I have an automatic 89, and when breaking one time, the car just completely stalled out and when I tried to start it back up, not a sound, so I waited a few minutes and then tried again, started up fine and it was squeaking so I looked under the hood and it seems to me the air pump is vibrating/shaking violently.

After googling and my limited corvette knowledge I'm assuming the air pump is so old that it is causing so much friction it stalled out the car? Or is it not possible and I have bigger problems? So if that is the problem, should I get an air pump removal kit, which is just a placeholder flywheel or can I take apart the air pump and remove the fins or is that not possible on an 89, I read somewhere tuned port injection has to get the delete kit, but I may be wrong on that too.

If it's not the problem what could be? Also the not starting thing, once every 50 or so starts, the starter will make a high pitched shrieking noise, I'm guessing the solenoid didn't push the starter gear far enough and it's grinding against the flywheel or something.

Anyway thanks for any insight, I don't want to take the car out while I'm not sure what causes it to stop and not start.

 

If I were to jump to conclusions, always dangerous, I'd pick the starter and/or solenoid before the air pump. You could partially remove the belt and see if that pump resists rotation or if it is another component. Not pumping the air into the CAT may cause issues later; perhaps a clogging of it. That pump normally draws little power and is cheaper to replace than to replace with any kit I've seen.

Welcome to the wonderful world of old Corvettes'-underhood realm.

 

The AIR pump delete was the first mod I did to my '85. The pump wasnt causing problems but I wanted to start cleaning up the engine bay. Removal of all the tubing and solenoids on the front helped and cutting the tubes from the exhaust manifold and tapping in a 5/16th bolt makes it so much easier to access spark plugs and all the nuts and bolts of assorted bracketry attached to the engine and manifolds.

You probly wont solve your stalling issue but you will be happy with the mod. Just dont believe suppliers claims about increasing HP cuz that aint happening. I would keep a close eye on that starter, you dont want to ruin a flywheel.

Good luck!

 

I'm gonna go ahead and say that I don't think the air pump even if it were to completely freeze up would stall the car because of belt friction. You can run and drive your car without the belt out, you just have to worry about overheating and killing your battery because you would not have any of the belt driven accessories.

I don't think you air pump is the cause of your stalling, but I could be wrong.

My stalling issue on my 89' not to long ago was my timing was really off. I'd have a look at that if I were you and wait for others to share their experiences and see what they have to say.

 

My alt seized up on my 89 350 truck, stalled it right out and wouldn't start. Replaced the alt and the truck fired right up. Didn't even charge or jump the battery, so I know it wasn't lack of power and it tried to crank with the bad alt, but the belt barley moved.

 

Really? I have never had that happen and I actually had on my other car 2 bad alternators in a row that seized up and all it did was stop charging and squeal a lot.

Also had it happen on my old car except it was the ac compressor pulley that froze up.

I just realized how bad my luck with that situation is haha.

 

Yah really, it was squealing bad before and I guess on those trucks they had problems with the tensioners wearing out alt bearings.

 

How tight should the belt tension be? It was a lot harder to put back on than to take off...

Anyway here is the final result: (warning, bad quality pictures) http://imgur.com/a/AzXD1

First picture is the 5 pounds of junk I removed, 2nd is a closeup on the delete pulley, 3rd is a diverter box that had 4 hoses coming out of it, 2 were capped off because the car has headers from a previous owner and the 3rd was coming from the air pump itself, so I decided to cap off the 4th hose which you can see in the last picture, its just a big lug nut.

Just wondering if I did this right, I also had to tape off 4 wires coming from the diverting box which hopefully won't do anything, and the car doesn't have to go through emmissions because it's historic so that was never a worry.

 

have seen many air pumps, alt. ps pumps stall engins when they locked up. at this point the starter will not have enough a?? to turn the engine over. Air pumps more then anything else because it is the vanes that lock it up and not the bearings.

 

Looks like the same pile of parts off mine!

 

The alternator seems a little wobbly for my taste, is there any way to secure it better? I know there's only two bolts but the top one is attached to the pretty light delete pulley, and I tightened the hell out of it but it is still moving.

 

Do you have a brace that goes to the exhaust manifold? That holds it solid.

 

Without the bottom brace the alternator case will eventually crack at the top bolt do to stress and movement

 

There's an unused hole on the alternator with no real place to put it I can see unless it goes over the valve cover to one of the unused holes: http://imgur.com/Mwon74R Other than that I don't see many ways to attach it better..

I see what you're saying: http://image.corvettefever.com/f/tec...%2Bbracket.jpg

But the headers are new so this piece: CLICK wont fit

 

You need to get a spacer or a crap load of washers and a longer bolt to put that back brace back on. As noted above you will end up cracking the case on your alternator as the other attachment points are not adequate to keep it from flexing and finally metal fatiguing until it breaks. Most higher priced headers provide this spacer. Worst case scenario you could get a piece of all thread rod, 3 nuts and 2 regular and lock washers to make the stand off. This wont be as steady as a spacer but will help.