fishslayer143

wow.. its shops like that that created the concept of rip off mechanics.. and the headlight switch replace is not difficult in the least ... You need to find an older mechanic, 55+..familiar with Small blocks chevy motors and not reliant on OBD to tell him what to do .. I would pull the valve covers and compare rocker movement for a burned cam lobe or a bad lifter . good luck..

Kevova

Back in 80-82 aa a tech we used to hope we could clear a check engine light with a part.

OldCarBum

Do the diagnostics to figure out exactly what the issue is before you start installing new parts.
Installing a new cam and lifters is a lot of work.
It's not difficult, just time consuming.
The intake manifold, everything on the front of the motor and radiator needs to be removed.
If that wasn't the issue you've spent time and money for nothing.
You would be like that crappy mechanic and ripping yourself off and still not fixing your problem.
Take your time figure it out and find the issue, then if you have to replace something, research the best fix and if your State allows upgrades and performance mods, do what you can to pull some extra horsepower out from that motor.

Kerz

Keep us updated on your progress.
Vic

derekderek

as Lars and I both said earlier, take off the valve covers and run the engine with the valve covers off for a minute. Yes it's messy. Watch all 16 rockers, if they're all moving the same amount up and down your camshaft is okay. You may need to do some valve adjusting stuff like that but the cam opens and closes all the valves. If one or two valves aren't moving or aren't moving enough, look and see if the pushrods are straight. But more than likely at that point you have a camshaft problem. this combined with a compression test will give you a pretty good idea whether you were Motors should run okay or not. If you have really low compression in one or two cylinders and the valves are all moving correctly, you have a valve or at piston-ring problem.

Cavu2u

My!
That's a beautiful car you have there. You shouldn't hold back spending dollars on a good investment, and I'd say ya got one there.
But you're being wise in asking here before doing so. Follow our advise and you will end up saving some of those bucks for going to the car shows.

Steve

derekderek

And if you do need and get a new motor, at least you will know it was necessary. Not be walking around with that butthurt because you might have just got screwed.

lars

Actually, you don't even need to run the engine to do this: Just pull the ignition hot wire to the distributor to prevent the engine from starting and have someone crank the engine over on the starter for a few moments - you can easily spot rockers that are not moving the same as the others without any oil mess from a running engine. Since you're going to pull the plugs to do a compression test anyway, leave the plugs out for this test, and the engine will spin over very easily without overheating the starter. You can spot a flat cam lobe almost immediately.

Lars

stumpshot

The last thing you need is you and your car covered with oil from running with no valve covers. Take Lars' advise and pull the ign wire.

Jstan2014

BKbroiler

Don't you hate when a thread just stops like this?

Bikespace

The problem moved to here:

https://www.corvetteforum.com/forums...ease-help.html

and here:

https://www.corvetteforum.com/forums...m-install.html

It's like a serialized novel!

Steve Ference

Do you mean engine, as in Internal Combustion Engine, as opposed to motor, as in Electrical Motor????

I am bored with this **** of calling things by their wrong name.

Lets call a distributor, a dissy, DAMN !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

jackson

'STRI byudur

sbc timin' GEAR

Big2Bird

The joy of 81 ownership. One year only designed by Rube Goldberg.

I wish he was close. 81 has it's own issues and solutions. Cam designs are limited to what the computer will read, etc.

wajulia

I do not in any way mean to contradict Lars, all of his advise is sound and based on much more experience than mine, but if it were me I would be looking at the Check Engine light first. It might be caused by the miss or it might be causing the miss, but I would try to figure it out first. In the 81 you can read the codes stored in the ECU by jumping two pins on the connector under the ash tray. The code will blink in the Check Engine light. There are only about 15 different codes. There is lots of stuff on the net on how to do it, but just ask me if you want some help and I can send you the appropriate pages from the shop manual.

After we see the code we can go from there. It might be something as simple as a bad sensor.

wajulia

Looking at the engine pictures I see that the air pump is missing and the air injector pipes going into the exhaust headers are plugged off -- are you sure that they are indeed plugged off? A leak in those would definitely mess up the O2 sensor readings for the ECU. Just a thought

Also -- that looks like a computer controlled distributor -- so the timing on an 81 is unique -- you pull the plug that goes into the distributor and set the timing 8 degrees. Your mechanic may not have know that -- quite unique to the early GM ECU. As Lars said earlier it would probably not cause a miss (but there is a computer in all this that can get confused) but I like to get all the little things right before I start looking for the bigger things.