So I'm stupid in two ways. The first is that the harness under the rear seat was unplugged, so that solved the problem of the fuel pump turning on. Second is to make sure fuel was getting to the rail, I loosened the delivery hose and proceeded to spray fuel all over myself and the engine compartment. The engine cranks and tries to turn over, but it's still not succeeding.

1. I tested the resistance between the negative terminal and the transmission, IM, and the chassis on the right side of the car and all show resistance.
2. The battery got charged up to about 11 volts while jumped to my other car and is losing 0.1 volts every second.

Where do I begin to troubleshoot?

Updates.

I don't think I have a parasitic loss at the battery. I charged up the battery via jumpers and read 14v across the terminals while connected. I then pulled every fuse inside the car and disconnected the negative terminal and jumpers. 12.5v across the terminals disconnected and no longer jumped. Set the multimeter to read amps and saw 0.00 at the start. I put in the fuel pump fuse and saw nothing, put in the ignition fuse and saw nothing. Then to test I put the key to ON and saw a spike in amps to 7, then down to about 3, so the test is working. Got every fuse in and saw 0 amps all the way across. Battery is stable at 11.8v, so the battery isn't very healthy to begin with. With the jumpers disconnected the starter won't even crank. It will only crank when the jumpers are connected.

Tested each ground to the positive battery terminal.
1: Chassis by battery - 11.8v
2: Trans at clutch cylinder - 11.8v
3: Wire clip on Upper/Rear trans - 11.7v
4: Head at valve cover bolts - 11.8v
5: Screws at ignitor pack - 11.6v
6: Top if IM - 11.8v
7: Wire ground point back of IM - 11.8v
8: Wire ground point firewall - 11.8v
9: Wire ground point right strut tower - 11.8v

Am I missing anything? I'm kind of at a loss at this point. Is there a ground at the starter?

2 wires on the starter. One should be a huge one that connects straight to the battery and should have voltage to ground all the time. The second wire is smaller. It should only have power when the ignition switch is in the start position. I would suspect that this second, smaller wire isn't getting power when you turn the ignition key. If so, you need to check out your diagrams and figure out where there is a wire not connected properly.

Swapped in the battery from my other car and the engine cranks.
It turns over, but not a very healthy sounding turning over, pops twice and dies.
If I pump the accelerator it will pop and shudder a bit longer, but it still dies.

Thoughts on where I should start?

Cam sensor location good? fuel injectors clicking? no random security features limiting it? Mine had an old system with a fuel disable and the wire is still there, I can cut fuel at any time
Does it smell like fuel in the exhaust, how do the plugs look? stuff I am sure you have already or will already be checking out.

Check for any other thigns u may have left disconnected? see if u can convince it to start with some gas pedal play

The CAS was fine on the other engine, so I'm not sure how it could have been damaged just swapping it over. As far as I know there are no security features on the car. The exhaust does smell like there is fuel in it. I checked over the engine three times for plugs and there's nothing disconnected other than the solenoids that don't exist anymore. I'm going to check the plugs and spark next and see if I can figure out a way to check the fuel injector plugs for power.

They make a thing called a spark tester. You can buy it at the auto parts store. Mine looks like this;

you'll have to tape the one end into the coil pack to hold it in place, but then you can crank it and see the clear plastic part light up orange.

For the fuel injectors you need a noid light.

Same deal. unplug an injector, turn over engine, it will light up if the injectors are firing.

If these test out OK (test all 4 cylinders please!!!) then I would look at a timing issue. Either with the ignition timing (sometimes the splines in the exhast cam spin, making the CAS timing way off, or the actual cam timing is off. I've seen people SWEAR the cam timing was right and fight with the motor for weeks, only to find out that it was off by 1 tooth and they didn't notice.

Just ordered both of those tools so in two days they'll be at my house and I might be able to get everything tested before another crazy weekend. Since Dee put this engine together, I would hope the mechanical timing isn't off. Since the timing cover does need to be painted, I'll pull it off and see if the cams line up like they should.

Quick question. If the MAF is not connected to the TB, would that cause these issues because the MAF isn't seeing any airflow? I would think the engine could start without that being hooked up. I only did this because I wanted to see if the thing would run before I purchased all the intercooler piping.

Without a good airflow pipe it aint gonna start... not unless u put the pedal to the floor and then its still unlikely.

connect the damn intake system you hippy!

I would highly HIGHLY doubt any of our cars would run without the maf reading right. I have blown off intercooler pipes in the past and let me tell you it is a quick sputter stall die cough spew.

itll run with a MAF disconnected (not well), the ecu will run on safe mode with preset fuel values.

That's what I had thought. Either way I'll run a piece of PVC pipe between the MAF and TB for now until I can get the thing running.

It will run with the MAFS unplugged (unless you don't have stock sized injectors). It won't run with it plugged in, but not connected to the TB in any way. It will run with it plugged in and connected to the TB by at least 6" of space between the 2. A foot would be better.

Thanks float, these are the things I need to learn.

The MAF is plugged in, not connected to the TB, and the injectors are stock. Tonight I'll be cutting a piece of 2" diameter PVC pipe that I have laying around and I'll duct tape the ends to the MAF and TB. I know, ghetto as hell, but it will help me in the short term.

I love you guys. Ghetto rigged my PVC pipe between the MAF and TB and the sucker fired right up. Pics and video soon.

The banjo bolt for the turbo oil feed line is leaking. There are copper washers on both ends and I tightened the sucker down as far as it would go and it still leaks. Any suggestions?

Banjo bolt on oil feed? say what...?? Those are normally flared like brake line, I have converted them to -4AN and use a 24in steel braided line. Only banjo bolts I use are for coolant, and those u can still get new from nissan (which I did!!)

If there is a banjo bolt feeding your oil on a stock T25 then i dont think it seats in there correctly... but of course I could 110% wrong.

yep looks there is sealing washers on the banjo fitting

http://nissan4u.com/parts/200sx/el_s13/ ... tration_1/

The turbo oil feed line that Dee used when he built the motor has a banjo bolt. I ordered a full 110 piece set of copper washers and they'll be here today. If the turbo still leaks I'll grab a new setup that uses a 90 degree AN fitting.

Talk to Dee. I don't think that will work. That surface isn't designed for a banjo bolt and I don't think any amount of tightening or new crust washers will get it to. As Liquid said, it takes an inverted flare fitting.

Another item that I was a little confused about during the wire up. I have a Zeitronix WB02 sensor system and it has a wire that needs to be tapped into the RPM wire on the vehicle. I tapped it into [Pin #7, Yellow/Red, Tacho drive output]. It also has a wire for the TPS so I connected it to [Pin #38, LimeGreen/Black, TPS resistance]. Are these correct?

It has a 0-5V input for data logging and I connected it to [Pin #28, Blue/Orange, Engine temperature sensor]. Just for my own reference, this water temp right?

I threw an extra copper washer at the bottom of the banjo bolt and threw some thread tape on it. The banjo doesn't fit very solidly in the turbo thread-wise. That slowed the leak to a small trickle and I was able to run the car a bit without worrying. Lots of smoke from the turbo which you can see in the second video. Is that normal? Plus my ghetto fabulous intake is visible in the videos as well. I set the idle really high (2k) at the start. I moved it down lower and the car sputters a bit and acts like it wants to die. I can't adjust the idle anymore either, because the threads stripped. New throttle cable was just ordered so the car will sit until then. I'm going to work on the exhaust first, just so I don't have to go deaf working on the rest of the car and debugging.

Startup
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUOLhqRHAPs[/youtube]
Smoke Show
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjhOjNHW6CI[/youtube]

Is it just my browser, or are the video's not showing up?

How do you imbed the videos on this site?

I checked your post just now, and you did it correctly. IDK why it's not working? I'll talk to the administrators about it. In the mean time, will you change them to regular links?

Maybe they won't imbed because they're unlisted video's? If I edit your post, and cut and paste the link into an address bar, I can watch the video that way.

you're just using the url.

if you edit your post, you'll see a "youtube" tab.

Type the long link in between the tags. [youtube] insert said long link here [/ youtube] (remove the space after the slashie of course)

I edited your post to show one video. Edit it yourself and you'll see what's changed with you links to get embedding to work.

That's weird. That's how he had it before, and I changed it to url tags so we'd have some way to watch the video's.

WHOA! jay!? why does your pulsar have a check engine light?? my 88 doesnt have one.. nor did either of my two 89's!? is it a california vehicle?

Also mine doesn't have the chime

The smoke is prolly from your (hopefully) brand new exhaust manifold gaskets. mine smoked for a good chunk of time the first couple start up and run cycles.

Mine is an 87, not sure there is any difference. Are you talking about the yellow dash light that says "Sensor"? I have no idea if my car is from CA. I bought it from a guy in Raleigh, NC and drove it back to Rochester.

Take the stupid little sensor light out and forget about it. As for the banjo washer thingy that's leaking, that's what the turbo called for, though I thought it to be a bit wierd. That leak can be stopped, just do as I told you so per our "PM" conversation and you'll be just fine.