went out today and got more gas and installed my new heater control valve and turned the key, nothing, so i just the battery on charge and still nothing, yesterday i moved my alturnator wire and when it touched metal i got alot of sparks, well onto the real story, i have no gauge lights, but i have new warnings on now, i have my check engine soon light on, my infl reset light is on now and my security light is now on, also when i turn on the key my temp gauge burrys its self and my brake light comes on, any help here? my engine is litterally doing NOTHING now

 

Do these have a fused link for the starter? My 88 does along the frame rail near the battery. I think it will kill all the power to the starter.

 

Let's see here. SES light is supposed to be on when the engine is not running and the ignition is on. The air bag light, is it on constantly or does it come on for a few seconds and then go off? Same for the security light? Do you have the parking brake on, or is the tan wire at either the switch under the master cylinder or at the parking brake handle pinched to ground or otherwise touching ground?

If the SECURITY light is on constantly, the car will not crank, and most certainly will not fire until either the correct key is used or the system bypassed. The anti-theft system disables both the starter and the fuel injection (not the fuel pump, the injectors themselves).

 

the ses light is on all the time, but i also still have my steering wheel apart so that might be it aswell, the barking break it off and my foot is off the brake when im turning the key, the security light is on all the time NOW but it wasnt the other day so whats causing it to do this now?!

 

Do you have the ignition lock in the column and connected to the wiring at the bottom? The air bag light will stay on until you put the air bag back in place and disconnect the battery to clear the trouble code.

 

i dont have the air bag connected, and im not worried about it im worried about vats right now

 

I was just telling you why the air bag light is on and what to do about it...

Anyways, is the lock cylinder connected to the wiring harness still? Check to make sure neither one of the wires got broken when you took the column apart.

 

i know and i apperciate that, iv had the column apart for about a month now and this is the first time its done this, i havent touched any of the wires under the dash at all

 

Either way, check the wires running out of the lock cylinder in the column and make sure neither got broken, as those things are tiny and easy to break. And the lock cylinder is like $50... Plus the key ($2 on eBay plus about $2-3 to have it cut). Unless you want to buy a bypass box that plugs in in place of the lock cylinder. But then you lose the whole purpose of the VATS, to keep your car from being stolen as easily.

Anyways, if you have an ohmmeter, look down towards the bottom of the column where all of the wires come out of the protective jacket. You will see a set of 2 wires that comes out and goes to a REALLY small connector that has a purple and a white wire attached. Disconnect the connector, and, with the key in the lock, probe the lock cylinder connector with the ohmmeter set to the 20K ohms scale (and the 2K ohms scale if this fails). If you don't get a reading from the lock connector, the wiring is messed up and you won't be able to easily fix it depending on where it's broken. So you'll either need a bypass module or a set of resistors to plug in there to imitate the key reading so you can actually try to see if your engine runs.

 

The way I bypassed my VATS system was went to radio shack and bought a huge pack of resistors. I measured the resistance across the chip in my key with a ohmeter and went through the pack of resistors and found one that was within .01k ohms. (My resistance was 6k ohms) yours probably will be different, I think there were 12 different combination's IIRC. Then unplug the connector and snip the wires going up the column, then solder the resistor to the plug, and snap it back together.

PS: To still have a little bit of security, I put a hidden kill switch in my car that does the same thing as the VATS, it breaks the circuit after the resistance. I just have to flip a switch everytime I go to start my car now. (Really, I only use it if I am in a bad neighborhood or something like that.)

 

what would has caused my vats to go off all of a sudden though?, right now im on my phone cause im out of town but when i do ill check the wires under my dash, how much is a bypass box dan?

 

It's not so much a box as it is a resistor soldered to a circuit board connected to a pigtail that would be a part of the lock assembly that's inside a box... I think mine was $15 shipped or something like that, but I ended up making my own removable "key" for added security.

:edit: And I forgot to mention that you'll need to measure the resistance of your key between the black pellet and the metal part of the key so you know either what resistor to buy or what key code you need for the bypass. There's 15 different key codes.