I have been doing alot of reading and searching. I have a 84 TA with a 305 . It originally had a quadrajet set up. When I purchased the car in 1986 the guy that had it before me already took all the smog related stuff off.There is no air pump,egr. He had installed a holley carb with an edelbrock performer intake, but give me the quadrajet with it. I liked the way the holley worked so I just kept the set up. The thing is there are wires tied up everywhere from all the stuff he unhooked. Basically the wires that stayed in tack was for the distributor, the altnator and starter. The oil presuure switch. There is a switch that was plugged into the back of the drivers side head and also one on the side of the head of the drivers side. Are these both temperature switches? I am planning on putting in an msd 6 digital ignition system with an msd mechanidal advance distributor. Is there anything in the ECM that is going to bother me with timing issues. I am going to run a 700R4 with a lock up. I see that the ECM holds all the wiring for the lock up. So if I get rid of the ECM I would have to rewire for the tranny. Should I basically keep the ECM in tack and just get rid of the wires I do not need in the wiring harness.I am installing a 383 . I am trying to clean up all these loose wires in the engine bay at the same time. Thanks for any info folks Roger

 

Ok I have the engine pretty near ready to come out, just have to hook the chains to it. I unhooked the wiring harness from the firewall under the master cylinder. This harness has all the necessary wiring for dist, starter altinator, lights etc. I am looking for the wiring harness that is suppose to be on the passenger side fender and all I have is a set of wires coming out of the fender and heading down to the tranny, in the middle of the harness is a junction of green wires that goes to some type of vacuum switch on the firewall. I remember one time a guy was changing my fuel pump it left me right in front of his shop so I had him replace it. That is when he said to me you have it made this car an 84 TA has no computer control. You have lots of options you can do with this. So what I am seeing here is that maybe the ECM in this car is just used to look afer the lock up of the torque converter. I think I should just leave everything in tack. Do I need this vacuum solenoid on the firewall? Any info or suggestions? Thanks Roger

 

Your ECM controls spark advance for your distributor as well. Most likely, if multiple other things are unhooked, then the computer is probably running open-loop (no feedback from sensors) and is using the mapped spark timing curves on your computer PROM. If you were to competely remove the computer, you'd have to put in a mechanical advance HEI distributor as well.

 

jgetti
I will be running an msd digital 6 ignition box with a msd mechanical advance distributor. How would i go about dealing with taking out the computer completely. Do I do all my rewiring for pwer etc down where the ECM is located. I figure that would be the easiest spot .Is there any info or diagrams on this actual process.
the biggest thing to me is the converter lock up, but after talking to the guy that is building my tranny, he uses a switch and all i have to do is supply power to this switch all the time and the tranny will only lock up in 4th gear. So really now I am saying why do I need a computer? Thanks Roger

 

Did you get any kinds of codes or check engine lights with not having your emission stuff hooked up? I've got an 84 with the 305HO and i want to get rid of that stuff and put a better intake on it. But i'm nervous that the car wont run right after i unplug all of the emissions stuff and dont have anything hooked up.

 

Well I bought the car in 1986 and it is a 1984 TA. The thing is I dont really know what was under the hood from the start. I talked to the owner one time a few years later and he said the only thing he took off of it was the carburator and intake and insatlled a holley and an edelbrock. The thing is this car was made in Canada and I am now finding out some wierd things. From a Mitchell program my distributor is suppose to be an HEI-EST with no vacuum advance canister on the side. Well mine has an HEI distributor with vacuum advance. Was that changed I don't know. So maybe my set up under the hood is different from what was put out in the United States, I do not know. In reference to codes my check engine light comes on when I turn the key on for a sec, but never comes on again after start. I have put over 60 000 miles on this car and never complained about anything , just want more horsepower. I figure if there are codes shouldn't the check engine light be on. So no codes here.

 

Well I have been reading a bit on the ECM forums. What I have found in my searches is that any of the cars built in Canada have different set ups. No ECM. I will have to look under the dash in the am, maybe this explains why i have a different distributor

 

Last night I took the dash apart on the passenger side. I could not see any ECM anywhere. Is this the only place they are located? The wires that come in on the passenger side are just for the torque lock up and they go into a wiring harness, not an ECM. I talked to the dealer this am and he said that alot of the cars built in Canada back then were built to go over to the foreign countries. They did not run the ECM for them and the HEI-EST distributor was not used either. So now I seem to feel that I have a no ECM car. This is probaly why when a mechanic looked at my car the first thing they would say is you got no computer . The distributor must have give it away. So if anyone knows where else I can look to find my ECM will you let me know . Thanks Roger