my winter project car log so far
i started by swapping the plugs out, which were no longer sparking from running so rich from PO trying to diagnose the problem. figure it's a good place to start.
yes, that's a header gasket laying there.. because i had to pull the headers to get out the plugs. from there i proceeded to yank the entire engine harness, throw the greasy burned peice of crap in my car, and drive home.
this was the worst kind of hell, even though i know my electrical. it's a lot of wires, man..
i found some serious hacking had gone on in there, the sensor ground bus was disconnected. the ecm was grounded to the sensor ground bus. easy fix! i pulled all the gm splices and soldered them up really good, just in case.
i yanked every single unnecessary connector while i was there, now it's an emissions and air conditioning free harness.
back in for test running, still needed some re-routing, but it fit pretty good, considering i wrapped it on my desk instead of in the car.. the wiring passing by the dipstick down the headers, i didnt plan for that.. i re-routed it down the firewall later.
unfortunately it still ran like crap, still wouldn't connect to the scanner, or read a bin. 'checksum error'. ecm fried, i'm guessing...
myltwon sent me an ecm pre-tuned without any codes or vats, threw it in, and it ran like a boss! ... with rapidly falling oil pressure because the oil was full of gross old foamy fuel, and it idled like shit. revved it out, a little, nothing. it went into closed loop, and the trim tables were rediculously lean. then it threw a maf code and started running worse. i shut it off.
great way to break it in, huh?
i drained it, put in some 10w40 with gm EOS and seafoam. now the pressure goes up more every time i run it.
then found no power to the maf.. trace it back under the dash, and find out; there's no pink power wire where there should be, on the chassis harness. snip..butt connector.. threw it on the injector power bus for now. no more maf code. running even better.
this silicone-free high temp 1LE intake elbow was $12, boat exhaust parts rock, in case anyone wondered how to get a cheap replacement..
i tested every single vacuum line coming from the intake except the brake booter for some reason, and they all had leaks and issues.
now it runs great, just idles kinda high, and still trims a bit lean, but that's to be expected.
it moved out of the garage under its own power, f#%kn eh! it leaked oil everywhere because the dipstick snapped in half while i was taking my headers out, but i have a lokar flexible stick waiting on my desk..
i ripped it around town, this car refuses to hook up, its sliding everywhere like a drifter.. but i soon found the brake booster was leaking.
the howling under the dash got louder. big vac leak, and it's pretty hard to stop the thing. just waiting for a new one.
but in the meantime, i shoved a ratchet extension in the brake booster; and loaded a mail tune from a similar car that someone else has.. and it runs perfectly.
drops right down to a slightly lopey 900 idle and hangs there, even from dead cold. trims in closed loop up to 3k are bang on. im scared to take it higher with no brakes.
