the way to go. As soon as you start modifying, you end up on a trail of mods to make things work right with the last modification. http://www.zcarsource.com/piston-set-280zx-020-50mm-oversize-81-83-non-turbo-new_8_55194_50979.html

Just because... http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-coventry-warwickshire-41268025

How about the factory drawing? L= blue, W = white, B = black.

Are you sure that you can't see the end of just one thread? All you need to know is which way it points. A very bright light and a magnifying glass. You might also look for witness marks on the flats. If it's factory original, only one side of the flats will be marred, up by the point.

These guys might be able to help. Looks like they have either side of what you need. You might try looking for 0.5 mm over, instead of .020" over also. Who knows if the people you are talking to are dong the conversion for you. Confirm your bore size also, just to be sure that the machine shop got it right. You never know. Might find the right pistons but then find the bore size is off. http://datsunspirit.com/shop/86mm-bore-flat-top-pistons/

It's not uncommon to find bad part information out there in the aftermarket world. I had not even heard of Safety Auto Parts until this thread. 99.999% chance that they just acquired the part specs somewhere and are having them made overseas, for cheap. Doesn't mean they aren't good, but they're just sending numbers over there and receiving metal back. Somebody misread a document and put bad info in their catalog. They call themselves a parts "sourcing" company. http://www.safetyautoparts.com/

Nice. Is it one-owner? 35K miles is not many. How does that happen? Does the hood close completely or did you leave it open for pictures?

Seems like you have a bigger issue than just bolt torque. You haven't even generated pressure in the coolant passages and it leaks already? Not right. When you say cranked a few times do you mean it ran for 30 seconds or somebody held the key at Start for 30 seconds? Doesn't really matter much, just wondering. I'd refill it with coolant after confirming that you didn't do something weird like set your wrench to inch-pounds, or have a broken torque wrench, and see if it still leaks. A little coolant in the cylinders will be easy to clean out, since you'll be removing the head anyway if it still leaks.

The turbo engine uses dished pistons. Their catalog shows both engine types but says that they don't have the turbo pistons. Seems odd. They might have their part descriptions backward. https://www.opticatonline.com/part/safety-auto-parts-corp-sp123-engine-piston