Hey all, I have a new to me 85 trans am. It’s 305 5 speed and I’m wondering if I could get rid of the computer. It’s got a new eddlebrock carb on it, not connected to any computer. I also see a lot of wires tampered with, so is it possible to get rid of the computer altogether. From what I know, I’d need a new distributor and I’d need to pull out a few sensors. But what else is there to worry about? Will all the gauges work?

 

Gauges will work they don't care about the computer just make sure the sensors are installed. Other than that if you put on an edelbrock carb and a regular vacuum distributor the car will run but make less power and get worse MPG than a working factory system.

 

The previous owner installed the carb and disconnected a bunch of wires. Why would it make less power without the computer?

 

​​​​​​​I find that hard to believe. It may not necessarily make more power than stock, but a tuned carb and properly setup vacuum advance distributor will not make you lose power compared to the choked up smogger junk OEM setup.

 

It wont if he has it tuned correctly. Thats the key. But truth is the stock Quadrajet setup is hard to beat for reliability and it will make just about as much power.

 

Not sure why you find it hard to believe butr the stock setup is not junk and the CCC quadrajet is a damn good carb and with some sort of feedback loop it can accommodate different environmental conditions. Same with the computer controlled distributor which has a timing table designed for the motor. The best you can do with an edelbrock is tune it for a specific temp using an a/f and vacuum gauge and hope it does not deviate too much when air temp changes your A/F. You can modify the distributor a bit but you are still limited to generic curves. I guess if you spent the time on a dyno and tuned for a few days you could get really close to a stock setup but not sure what the benefit would be

 

Because the whole thing is garbage from the top down. Top it off with a pathetic cam, terrible heads and compression ratios and you have the complete malaise era smorgasbord of disappointment. If making a wimpy 150hp is the goal there were/are much more efficient ways of doing it than 400lbs of iron and 5.0 litres of displacement.

 

Jayson_305:

If your car already has an aftermarket Carb and distributor than - like you said - the computer isn't doing much anymore. Removing the ECM and the harness from your T5 car at this point will not harm anything. Starty by removing the ECM, then run the ECM plugs thru the body, thru the fender well, and into the engine bay. Then disconnect the harness from everything it's connected to in the engine bay. Put it all in a box and store it or sell it: Done.

** On 86-87 Firebirds the speedometer buffer will lose it's ground when the ECM harness is removed.... so a ground wire will need to be added on the VSS Buffer. (85' uses cable and 88+ doesn't have an independant ECM harness. )