Hi all. I have an 86 trans am with the 305 TPI motor. Recently the 305 got tired, so I am building an aluminum headed, big cammed 355 motor for it. I have two questions, and I'm sorry if I missed other posts where they may have been answered.

First of all, I do not want to use the factory TPI setup due to the poor flow, but the cold start injector is a problem. What is the easiest and cheapest way to get rid of it? I don't want any check engine lights either...I'd like everything to run perfectly.

Also, is there any way to get rid of my clunky HEI dist in favor of the 87 and up type? Any adapters made that I can just plug and play?

These two things are really holding me up for aftermarket setups. I'd like either the holley stealth ram, or the TPIS mini ram. Any help would be awesome! Thanks.

 

Welcome Aboard!

The cold start system can be progeammed out. There would be no problems, no check engine lights, and you could remove or abandon the CSV and controls.

You can install a later style distributor with some rewiring and mounting a separate coil. I'm not aware of a "plug & play" harness adapter, but they might be out there or could be made easily.

 

Cool, sounds good to me. As for the distributer, could I just snip the plug off the HEI, and splice the correct wires up to the small cap dist and it should work? If so that would be great....just didn't want to go killing my harness if it wasn't going to work.

 

You could cut and rewire, or acquire plugs to make an adapter harness.

 

I converted to a small cap- each wire is the same color so it was incredibly simple. Just solder the wires and heat shrink them to make sure its all strong and sealed.

 

Small cap and large cap HEIs are electrically speaking, the same. The external coil on the small cap HEI has 4 connections (2 to the wiring harness, 2 to the distributor) but so does the internal coil on the large cap- it's just that 2 of them go immediately down to the module via short pieces of wire built into the module's wiring harness and 2 of them are external from the wiring harness. A rewire should be a simple operation.

I haven't done what you're trying to do but I've done several the opposite way- small cap/external coil to a large cap/internal coil distributor. Never a problem.

 

Sounds easy enough. I'd love to get the miniram, but money just doesn't seem like thats gonna happen, so the stealthram will probably be my choice, and that means small cap dist. Thanks for all the help guys!

By the way, josh, did the stealthram seem like it made a big difference from the TPI setup? Also, what did you do about the cold start injector?....I noticed you also have an 86. Thanks again.