legacycentral bbs

Hi guys, friend of mine just picked up a pretty clean 93' SS, white and a 5MT swap from a 91'. Anyway, the previous owner was driving it daily till one day he went to the store, came out and it wouldn't start. Crankcrankcrankcrank nothing. Towed it home and the next day found the tensioner was failing so it jumped timing. So he left it. But before he found that he thought it was the Idle Air Controller or TPS.. idk why. But he swapped all that stuff around and swapped cam and crank sensors for new ones. Anyways we bought the car as it sat for $2000. I put a new tensioner in and timed it. It fires up but runs madddd poor. It idles super high (cause they fucked with the TPS and IACV -_-) but when you push the throttle in it doesn't rev it just dies out until you release it and it catches it self. You can slowly rev the car but stabbing it does nothing. Unhook your vac line going to your MAP/PES and punch the throttle, that's what it's doing. The MAP and PES are working to my knowledge though. The car doesn't look to have any leaks or anything vacuum wise. We really just want to get the car going..

Also. CEL works but the black plugs don't. Oddly, the door chime doesn't work unless the black plugs are plugged in, but it reads no codes. It has a CEL but won't report what for.

As yall know I've had a fair share of SS's including my current one which has had a lot of work. I am just not really sure where to look and the throttle thing is kind of got me questioning.

did he swap over a whole throttle body or just the TPS? Iv never had good luck doing just the tps as the calibration is annoying. Also if it was just the TPS are you sure the sensor is clocked properly? would be worth trying to recalibrate. BTW is it still a 2.2?

Sounds like it could be a nasty vacuum leak. Also +1 for checking the IAC calibration.

Check the intake elbows from resonator-to-turbo and turbo-to-intake for leaks or splits (especially if it's stock). The pre-charge elbow it notorious for splitting under the accordion part.

Regarding the ECU/CEL and door chime, it sounds like something was messed with, possibly during the 5MT swap. Do you have any idea what was done? Is the TCU still in the car or has it been pulled and properly converted?

I would see if you can ground the specific read memory pin at the ECU to see if you can get it to display the codes.

Josh, it sounds like it was messed with. It also has a 90/91 MT cluster as well now. I haven't looked for the TCU but I will check for that, and I will see I can ground that pin, assuming it's listed on the ECU pinout.

I would like to say the car was running perfectly fine until the belt tensioner failed. This is ALSO really strange, but we started the car and it fired up, we shut it off and then 5 mins later it wouldn't run. It cranked and as soon as you turn the key it would fire for like 1 second and then just continue cranking and cranking.

Hmm.....I know there are some differences in the cluster pins....and low behold after taking a look at my handy dandy spreadsheet the seat belt warning system is one of the differences.

Take a look at this spreadsheet for more details

http://main.experiencetherave.com/subar ... n_Out.xlsx

My purple car is a 93 auto to tranny swap. You need the cluster from a 93-94 manual non-wagon to get it all to work. Double check your timing and the cam/crank sensors and the tps. Then go hunting for leaks

In theory then, if we swap over to a 93-94 non-wagon, the CEL plug should work again?

robertpaige wrote:In theory then, if we swap over to a 93-94 non-wagon, the CEL plug should work again?

Can't confirm that. But the cluster will be correct for the transmission/year/and ecu.

figured I'd close this out.. Ended up bein the fuel pump lol. A year later we finally gave it a shot one afternoon and I had a hunch, sure enough the pump wasn't priming. Wiring tested good so we put a new pump in and it fired right up.

Damn bro, that's brutal. Glad you figured it out though!