I have been reading a bunch about everything on these forums ( it has helped me a lot through the process of dropping the motor and narrowing down the possible issues of why my car was not running).
I bought my 86 GT back in September. It was not running at all when I bought it, the previous owner had enough with the car and wanted to clear out the garage for his new project. He had "big plans" for the car.
He converted it to carbureted(Holley 390cfm) along with 1.6 ratio roller rockers and a (I believe) CompCam 252.
I have been reading a bunch about everything on these forums ( it has helped me a lot through the process of dropping the motor and narrowing down the possible issues of why it was not running).
I ended up getting it to start, but it would "randomly" die. I still am not sure on why, I honestly haven't touched the car much since this happened. I have a feeling it has to do with the carb set up. I have never messed with carburetored cars much before.
I will upload some pictures tommorow. This is just a brief introduction. I am going to start working on the car again to try to get it running for spring. I will be posting updates.
Hope to meet some cool people and possibly ( one day ) help people with thier issues.
Things to do:
- Sort out the wiring harness to verify everything that is needed is still there and delete all uneeded wires - currently in a plastic bag zip tied under the battery tray
- Mount the oil filter somewhere - it is ziptied under the battery tray along with the loose wires - looks like a botched relocation kit
- Attempt to tune the carb - no experience with this besides reading the manual online.
- If all else fails ( 3800 SC swap ) - been looking into this more and more, but currently do not want to overwhelm myself as this car is my first project
I seemed to have lost the pictures of the process of dropping the rear subframe and all. Not sure where they disappeared to.
I did take a couple pictures today to show the current state of the car.
Here is the car parked in its hibernation chamber.
Here is a picture of the engine in all of its glory.
This is the rat's nest of wires, the oil filter is not pictured but it is ziptied to the bottom of the battery tray. Can anyone suggest a decent location to mount the relocation kit? Any suggestions on what to do with all of the extra wires? I was thinking take the whole wiring harness out and delete all of the unneeded wires.
Any idea what exhaust this is? PO said it was a custom exhaust. I have not noticed any markings or branding on it. It is also completely wrapped.
[This message has been edited by snypez221 (edited 02-24-2015).]
welcome. looks like you've picked up a challenge with all the mods but lots of promise. someone went to a lot of trouble but the car looks like it's got good bones. hard to tell but the headers don't look to me like either sprints or Francis' so thinking they might be west coast fieros. maybe the seller is a member on here and you can find his build thread to help you out with how he put the pieces together.
Looks like fun, take your time.
[This message has been edited by Grantman (edited 02-25-2015).]
I took the car for a ride on Monday, as it was relatively warm. Drove it about 5 miles, it did not stall once. This was pretty exciting. It could have been the cold weather and the "tune" on the carb that was causing the issue.
I went to start it up today, no fuel pump. The car started for all of 10 seconds, I was thinking I jsut could not hear the fuel pump as there was some background noise. I start probing with the multimeter and find that there are a lot of secrets about the wiring. There are spliced connections all over. Unconnected connectors under the dash. The fuel pump seems to be spliced into the ignition wires. It is the brown/white wire spliced into the pink/black wire about 4 inches from the ECM connector. I have read about hotwiring the fuel pump, but this seems like an incorrect way of doing it.
I tested for 12 volts between the pink/black wire and the ground bolt under the center console with the key on, nothing. Checked the fuse and it is ok. Should 12 volts be shown here?
This project is starting to be a bigger head ache than I originally thought it would be. I am really leaning towards doing a full trace of the wiring and cleaning it up, and dropping a 3800sc in it next winter. I would really like to get the 2.8 up and running for this season.
Welcome to the forum Its going to be interesting with this car and its rigged wiring. The carb dying could just be the choke settings on the carb? Research regarding how to set a carb up in a previously fuel injected car may be required. I've not done that before.
It has been a while since I was able to work on the car at all. This past week and a half I have been on vacation and have worked on it quite a bit.
I dropped the fuel tank(not fun with a full tank.) The fuel pump ended up having a short. The wire was pinched somewhere along the top of the tank. It was not in the rubber "grommet" that the fuel lines run in. I replaced the fuel pump while the tank was out as I want to do a 3800sc swap in the future.
Also, I took the engine wiring harness out of the car to get rid of all of the unneeded wiring. There are a great deal of wires that are unneeded due to no AC and the car being carbed. I was looking at the wiring diagram yesterday and started erasing the deleted wiring. Here is the diagram:
While I was looking at this there are a couple of thoughts going through my head:
1.) Is the coolant temp sensor for the ECM even required?
2.) Is the ECM even required anymore? I did read in a couple posts of the ECM having accident safety. Where it will shut off the fuel pump in case of an accident, I don't understand this as it has no sensors or connections to tell it when this happens?
3.) The VSS. Is the ECM connection required for the gauge to properly operate?
I ordered some heat reflective tape and harness tape to put the wiring harness back together, but want to get it as bare as possible before I use that expensive reflective tape.
I have only seen 2 or 3 Fieros around anywhere. They are scarce around here. Hope to see you around. I got what was left of the wiring harness taped up today. It seems pretty pointless now to even have the ECM, especially after how small the wiring harness looks:
I did add a wire from the ECM fuel pump relay drive through the engine harness toward the C500 connector. I will be using the "hotwire" instructions for the wiring of the fuel pump.
Tomorrow's goals are to get the harness back into the car as well as the gas tank. If all goes well, I should be able to try to start her.
It already is looking a lot cleaner in the engine bay without half the wires just hanging by the battery.
Welcome!
