['82 N/A 280ZX] Idle and running issues

[mazikowski]

Recently my '82 280ZX has started running rich to the point that it would flood and stall. I replaced the O2 sensor and it didn't seem to change anything. I replaced the fuel pressure regulator and now it is missing at idle and will eventually stall out. If I unplug the O2 sensor, it runs REALLY rich. I replaced the spark plugs, but that doesn't appear to have changed anything either.

So, as it stands the engine misses and stalls, with a little bit of a fuel smell from the exhaust, but nowhere near as bad as before I replaced the O2 sensor and FPR. I used a timing gun to verify that all of the plugs wires were receiving pulses from the distributor.

Any suggestions as to other possible causes would be greatly appreciated!

[evildky]

sounds liek the cts, or is it chts, the turbo temp sensor is in the head nto sure about the n/a it's either i the head or the lower thermostat housing,l if you unplug it and things don't get worse, then it's bad

[mazikowski]

Well, I replaced the Coolant Head Temp Sensor (located on the spark plug side of the head between plugs 5 and 6) and didn't notice much of a difference. After tinkering a little bit more, we discovered that if we unplugged the plug wire for plug 2 or 4 it didn't affect the way the car ran at all. On the other hand, if any of the other plugs were unhooked, you could tell right away.

We checked to make sure the plugs were good, wires were not damaged, etc. After a while, we made our way to the injector wiring. Moving the wires around for injectors 2 and 4 made the car run smoothly again. We looked and all of the rubber boots on the connectors for the injectors are split, so there is a good chance the nearly 30 year old wires are starting to succumb to the heat and other conditions of the engine bay. I'm most likely going to replace the wires running to the injectors as well as the connectors themselves.

[evildky]

this is a common issue, but no firing plugs won't flood the engine very common fortunatley unlate z32's the s30 and s130 use standard bosch injector pugs easily purchaced from any number of places, I seem to recall summit having a pretty good deal ont he msd brand injctor clips back int he day, although saturns form the junkyard are popular donors as they use a spring type clip so future removal is a LOT easier!