Ok so here's the critical info. The car is originally a '92 V6 Auto that I just finished swapping to a TPI 305 5 Speed. The drive train is out of a '90 Firebird as is the harness and the ECM. The cluster is from the 92. The Steering column, key and VATS module are from the 92. All of the AIR/Emissions system has been deleted. Since both cars we're SD injection cars this swap aside from some sheet metal cutting, should have been pretty much plug and play. It was for a while. Everything went in pretty good. Had some clearance problems between the V8 headers and the V6 heater lines & brake lines but all that was an easy fix. After connecting everything the car fired up pretty quickly after a few tries to get the timing right. Then the problems started.

After having the car running for a few mins to heat up I noticed that the oil pressure gauge was at almost 0. I then put the headlights on too see the gauge better and the gauge dropped down to 0 and would alternate between 0 and almost 0 as I turned the headlights on and off. At that point not wanting to take any chances I changed the oil pump with a known good one and the pan too cause the one on the motor was pretty banged up. I then hooked up an external gauge to the oil pressure port and got great pressure off the pump so I then re-installed the oil pressure sender and buttoned everything up and then started the car, still no oil pressure. Obviously at this point it's either wiring or the cluster but the cluster was working fine with the V6 and as far as I know for SD cars the clusters for V6 & V8 cars are the same. Correct me if I'm wrong. I'll get back to this problem a little later.

Now the car has developed a starting issue. Keep in mind that the car has run only for about 30 mins since the swap. Every time I finally get it to start and run smoothly as soon as I shut it off it will not restart without playing with the timing. Now it's taking me between 5-15 minutes of messing with the distributor to get the car running. When I rotate the distributor past a certain point the fuel pump primes. When it finally does start it usually just sputters and i have to give it some gas to get it running properly. Throttle response is terrible no matter where I have the timing set. I have not yet set the timing with a light but I have a tough time believing that if I get it to start at a certain timing setting, that it will not repeatedly start at the same position. I will get a hold of a timing light tomorrow and I will attempt to get it started again and then time it correctly following the computer controlled dist procedure. Does this sound like it could be anything else other than timing?? It doesn't seem like a VATS issue like any of the others I've read about/researched. Maybe the ICM? The is also quite the delay before the VATS energizes the starter enable relay.

Now, back to the guages. While I was messing around with the starting problem I decided to eliminate the obvious before continuing. I put 25 liters (6.6 gallons) of gas in it just in case it was that was an issue and I then found out that my gas gauge was also not working and somewhere along the lines my tach stopped working too. I noticed that the tach was reading a little high before and just the slighest rev would send it deep into the redline (making me think that maybe the V8 cluster is different). I also noticed that my engine temp on the guage went way high before the fans kicked in but at first attributed that to a possible low coolant level. After topping up the coolant the situation was the same with the guage. It gets to almost the red before the fans come on. Any ideas where to start with this issue?? I've been looking at diagrams to find common grounds that may cause this problem..

The last major problem I'm having is with my ACC circuit. The fuse keeps popping. The dome light was working fine when I first gave the car power but somewhere along the line in re-assembly of the interior it stopped working. I then noticed other thing on that circuit not working so I went check the fuse. Found it blown and tried to replace it and it blew right away. Searches have pointed in the direction of the Cig lighter bit it's not even plugged in right now. On top of that I'm getting continuity across the black and orange wires at the cig light plug which may be a sign of a short to ground in the circuit. The only modification I've done with wiring was to jumper the starter wires at the auto shifter plug to get the starter signal to the starter.

I need to solve the problems in this order.
1. The car need to start reliable so it can be moved when I need to use the garage for other things.
2. The guage issue so the car an be used on the street.
3. The Acc circuit issue.

I just want to say that I'm not a newb. I've done many engine swaps before and do all my own mechanics work myself as well as for friends. This however is my first RWD car and I'm not hugely familiar with distributors. I know how they work but I'm not a fan of them. I'm much more used to the GM DIS systems on FWD GM's.

Any suggestion would be very much appreciated. I'd really like to have the car able to start reliably by this weekend so I can use my garage for the 10+ cars of winter tire installation I have to do.

Sorry for the novel but I wanted to be a thorough as possible....

 

Sooo, I've solved a few problems and some new ones have com up. Problem #1 ended up being the VATS decoder module . It's weird that it was only stopping the injectors from firing and but the starter enable relay was still working. I ended up using a chip I had made for a 350 TPI with a 5 speed and the VATS removed and grounding the starter enable relay.

I managed to find a 92 Dealer Service manual for sale online and after I got my hands on it I decided to tackle the gauges (Problem #2). I decide to first concentrate on connections that we're touched during the engine swap. I started at the C100 firewall connector. Since most likely the car side was fine I looked at the C7 terminal on the engine bay side of the harness and to my surprise, there was no pin there. I then grounded the circuit in the car and the gauges started working as normal (almost). After a quick online lookup for the 90 firebird C100 connector it turns out the 90 firebird doesn't use this wire in the engine bay harness.

I let the car warm up and set the timing to 6* and tool it for a 20 minute drive but the car felt weak and then i got a faint burning smell. During this drive I also noticed that my speedo was not working. I took the car home and I was going to set the timing back to 10* and see if the power I lost came back. The car stalled in my driveway and when I went to start it back up it wouldn't start. The starter solenoid would click and it would crank for like half a second then stop. If I held the key for any length of time the small wire from the neg terminal of the battery to the frame would start smoking. I figured that my main ground had come loose and the starter was trying to get all it's current through the little ground wire and that's why it smoked.

Yesterday I decided to jack the car up and check the ground connection at the block and the battery. Everything was tight so I put the car down and tried to start it. It started right up so after it warmed up a bit I set the timing to 10*(properly). I shut the car off and started it a few times as it warmed up and had no issues. I then went for a 5 min ride to get it up to operating temp. It stalled once or twice at idle but I was still able to get it going. When I got to operating temp I got home and when I went to open the garage and the car stalled again. I went to start it and I got the same no crank condition as before. After yet more internet research I think it's a starter heat soak issue. The thing is, from everything I've read there is no mention of the small ground wire smoking..I'll be getting a mini starter as well as a heatshield or heat wrap for it. Hopefully that will solve the problem..It also bother me that all I have to do is get the car to operating temp even when it -1C (30F) outside and that's enough to heat soak the starter. I do have headers without any wrap on them. Comments?

The car still needs to have the exhaust welded (it's band aid clamped from the swap and one clamp is dragging on the ground speed bumps etc) and it need an alignment but since it likes to stall when it drops down to idle and there is a chance that it's won't restart, I still can't take it far. The stalling may have to do with the fact that the speedo isn't working. Need to check the VSS circuit.

 

Ok i took the bullet for everyone on that and read the whole thing lol

You are going to need to replace all the battery cables, the starter, and the engine to body grounds. Make sure you clean off the contact areas. These poor grounds will cause all kinds of problems. It could possibly fix your stalling issue.

On my engine i bought a 12" battery cable i grounded it from the engine to the body and at the same spot i put my ground from the battery. I also have a ground strap on both cylinder heads to the firewall. I also upgraded the wire size from the battery to the fender well.





You cant see it very well but i have two cables bolted here. One from the battery and one going to the body.

 

I changed all of my engine bay wiring to that from a '91 Auto Camaro including the battery cables and I also swapped to an LT1 starter. All of my electrical problem are gone now and so is the hot start issue. Still stalls though but always re-starts. That's a story for another thread...

https://www.thirdgen.org/forums/tpi/...not-start.html