Long story short, this was my old 240vert that I sold while it was still an automatic. Kid bought it, spent 2k on the blacktop, couldnt get it running and sold the car back to me 2 years later- never got the motor running.

Fixed a list of issues already - timing chain wasn't set correctly, missing rocker shim, stripped keyway on the cam gear, and bent CAS trigger wheel. Motor has perfect compression.

Here's where I am today-
The car turns over smoothly but does not fire up. Every once in a while it will backfire through the exhaust side. I sprayed starting fluid in to the throttle body while turning the motor over (fuel fuse pulled) to see if it would get going, and it backfired through there as well. I think the spark plugs were wired incorrectly, or the ignitor (I guess you can wire it 180deg out?).I know the firing order is 1-3-4-2 , but have no clue how to check which spark plugs are which (do these use a bank system?), or if it was wired 180deg off. I'm confident the mech timing and Cas is correct, but since its the first question I'll get that out of the way now -

So, I'm looking for some guidance on what I could or should be looking for and I'll be searching all along the way.






TDC on the compression stroke


10 and 12


9 links between the marks


aligned (camera wasnt facing dead on, but those two match perfectly)


and the cas floating right in the middle. tape is covering a crack in the housing, the wheel inside is fine

I'm still skeptical on the timing part. I see one link lined up and the CAS looks good but you only have one linked marked. Where is the other link marker?

Also, are you getting fuel? If so check spark. If both check ECU. Pull any codes? You have to start somewhere.

The links are lined up - ignore the yellow link on the chain, theres still the correct number of spaces between the dots on the cam gear to put them at 10 and 12 when TDC.

Yesterday I checked for spark - its there. Will check for fuel today.

Though - yesterday after checking for spark, I sprayed starter fluid in the throttleboddy, and there was backfiring. Can I guess this indicates the timing is still off/Spark plugs in wrong order/something was wired wrong?

Backfiring is usually from the timing being 180 degrees off. Since SRs have coil on plug, you can't really goof up the firing order when you're just simply plugging and playing. I've seen them off 180, but that was with running custom wiring from the ECU to the ignitor that was wired up backwards. If you think it's truly 180 off, I can try to dig up some ECU pinouts for you so you can go wire chasing. Looking at your pictures, it looks like you're running the JDM harness, so I highly doubt that the wiring is messed up.

Check your fuel pressure to see if it's a fuel related issue.

Hijacker, I've been reading some of your replies you gave for people running in to similar issues - which lead me to chase down some wires to the ECU. I stopped when I found the black ground wire on the ignitor going to PIN 25 on the ECU , and the pinout I had said that should have been #4 on the ignitor. Yikes. Probably have the wrong pinout sheet, or it just got late and wasnt paying attention - either way I stopped there.

The ECU is an E5 (23710 50f05)

The black wire should feed back to a communal ground coming from the ECU grounds.

Here's a series of screen shots from the JDM S13 service manual:









I color-coded the ECU portion of the wiring diagram since Nissan felt to obfuscate it all with an extra layer of decoding.

Hopefully this will help you.

Update 10/7/13
Pretty sure everything is wired up correctly at this point, given that I can actually get the motor to fire up - baby steps! Any thoughts?
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23t-dgho0r8[/youtube]

the car will start, but then bogs. Any throttle given will cause the car to stall with no increase of RPM

I actually bought this convertible and pulled he at out put a new cas in it and found out the lower oil squirter was broken off and cracked the block. But we fixed it and now the motor is running great iny hatch. It's kind of funny that I came across this.