First I'll give you a history. I will apologize up front for this being a lengthy post, but I feel you need to know the history and the issues in order to help me figure out the issues. Thank you for your patience!

Car A: The car is a 1987 IROC that originally had a 5.0TPI and 5 speed with no cat and no A/C, I bought it minus the engine and tranny and main wire harness and ECM. The body was decent and thus a good platform for bringing the entire car back to life.

Car B: I also purchased my cousins complete and stock 1987 IROC with 5.7TPI, 700R4, and A/C and cat. He had sideswiped a bridge and damaged the front right corner of the car causing steering and suspension damage that was unfixable. This car ran great otherwise, as far as I know. You could turn the key, blip the starter and she would flash up immediately. Then the car sat for a couple of years until I bought it.

When I bought it, we couldn't start it. So I replaced the distributor module, nada. Then I replaced the entire distributor with a junkyard replacement, she fired up immediatley and ran, but needed timing badly, I had actually installed the distributor one notch off so I pulled it back out and slipped it back in one notch back. Since I didn't have a timing light, I didn't worry about timing it right away. I adjusted the distributor by ear for the time being, and the car would always fire up in a split second and seemingly run fine. So then I started the swap.

So I removed the engine and tranny, deleted the A/C in the process, and also took out the main wire harness and ECM, center console and shifter assy. All this went into car A. Since my cousins car B was scrap, I cut out the floor plate under the center console and fitted it into place on car A, everything went together beautifully. One exception was that in car A of course there was no wires for the shifter assy in regards to backup lights and neutral safety switch for the auto setup. This didn't bother me too much so I left it alone.

Once everything was in and looked good, I fired her up. She would fire up, but seemed to have a high idle, but otherwise seemed ok. I attributed the idle to the timing. This was about a year ago. Next on the agenda was body work and paint. My buddy did the work but couldn't get it in his shop until this spring, so the car sat until then and I just got the car back about 3 weeks ago and she looks good! I got ahold of a timing light and set the timing to 6 degrees ahead, like car B's underhood decal suggested. I have since rechecked/adjusted the timing several times and found it to be slightly off each time, usually ahead by a degree and a half. Not sure why it keeps changing. So I insured it on fathers day weekend and started driving it.

Here is what has been happening. It seemed to have a high idle most of the time, whether in gear or in park. I found a cracked vacuum line going towards the cannister, so I fixed that and the idle is now noticeably lower, in gear with the brake on about 750-800 rpm. In park it changes to a little higher. That seems fine. However, sometimes when she is warm, she wants to idle very low or stall alltogether. Sometimes a blip of the throttle fixs that, sometimes not. Occasionally, when going from park into drive or reverse, or from drive to reverse or vise vera, she will hesitate badly and sometime stall. When it does stall, she wont start without a bit of pedal applied, then she idles fine, but once back in gear the hesitation returns. So if I keep a bit of throttle on when shifting she won't stall. Not nice. I talked to my cousins younger brother, who owned the car before he sold it to his older brother, and he said the car would have this issue when he owned it. He claimed the MAF needed replacing but never did it. So I don't know if it (MAF)ever got done, and I haven't done it yet myself.

I also did the seafoam treatment. One can in a full tank of 91, and one can down the vacuum booster line, and a liberal soak down of the upper intake with Deep Creep through the butterflys. She ran really rough for the first half hour, like only banging on 6 cylinders, then she smoothed out. I am now done with that tank of gas and have some non-treated 91 in there. Driving down the road she seems great, power is there, smooth shifting, but the idling/starting stuff as mentioned above still persists.

Another issue. It seems like the torque converter isn't locking up. I can hear and feel (and see on the tach) the car shift all the way up to overdrive, but then nothing for lockup. When driving along at highway or lower, but steady speeds, I feel a bit of surging, it's not too noticeable but it is there, feels kinda like being in a row boat or canoe with very tiny wave action.

Also, at 55MPH (90KPH) the rpms are around 2100-2200rpm. I think the rpms should be lower at that speed but I have nothing to compare to, especially when lock up occurs.

And finally, CC is not working.

 

torque converter lock up is powered off the brake switch. did u switch the brake switch?

 

Ok, so I just did some reading in my Haynes manual. It told me the importance of having the park/neutral switch hooked up because it then tells the ECM whether it is in park or not and then the ECM controls the TCC and the IAC, which in turn adjusts idle speeds and torque converter. DUH! Now I'm a bit stuck cause I no longer have car B as a parts car anymore. As I recall, the park/neutral switch is a single wire hookup. Question is, where does the other end of the wire connect to??? I remember looking at the wire in car B and seeing it dissappear into an under dash wiring loom (that was the reason why I never swapped it over in the first place as I didn't want to mess with the loom). Anybody have any idea on how and where this wire should go? I would assume the ECM in some fashion. Please help.

 

No, I don't recall that I did. But that makes sense because the converter unlocks when the brakes are hit. Actually, no that I think about it, the post I just made about the park/neutral switch relates. Does the Park/neutral switch wire run over to the brake switch? And where does the brake switch wire/wires connect to?

 

Ok, I'm really feeling stupid now. Just reading back through some old posts and found the most valuable info that I did not follow.

"You may have to splice the 3 wires for the TCC from the auto into the '87 trans harness if installing the auto
Have to check ;wires and plug for trans may already be there but not used on the manual car"

"TCC
Torque Convertor Control
Auto trans has a convertor that can be locked up and that lockup is controlled by the computer.
Power wire goes through a brake switch ( so convertor unlocks when you hit brake ) to the TCC solenoid in the trans then back to the ECM where the ECM grounds circuit to makes it work"

Still need to know where everthing plugs into. I'm assuming a single power wire from brake switch to solenoid, then from there to ECM, but exactly where at ECM??? And where on the trans is the solenoid located? I know I've seen it but can't recall at this time.

 

the park/nuetral is just a ground to the ecm. which pin off hand i cant help. it is in the c207 connector. tan/ black. look up c207 and a diagram will show. austinthirdgen has some great diagrams. the ecm ground the tan wire on the trans connector. the blue wire is the 4th gear switch to the ecm and the purple wire will be 12v to the trans. the purple wire comes off the brake switch. look up the site i gave u and read up on the c100 and c207 connectors.

 

Ok, was studying the diagrams and also some others I found and a picture of the neutral/park switch wires. On the switch we have the orange/black wire, location B on the connector, I believe this is the ground wire mentioned that goes to the ECM, which would be pin N on the C207. So hooking this up should give me some idle control back?

Will have to crawl under car to view the wire connections/colors on trans.

 

Ok, looked under car and saw the three wires going/coming from trans, tan/blk, dk grn, and purple. Looked at the electrical diagram in haynes for model and year of my car. The tan/blk (converter control solenoid) and dark green (grounded 4rth clutch switch) go to ECM. The purple as mentioned above comes in from brake switch.
Since my car doesn't have the brake switch and I didn't swap the one from donor car B I will have to find another one to put in. Factory setup should be a Pink/black wire coming from I/P fuse panel with a 10A fuse to the brake switch, and purple going out of brake switch to trans.
If I get this done right I should have TC lockup as well.

Next will be to find my light green wire for back up lamps and connect that to the D pin on the neutral/park switch assy.