Captain Obvious

Well that's pretty definitive about the stub shaft. Hopefully the replacements from ebay will solve the problem! That would be a really easy solution. A lot easier than pulling everything back apart and starting completely over. Unless you have a neat way of pulling the outboard bearing off the stub shaft without putting pressure on the balls, you might consider using yet another new outboard bearing on the new replacement ebay stub. Depends on how you feel about reusing the one you already pressed on. And all this talk about wheel bearings and the resurrection of this thread reminds me... We never heard back from @Jason240z about the final outcome with his car. I believe his car is back on the road (so his issues have been resolved), but I don't think the loop was ever closed about what the problem was. Hopefully he can fill us in?

Yes, the vacuum source is ported. There should be no vacuum at idle, and then slightly above idle (think light cruise), the vacuum peaks. From there, the vacuum will drop off above that point down to zero at WOT. So it never "retards"... It just provides no vacuum at idle, so the timing just reverts back to the base setting And about the temp sensor... Unless you are in Antarctica, I don't think there should ever be a situation where your engine would be cold enough that it would need the sensor to be completely disconnected to run right. Even with constant cool water from a hose, that temp sensor will be getting way warm enough to be providing meaningful input to the ECU. If you need to disconnect it to get the engine to run, then I think there's a problem somewhere in the system.

Yeah, that's not cool. If that shaft is straight, there's no way you should be seeing that. Maybe out at the edge of a big rotor or something, but no way you should be seeing that at the axle without the mechanical amplification of big disk. Are you seeing that on both axles? One of them turned out OK, right?

I understand the ASCII art perfectly. And if the seating surfaces are not square to eachother, there will be big problems. There will unquestionably be dimensional changes caused by the welding operations and my expectation would be that T3 would have started with raw materials and designed the housings such that after welding, there would be extra material that would have to be machined off to square up the surfaces and make them precise. Above, you mentioned looking for a thousandth or two, but when it comes to bearing placement, you're actually looking for the tenths of thousandths. A thousandth or two is usually way way way too much. In fact, a thousandth or two would make the difference between 200T required to press a bearing in vs. one that drops in free with just it's own weight. If those bearing bores are out of round and/or not coplanar to within a fraction of a thousandth, then I think you ought to put in a call to T3.

So when the temp sensor input is actually making it to the ECU, how does it run? How do the plugs look? I'm a little concerned about the pic you posted of the insides of the AFM. Since you have a good report with the PO's mechanic, can you (did you) ask him if he adjusted the AFM to try to lean things out?

I'll do the same and stop poking at it. Thanks Mike.

Excellent!! So maybe all of the fuel pressure stuff was a red herring caused by questionable test equipment and procedures? In any event it reinforces the belief that it just looks like most other old 280Z's that are running either really rich or really lean because of a whole bunch of interrelated issues like dirty connectors, improperly placed connectors, and vacuum leaks. So you found the first, highest priority of those, but there are probably others of lower contribution and impact. The remaining issues are probably what the previous owner's mechanic was chasing to get it to pass smog.

Haha!! No, they do not! So... Now it's been three days since this post was started, and the OP hasn't ever signed back into the forum since. Brand new user, all hot to trot about purchasing a car (or two!!) and hasn't been back to discuss all the input from the fine members here. Maybe he's totally consumed with a huge Easter party prep and just too busy to come back, but I just get a bad vibe from the whole thing. @Mike, I'm thinking maybe give it another day and then delete the whole thread (and user) if nothing changes? Been a while, but wasn't there a rash of spam bot users that signed up a while ago? Year ago maybe? And all of their user names were the same format... Name followed by a couple numbers IIRC?

Glad to help. Before you rip everything completely apart and start over from scratch, I like your idea about moving the stub axle from the other side (that spins ok) and seeing what happens when you install that stub axle in the problematic housing. I agree that could be a good clue if the problem follows the housing, or the stub axle. In any event, I hope you get to the bottom of it.

Been another half day and still nothing from the OP. Wonder how many additional hits have his links seen since he posted this?

Couple of thoughts. First off, yes... if the distance piece is too short, it will completely bind the bearings when tightened. So getting accurate measurements of all the parts in question would be the best thing to do. As Zed Head mentioned, I modified a pair of (accurate, but) disposable calipers to fit down into the bearing recess and measure the distances between the bearing seating surfaces to make sure everything was within spec. And on one of the cars I did, I found that one of the housings was narrower than the other and one of the distance pieces was slightly shorter than the other. So even though all of the parts were "within spec", I mixed and matched parts and used the shorter distance piece in the narrower hub just because I knew. Pics of the modified calipers are in one of those other threads. Next thought is that one thing I have seen cause problems are raised burrs on the hub machined surfaces caused by pressing a bearing in while not completely square and raising a bump. After that happened, the bump caused some misalignment in the bearings and resulted in rotational binding like you described. So, question would be... Did you have any troubles pressing the bearings in or did they go in smooth, even, and easy from the start? Or did they go in cocked to one side and eventually snap into alignment. Lastly, while a surface grinder *CAN* be a very accurate device for removing material, if someone had messed with the distance piece in the past and screwed up the squareness of the end cuts, slapping it down onto the mag chuck of the grinder and removing a little material won't fix the problem. It will just propagate the error to the new length.

Have you got some pics of what you're working with? And I'm not sure what you mean when you say "they are using the "B" series housing as a baseline." Are you doing the work yourself, or is someone doing it for you?

Dig around on the web for input on this. Engravers have been making indexing fixtures for this sort of thing forever. With a little creativity, I'm sure you can come up with a way to index either the stamp or the target less than the width of the punch shank.

Actually I don't like all the links in the OP's post. Links to a whole bunch of auction sites and pics nabbed from copart. Just joined. One and only one post. And hasn't even responded to all the input from other members about his original post. I'd like the OP to participate in the discussion he started and convince us that he isn't a spammer or a bot.

Haha!! I had to look up the Coffman reference, but it reminded me that it's fiddler crab season!

Boys, keep off the moors. Stick to the roads.

If the battery is tip-top charged, it should be able to run the EFI and ignition for quite some time even without an alternator.

The what? Did you say computer???

Yeah, but I'm not easy.

What he said. You might not have to replace ANY injectors. Have you verified that the issue is inside the injector itself and not something else?

You... Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. Us... You know we can still see you, right?

The scammers will just put the scams into a different category instead. One that's still free. The thing that drives me nuts is the four pages of keywords to force ads to get picked up in searches when they shouldn't. People put "Ignore" and then a whole bunch of keywords. Sure... I can ignore them, but my search engine cannot. Effers.

Haha! Well a quick look on the web found the following: Normal Engine Operation At idling speed, an engine at sea level should show a steady vacuum reading between 17" and 21" HG. A quick opening and closing of the throttle should cause vacuum to drop below 5" then rebound to 21" or more. http://www.gregsengine.com/using-a-vacuum-gauge.html So I'm not sure. If a normal engine is supposed to be 18 in-Hg, and calculations indicate you're getting 4 in-Hg instead of 18? A massive intake manifold leak could maybe account for that, but it would be running way lean, not way rich. I'm hoping someone can chime in and show me that I screwed the calculations somehow.

OK... So the more important question. Does it make sense?