Something doesn't seem to be quite right with the engine in my *new* 1986 Trans Am engine bay. By that I mean that I can find no pictures or diagrams that have even remotely similar set-ups to this and it kind of worries me. For starters I notice that there's a line from the engine that is going to where I thought that the ac compressor was supposed to be, but even in a delete it doesn't look like it should be there.

Does anybody have an idea as to just what in the heck is going on under here? I can't really post a better picture as I am currently out of province.

 

Wow... just, wow....

Somebody hooked your heater hoses to your A/C evaporator. I don't think I've ever seen or even heard of that. Pretty impressive.


That's scary. No telling what else is botched, butchered, or sodomized.

 

Well, judging by some of the other rice-tier mods on the thing I think that I may have a lot of work to do when I get home.

It has the "premium" audio pack as well.

 

Well, good luck with all that. I hope you weren't counting on starting to use this as your DD tomorrow morning.

 

Well, the cigarette smoking old man who sold it to us never said that hot was dry air and that cold was, well, hot air. I take it that this is the kind of wacky routing that is going to require some serious redoing, any idea as to where to even start?

 

Start from the beginning. Pretend you were doing your own carb swap and start from scratch. That or get a 350 and start fresh.

I bet it is slower than factory

 

I'm with Sofa on this one. Wow. Just.... wow.

That's ghetto-hack-deluxe right there.

 

So it may just be worth my time to find a better 350 instead of trying to correct whatever atrocious deeds have been done to this 186k mile engine?

 

Your problems are external right now (that INSANE heater hose routing, for one). You better fix that before you swap the engine.

You realize, of course, that the reason they moved the heater hoses up to the A/C evap is because the heater core itself likely has a nasty leak in it, right?

I will admit, changing out the heater core is a bit easier with the engine removed, but it's an involved job even with everything out of the way in the engine bay.

 

So basically, things are going to get very fun under the hood? You folks seem to know your stuff, so I thank you for that. Is there anything else in particular I should watch for?

 

Look for randomly cut wires and any hoses disconnected or new looking they were probably botched.

 

Yes 100%, look for a 96-2000 vortec 350

 

All right, so to start off with I'll make sure that the car is actually suitable and that no more ridiculous hack jobs have been performed. I can imagine that whatever guts were left of the ac system were probably nuked from the heater, so I'll start by replacing/rerouting all of the necessary lines. Is there any sort of detailed diagram that shows where all of the lines need to go, or is it down to studying a parts book and using one of the (confusing) vacuum diagrams on here? I would quite like to give this mistreated bird a second chance.