Joey J

They had sent me a vid when it was getting dyno’d. Sounded fine. The crud was dirt and gravel. No metal. Old belt actually looked good. No teeth missing. Didn’t appear to be old at all. I hope that’s not the case. I don’t want to have to deal with pulling the engine. I don’t have space to do all that. I’d have to ship it to a shop. I really want to avoid that. I got everything back on today but I ran out of time. I’ll check all the bolts next week end and refill coolant, check for leaks and give her a crank. I had replaced the water pump and thermostat since I was there. The gasket maker says it needs 24 hours to cure. I’ll report back next week. Thank you all for the responses. Much appreciated! I feel I’d be lost without this forum.

Balancer looks good. When I pulled it off the crank gear mark lined up with the timing mark on the block. Im assuming below is why the cams are both off by 4 teeth. Not sure. Between those 2 teeth was that crud had pretty much turned into a rock. I don’t know how the car was dyno’d at the shop and no one noticed the timing was off. Is it possible it was set like that on purpose? I don’t see why that would be done.

Working on fixing it now. Balancer is off and mark on crank lines up with tdc marker. I will update once done. Probably won’t finish untill tomorrow night.

Just verified that the balancer is marking tdc corrrctly.

On my previous post there is a video of me checking the timing. Which was wayyyy off. At 60 degrees adjustment on the gun it was still off.

So I’m replacing a few maintenance items and I noticed the cams are both off by 4 teeth. The car will turn on and run for like 30 seconds before shutting off if I don’t give it gas. i thought the issue might be the tune but now I’m not sure. Could there be damage to the valves?

i uploaded a video to YouTube. I have the dial set to 60 and the timing marks show up. In the video it’s a bit off. In person having it at 60 is almost dead on tdc. It fluctuates 5 degrees while idling. it’s idling rough but significantly better than before. You can also see my fuel pressure at the end of the video. It’s at 25 ish.

Gotcha. Yea I’ll probably just go with a stand alone. Ughhhh, didnt want to spend all that right now but w.e. On the bright side I messed with the ignition timing again and the car idles pretty good. No need to give it gas or anything. Kept it idling for a good 5 minutes. I moved it like 10 degrees clockwise at the CAS. Last time I moved it about 10 degrees as well and that fixed my no start issue. From my last post someone suggested that the harmonic balancer went bad and I need to set a new tdc mark to set timing. I checked it and the tdc mark is correct. I tried to use the timing light and marks are no where to be found again. I adjust the timing on the light and it shows up as I increase it. I moved it to 60 and it shows the tdc mark now. I’m super confused. I feel like it’s impossible the ignition timing is at 60 degrees and the car turns on at all. I attached a pic of the CAs. It’s pretty far clockwise. It’s idling significantly better. The engine doesn’t shake much either.

I just came across this on a guide how to set up a z32 ecu for an RB25 motor. “Z32 ECU uses a fuel temperature sensor and R33 RB25 does not. A Diagnostic Trouble Code (DTC) will be raised by the Z32 ECU if it senses that the Fuel Temperature voltage is out of range” I checked and I do have this fault code on the z32 ecu. Supposedly when you have this code the ecu makes that car run rich and rough idle because it doesn’t know the temp. Maybe that’s why I was forced to drop the the fuel pressure so much? GTSBoy, any other option I may have other than just biting the bullet and getting a haltech ecu and new injectors?

It is on a z32 rom tuned ECU. I was just looking up what the stock injectors are supposed to be and I saw it was 370cc. I'm not really sure what my next steps would be with the fuel system. If I get 370cc injectors I'm not sure how that would interact with the rom tune. Also, that will pump more gas into the cylinders which seems to be my problem. I've lowered the pressure in the rails considerably through the FPR and that's helped the car run. The only thing I'm thinking is get a standalone ECU and get upgraded injectors. I planned to go with Haltech eventually but not so soon.

Thread #2 Thank you all for the valuable information in the last thread I posted. the motor cranks on just fine now. I'm trying to work out my new issue. The car turns on and and idles for 10 seconds before it stalls out. If I give it some gas through the throttle body. Just rotating it a tad keeps the motor running. I let it go it starts to lower RPMS to the point of stalling out. Even giving it some gas it feels pretty rough. The motor is in a Datsun 280z so i don't have a tachometer so I cant check where the RPM is at. Sounds really high when I give it enough gas to stay on I cleaned out the IAC just incase. Tomorrow I'm going to check the voltage for the TPS and make sure that's set up correctly. Then I'll set the ignition timing hopefully. I don't have the loop behind the motor. I have bought an inline spark tester so I'll use that on cylinder one. Also fuel the fuel pressure is confusing me. I had lowered it significantly to about 30 psi and that's what allows the car to run. Today i tried to raise it back up to 42 while it was idling and didn't make much of a difference. Once it stalled out. It only would crank and no start. I disconnected the injectors. It started up for a few seconds. Lowered the fuel pressure back down to 30 and the car started up. I looked at my emails from the shop and they used 330cc injectors from a 370z and bumped up the fuel pressure from 42 to 48. They said at the time that worked. I'm wondering if the injectors are the issue. Since the motor will only start up with low pressure maybe they're soaking the plugs at the regular pressure? From what i understand I cant upgrade injectors without getting a standalone ECU. Any ideas and tips are much appreciated! If i cant work it out I'll take a video, upload to youtube and post a link here. I'm sure that would provide more information than what I'm trying to say here.

That makes sense. Thanks so much for that. I was baffled on why I couldn’t see the marks. I’ll definitely start shopping around for a new balancer. I’m thinking if I’m gonna pull the balancer might as well get a new timing belt and tensioner. It looks like the hardest part about getting to the timing belt is getting that pulley off.

The voltage at the fuel pump was at 9.5v when it turns on. I tested all the wiring replaced the terminals and it’s still at 9.5v. I unplugged it and tested the voltage to the wiring only and it was over 12v. Not sure why it drops once it connected to the pump. i ended up lowering the fuel pressure to under 30 and it sounded like it wanted to turn on but still no dice. I didn’t know what else to do so I tried adjusting the CAS while it was cranking and BINGO! Turns out it was ignition timing. I adjusted the CAS a bit to the right and it started to idle. Turned it off once it stayed idling for a bit. I got everything hooked up to set timing correctly with a timing light. The marks are no where to be found on the balancer while the light is flashing. It’s definitely there because I checked to make sure they were visible before trying to set it but I see the marks at all once trying to set the timing. Is it possible the timing was way off to the point the marks don’t even show? I ran out of time so that’s as far as I got.

So I unplugged all the injectors to test for voltage and it started up for 2 seconds. Plugged them back in, car didn’t start. Unplugged again and it started for 2 seconds. Also on the Fuel pressure the gauge stays at 43 if I use a jumper on the pump relay. As soon as I unplug the jumper, fuel pressure falls by 20 psi. any ideas? Edit: I lowered the fuel pressure pretty significantly down to low 30s through the fpr and it would want to start when cranking but wouldn’t fully start. EDIT: I’m thinking it’s either the fpr is bad or the rom tune is bad telling the injectors to dump too much fuel.