RDusel

I've used POR15 a number of times and have had mixed results. My best results have been on wire brushed rusty areas that have that familiar "rust" texture. This is where I get good adhesion and it seems hard and permanent. When used on smoother surfaces I have had a number of times when the POR has just peeled off. I tried prepping it with cleaner, wire brushing to make the surface less smooth and it is still about 50/50. And of course, everytime I call POR15 they blame it on poor surface prep. So textured rusty metal is where I trust it the most. On smooth rusty metal I am more likely to use Rustoleum Rusty metal prep and then Rustoleum paint. Just my 2 cents... This summer I am going to try out the "corroless" version of POR paint from Eastwood I think..

A V-8 with reversed heads? Big front mounted blower, very nice but no intercooler?

Are you missing the banjo bolt or the small plate that bolts to the turbo and accepts the banjo bolt? I may have a spare plate if that is what you are looking for, I seem to remember getting a parts turbo to rebuild and it had a plate on it. If you need the plate let me know and I will see if I can find it.. Rob

Do you mean the unit that bolts to the block and then accepts the oil filter and banjo bolts? I have a spare if you need it. Confirm that this is the right part and I will pull it from my attic and take a picture for you.

The 82/83 ECU should work fine in your 81. If you experience a missfire then you will have to find the resistor pack and use a jumper wire to jump out the resistors. Resistors were used on the 81 and older ECUs to limit the power going to the injectors so they did not overdraw and burn out the driver transistors. In 82 they started using a system called PWM (pulse width modulation) that allows the ECU to limit the current by quickly switching the driver transistors on and off. This little software trick made for more precise opening of the injectors and allowed the deletion of the resistor pack (saving a few cents per car). I had read of people who did not remove the resistors and had the car run fine so I would give it a shot. You will not hurt anything. If there is a problem it will be one or more injectors missing once in a while due to the lowered voltage. FYI Here is a picture of the resistor plug, looks like it is just on the engine side of the firewall.

82/83 ECUs should work in the 81 (as long as you match NA with NA and turbo with turbo) but you should bypass the dropping resistors for the injectors. 81 and older ECUS will probably fry if you put them into an 82/83 as the older ECUS require the dropping resistors (they dont have PWM) for the injectors to limit the current draw and 82/83 did away with the resistors.

Keep in mind that an extreme lean condition will also cause a "frontfire"(backfire through the intake) as well as the timing. Given that the car hits a wall at high RPMS I would suspect fuel starvation is causing the backfire. CAS on the crank is pretty accurate (unless someone played around with it) and doesn't tend to creep with wear like a dizzy CAS will. I guess that is one advantage to the 81 system. And the advance is done via the ECU so there is no vacuum advance to worry about.

This will help you with the ECU power probing... I had a bad ecu that would work fine and then the car would just die and click the fuel injection relay (my car is a ZXT transplant also), sounds similar to what you are experiencing. Do you have access to a spare ECU to test? file.pdf

I live about 30 minutes from the Green Acres mall where the death happened and worked there when younger. It's always been a tough mall with lots of gang activity. In the 80's it was the local car theft capital with 12-15 cars a day disappearing from the parking lots. It's a shame that a young man lost his life. I think that Walmart needs to rethink their sales strategy for the future to avoid this.

I just happened to have a T-5 manual driveshaft next to me that I bought. It measures 30.5" from the end to the tip. Should help compare with the auto shaft.

Just a quick note here. The yellow wire from plug 2 to the ignition switch starter wire tells the ecu to richen the mixture because you are trying to start the car. I had accidentally wired this to a constant hot when on wire and it caused the car to always run rich and never go into closed loop mode. If the coil is getting hot then it sounds like the wires to the igniter are backwards and the coil is getting power all the time because the igniter is always on.

It's a GM. From a 3.1 or 3.8 liter V6. The baseplate is actually the ingnition module that fires the coils on a pulse train signal from the ECU. The coils can be removed by taking out the screw and pulling them up, that leaves you with a set of metal pins from the coils into the ignition module (or vice versa, I forget). I would just toss it as the coils are not easy to hook up when removed from the ignition module and the module probably won't work without the factory ecu feeding it.

Dieseling has a lot of possible causes. In addition to the question of fuel octane and engine temp from loy I would ask what the plugs look like. Do some quick internet research on "how to read spark plugs" and see if you have one that shows overheating (the plug, not the engine) or any that show a lean condition. Dieseling means that something in one or more cylinders is too hot and igniting the fuel mixture after the spark is gone. A too lean mixture or a vacuum leak are prime causes of this. Reading the plus will help narrow down the issue if it is a lean condition (you will see all the plugs looking lean) or a vacuum leak (some of the plugs will show lean or overheated). Good luck! RD

Chris, The turbo "igniter" is just a switch to interrupt the power to the coil and create the spark. It gets it's signal from the turbo ECU, it does not feedback to the ECU. Unfortunately I can't think of any way that you can do without the CAS as this is what creates the pulses that tells the ecu when to fire the injectors and trigger the igniter for spark. The ECU is looking for a particular pulse train and uses the speed of the pulse train to determine engine speed and combines with air flow reading to calculate the required fuel. The older style transistorized ignition just gives one pulse when each cylinder is going to fire and the N/A ECU averages this to determine engine speed. If you tried feeding the output of the tranistorized ignition into the ECU I'm not sure what would happen, might work or it might over-inject or under-inject the motor. It would be far easier to just get a CAS dizzy then spending hours testing to see what would happen. Hope this helps.

A good test: Pull all the spark plugs and see if some are clean and some are black. All plugs black indicates that the injectors are probably OK and something is making the FI run rich. For just a couple of black plugs you can check the injectors for leaks. Pick up a new set of injector o-rings and seals (Pallnet has them), remove the injectors and rail as one piece, put some small clear cups under the injectors, remove the coil wire and crank the engine. Look for each injector giving a nice clean spray and see if any drip after you stop cranking.