I am droping the ecm on my '87 Iroc originally equipped with a 350tpi 700r4 combo. Will my AC still be able to funtion without help from the computer? Any tricks for getting this to work for me??
Thanks

 

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Yes, it will. I don't use the ECM in my car anymore, since i swapped from a 2.8 to a 350. Basically this is how I did the wire removal. Anything that had been hooked to the sensors and such on the motor was traced back as far as I could go. In most cases this was through the wiring harness to the area by the passenger's feet. There, they all went through a sort of epoxy block to the inside of the car. I cut all of the unused wires off here. Also cut the corresponding ones off the inside of the car. While not functional, the computer is still in my car. Turns out that how I wired my coil, if I unplug the last remaining plug from the computer, my car will shut off. So I can't remove it completely. Anyways, I don't think the a/c system runs through the computer. There is just a wire to the compressor that you'll want to keep, and of course the wiring to the blower motor. Ok, I think I have rambled a lot and basically said nothing useful in all this. Hopefully you can find something good in it. If not, let me know and I'll give it a better shot.

Good luck,
Mike

 

You didn't ramble all that long... Why couldn't you just cut the wires at the ecm, instead of on both sides of the fire wall? Was the harness permenently attached to the car, mabey I misunderstood you? And what was the glitch with having to keep one wire attached? Did this have to do with the VATS, or somthing else? I am very interested to hear all of the possible negative side effects of disabeling the ecm and trying to remove all of the unnessary 'engine monitoring' wireing. Thanks

 

I had to cut them on both sides of the firewall because as far as I could tell, the wires were pretty solidly sandwiched in a plastic block built into the firewall. I think I could have drilled throught the plastic to get a saw or something in there to remove it, but it would leave me with a hole to have to seal up, so I just cut everything off. I think the reason why my car dies when I unplug that last connector on the computer is that I wired up my new motor before cleaning out the wires related to the ECM. I basically found a switched power for my distributor that was convinient, but happened to be run through the computer for some reason. I don't think that the computer regulates it at all, because it is simply 12V when the key is on. I'm sure that if I had started at the ECM and removed wires from there, working my way into the engine compartment, things would have turned out a little better. I'd like to redo that ignition wiring problem that I have sometime , but won't have time for another few weeks. You'll likely be done by then i'm guessing. If not though, I should have my car working with the ECM completely removed and sitting on the ground (weight reduction). That way I can answer your question more exactly. Right now, if I unplug the thing completely, the car shuts off so I can't really say if the air runs or not. I feel confident that it would though. Sorry that last statement might have raised some doubts. I'll look into it as soon as I get a chance (and put some more 134a in there). Just as an interesting side note, my voltage idiot light still works! Imagine that.