Big problems with my 280Z

[pacecardriver1]

Hello,

I own a 1976 Datsun 280Z, and lately I've been having some problems with my car. One day I was driving on the freeway at about 70 mph and the engine just cut off. Luckily I was able to get off of the freeway before coming to a complete stop. Once off, the car did not want to start again. It took about 45 minutes of cranking my ignition and damn near ruining my brand new battery before she decided to start back up. This unfortunately was not the last time this would happen. It's happened dozens of times now, mostly on the street, but a few more times on the freeway again. Sometimes the car will suddenly cut back on before I come to a stop. Initially I thought it was a bad fuel pump (which would be everyone's first assumption), but the fuel pump is fairly new and checks were done on that. I got annoyed so I had all of the easy things replaced: new coil, new spark plugs, etc. Still this did not fix the problem of random engine failures. The only thing that is not new/has not been replaced is the distributor. I don't want to assume that is the cause of the engine failures, but I am hoping that someone here can maybe give me some pointers or knows 280Z's like the back of their hand and can just tell me what's going on, because I have no idea.

[evildky]

just replacing random parts is never the answer, when the car cuts out next time, you need to determine if you are getting fuel presure, and if you are getting spark at the plug, and at the cap, this will give us a much better idea as to whats going on, the vr int he distributor is a possible problem but it could still be the cap and or rotor, or the ecu, or a wiring short or a fuel pump relay etc, so please let us know wether it's a spark or fuel problem next time this happens

[The Siath]

I've owned a couple of 280's ... need to get a bit more information on your particular car...

Do you have sidedraft carbs or a fuel injection system or some other system, does the car have it's original ECU or aftermarket fuel management (if FI), original Fuel Pump or aftermarket.... etc etc

If your cars FI - I'd suspect the ECU/Fuel Pump - fuel pump is easy to test, ECU not so much..

[yiannitQ45]

try the fuseable links(i think thats what they are called) there are 4 wires, mine were bad and i had the same problems as you, try replacing them