Hello everyone, I need your knowledge: my 82 Trans am have a problem that was present before I buy it. During routine maintenance, my mechanic reported that the torque converter clutch does not lock. The gearbox is an original th200c but the car was produced in california so equipped with anti-pollution systems. The last owner before me had the smog pump removed, the catalyst, and deactivated the egr valve. Could this have an impact on the torque converter lock? The rest works fine. Thank you to everyone who can help me. Patrick

 

Not sure about this "had"... sounds like somebody that was LAZY and paid SOMEBODY ELSE to indulge in his hobby FOR HIM/HER???? Kinda like the Vette (Porsche, Maserati, etc.) guys/girls??????

Around here, we do things OURSELVES. That way, at least, no matter how bad we screw something up, AT LEAST, if we're HONEST with ourselves and willing to admit that we MIGHT HAVE made a mistake, we can go back and check what we did. If you pay somebody else to play your hobby for you, ... WHO KNOWS. No way to go back and trace what they did.

So...

Depends on how they went about the first part of that. Since it's all butt impossible to "deactivate" (or anything else) ANYTHING in that old 70s computer without manually disassembling the machine code (it wasn't even written in Assembler, it's raw MACHINE CODE, no doubt they had a team of HUNDREDS working on those few lines of code) unless you're a REALLY GOOD software engineer on 1970s Motorola MC series microprocessors, particularly the MC6809, I'd be inclined to think there was more stuff like ... CUTTING WIRES ... and such as that, that went into that. Now, HOW THE HELL ARE WE OUT HERE supposed to know what wires they cut, spliced, moved, reconnected, (or not), WHATEVER, ... ???

Get yourself the Factory Service Manual for 82 Firebird and trace EVERY WIRE until you find what magical SNIP they put on it.
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Hello Sofakingdom, unfortunately these changes have been made in the time of the previous owner. I am honest and if I had made a mistake I would have said so. As you say, God knows how they did it to remove these elements, that may be the cause. I have already made repairs on the car but electricity is not my strong point... I have a manual haynes on the 3rd gen , and I understood that the TCC is managed by the ecm via the tps and the sensor map. I will check if the vacuum of the map sensor has no leak and if the tps works properly, it could be a good start ...

 

OK fine; in NO WAY do I blame you for that.

Problem is, NO ONE out here can tell you what fornication and sodomy the previous owner inflicted upon your car. We would LOVE to be able to tell you more, butt, ... we CAN'T. They put their dykes (wire cutters) wherever, and WE have no idea where. No one out here can see what they did. Therefore, no one out here can tell you how to UNdo it.

You will simply have to get the FSM for your car, follow it closely, trace every wire, and find what they cut, what they spliced, etc., on your own. We can help you understand what wire does what; but we CANNOT tell you they EFFFFFFED UP about your car. ONLY YOU can do that. And ONLY after you get the documentation that tells you what GM put in it, back in 1981.

Electricity is EEEEZZZZZZZZY. I spent some years at a university teaching Statistics: EVERY student who came into my class would bitch about "statistics is hard". NO IT'S NOT. The only reason it's "hard" is because YOU DECIDE BEFORE YOU EVEN START THAT IT WILL BE. If YOU decide that it's eeeeeezzzzzzy, well, GUESS WHAT... it's not "hard" anymore. Same with a car electrical system. There's like, what, A BILLION "cars" in the world, and EVERY ONE has an electrical system, and EVERY ONE was built in who knows what nationality and culture and education level and intelligence and ALL THE REST of that. If ALL THOSE people, whether they be French, German, English, Korean, American, Italian, Russian, Mexican, Japanese, African, Brazilian, Chinese, Vietnamese, Australian, Indonesian, Indian, Turkish, ... you get the point no doubt ... can figure it out, YOU CAN TOO. Lay off the "I'm stuuuupid" "fix my car for me" CRAP and step up and LEARN. It's just a car. Figure it out. It's just NOT THAT HARD. You're admitting that you're not even as good as all those "others", let alone "better", by saying that. You don't deserve to be an ANTIQUE CAR (40 some years old) "hobbyist" otherwise.

 

Okay, anyway I have no choice, I’ll have to inspect everything. But I still wonder if unplugging some pollution control systems does not conflict with the ECM. I will also order a TPS and a sensor map to eliminate some tracks, it does not cost so much. Thank you for your advices

 

Generally, no. Not that old crude 70s thing. People hack the emissions stuff off of those old cars all the time and they work fine. When PROPERLY hacked, that is; but when somebody's dykes get across the wrong wire somewhere, there's no telling what they might screw up.

About half of these cars were produced in California that year, and up to (I think it was) 87. There were 2 plants, one in Van Nuys CA just north of LA, and the other was in Norwood OH which is a neighborhood of Cincinnati. Norwood was a relic from like the 30s, before the war I believe in any case, and they shut it down as part of modernization in general. Cars built in Van Nuys had the same emissions equipment as ones from Norwood.

 

Not good enough, especially for electrical diagrams. As mentioned above, get a Factory Service Manual; used copies come up for sale frequently on ebay.