Me and my father have recently bought an '89 Trans Am GTA and are in the process of fixing/restoring it. While the cars got plenty of other problems, I figured this would be a good first post. What is this thing? found it in the glove compartment and really have no idea what it is or does.

 

Calpac and chip for ecm.

 

Thanks for the quick reply. Does it need to be plugged in anywhere, or is it a just-in-case thing?

 

Looks like in case thing.....should replace the original chip.....or maybe that's the original and there's an upgrade chip in the ecm now?

 

I would guess there is a Hypertech or other 3rd party chip in your ECM. Thats a Factory chip.

 

I'd put that one back in for reliability and sell the after market one on eBay.

 

Ill start looking trough the manual tonight, but for now, does anyone know of a thread with instructions on where to find the ecm and change the chip?

 

The ecm is under the pass side dash.there's two 7mm screws in a plastics bracket facing the carpet. The ecm slides down and out.there's a door securing the chip in. It just pills strait out.

 

May want to pull battery cable to be safe.

 

X2....

 

I wonder, if it does have an aftermarket chip, if they forgot to plug the factory MEMCAL onto the adapter...

BTW, that item is called a MEMCAL.

 

got it in one.It was a Hypertech. Ill keep it for now, and put the stock one back in. Once the car is up and running ill change the chips out again to see if its worth keeping. Thanks for the quick help guys!


Edit: also, the stock chip has turned off the security light- now i just need to throw in some plugs and it should be ready to fire in a couple days!

 

SES light? The security light is for VATs, which the ECM won't/shouldn't affect. Depending upon how the Hyperchip MEMCAL/chip was set up the SES may have been from the missing CALPAK/ESC-Filter portion of the MEMCAL.

RBob.

 

Im not really sure. All i know is the light that said "security" stopped turning on after i changed the chip back to stop. Also, i dont know if this is related, but there was gas in the oil when the car arrived on the trailer, wich led us to believe the engine was flooding. Since i have been led to believe the chip controls fuel/ ignition timing, is it possible that it was the chips fault?

 

sounds like the chip that was in there had vats removed and someone disabled your vats sytem. the memcal you have pictured has vats. The gas in the oil could be caused by a stuck open injector.

 

could be an injector. There was ALOT of gas in the oil though, so i wondered if it was possible the PO was just as stupid aas it seems from the wiring job he tried for a back speaker, and bought the wrong chip.