Ok so i have been having issues with an intermittent no start condition caused by vats. My question is can i simply bypass the start enable relay to solve this. I found the vats wires had been chopped into and crimped when i was fixing my sloppy column. But it seems the module doesnt work properly anyway with the wires unhooked you can touch them together and turn the key and the car will run even after you let them seperate. So im figuring if i bypass the start enable it will run. Could use some advice here any help would be appreciated.

 

I just measured the resistance of the pellet in the ignition key and soldered a resistor of that value across the two wires in the orange sleeve. If you go this route, disconnect the orange wires from the ignition cylinder because it could throw the resistance off should it actually make contact with the key.

As for bypassing the VATS, I *believe* it outputs something like a 40Hz square wave to enable starting...so bypassing would not be too easy.

 

I tried that route first, but i had the guys at radioshack measure it, they gave me the wrong resistors so i was looking for another option.

 

Radioshack only carries very standard values, 2.2K,3.3K, etc. so if you had something in between they would just round it. Building a square wave generator isn't hard but if you have to ask then I don't reccomend it. Any precision electronics places around? You either didn't use the right resistor or its in the wrong spot.

 

Well im sure it was the wrong resistor. I have read a couple of posts where someone has bypassed the start enable relay to make the car run rather than fixing vats. I was just wondering how to do it or if there is more involved.

 

If you can find the relay- then bypassing it is extremely easy. If two wires on the relay plug are larger than all the others, then just connect them together and forget about the whole relay.

I was always under the impression that VATS did something inside the computer (change fuel tables? I don't know what I was thinking). But if bypassing the relay works then there probably isn't a need to screw around with removing VATS when burning PROMs.