So I redo the head gaskets with cometics and take my time and do a few more things to hide wires and dress it up under the hood and make it look more presentable. Go to start the car to heat cycle the head so I can re-qorque. Turn the key on the oil needle pegs to the top. Try to start it, it runs for a few seconds burps/backfires through the intake a couple times and wont stay running. My immediate guess is its the harness and not the sending unit. I knew something wasnt right when I reconnected the battery and it drew a heavy load right away. It should draw a little for the radio memory but not throw a big spark. Something is chaffed and grounding out. I know the TPS ground has issues from before as well. Really starting to **** me off, not that I woud be driving it now anyway but I hate introducing an issue while fxing something else. Ok that's my whine/rant for the week.
I've got my car ghetto'ed into the garage. Half in half out with a tarp or two to block the outside weather from coming into the garage. totaly ugly. If I could drop 250 on someone to fix it I'm at the point that I would do it. After a while I get impatient when working on my car and its loses its luster. I usally like to do things to it but the eletrical **** pisses me off to no end.


OR is it possible I bashed the OSU and thats is grounding out and I need to do a crank re-learn due to rotating the crank while doing the rockers and the batt cable was disconnected?

 

i swapped a new engine in to my vehicle and never did the crank relearn. it runs strong and has no problems. id say no on the crank relearn.

 

Electrical problems suck.

 

I've got the whole harbness exposed and none of the wiores are chaffed or look bad or anything. But I know I have a grond issue with teh tps signal some I'm gettiung the mulit meter oyut and going to start chasing it down. There are muliple connection where they combine two wires into one. I'm hoping the tps ground issue will lead me to the oil sending unit issue.

With the sending unit unpluged it still pegs the needle and the needle doesnt ever come back down now but it does go even higher when you turn the key on. I've chase sending unit wire to the firewall and it looks fine as well.

Something caused the caughing through the intake and the needle to peg. Something has to be grouding out somewhere right? Some power lead throwing the needle and timing off on the spark?

 

To me it sounds like a ground problem. Did you unplug connectors and plug them back in when you were hiding wiring? Not likely since the connectors usually only work in their intended mate, but maybe you swapped plugs somewhere?

 

Well I striped it all down and checked all the wires. Didnt find anything wrong with any of them. I used my multi meter and checked for loss across what ever pins I could find and none of them had loss. Found no chaffing anywhere. Retaped and will put the loom back on tomorrow. Maybe the cluster went bad as a coincidence? and the coughing was due to I dont know what. Fuel rail was apart air pocket maybe?

 

I could be wrong but I do believe that the way GM wired the oil pressure gauges it will peg if unpluged. I think it relies on the signal to bring it down to correct reading.

 

Thats exactly what mine did when my oil senders cable got bumped off putting all the pcv crap back in...

 

Doug had similar starting / ilding issue when his water temp gauge was unplugged. Sounds like several of your sensors aren't being read by the PCM....bad / missing ground? There are only about 10 of them connected to the back /sides of the engine.

 

CHeck fuses and Fusable links

 

Ok, checked everything and found nothing wrong. So the one last thing to do was swap out the new coil harness I had bought and voila... problem solved. Not sure if it wasnt plugged in all the way or what but it was the issue with the missfiring.

So now I get it started and its idling fine and I'm watching the afr guage and all of a sudden it spikes to 18+ . I'm like no way that can be so I get out and look to see if I can see anything and find the passenger side exaust glwing red bening the cat.

What can make it go lean on that side all of a sudden? clogged injectors or something like that? Car was only running for a few minutes when it spiked lean. I shut it down right away. Fuel pressure was fine, guage is on the passenger side rail last in line.

Oil guage is still pegged.

 

SO I get a temp gun and start measuring some temps to see whats up. I get some temps on one side and then go to the other and see that the cat is hottest in one spot. At the very end of it where its welded to the y pipe. So I'm guessing the lean condition is due to the guage being after the cat and the cat is semi clogged or something is in there buring up. I'm waiting for a new ory right now.