ShawnZR-1

Yup, :yesnod: Last weekend, I had to replace the starter... dead as a doornail! Advance had one for $160, not too bad.

Total time to get all of the way down to the starter and have it in hand: 4 hours. Then another 4 hours cleaning all of the :cuss crud out of the valley!! :eek: Oh, and why did the starter fail? Guess! There was enough water in the valley to start an aquarium!!!

Whoever designed that stupid (no)drain system needs a right angled drain tube shoved....... :rolleyes: :smash: :lol:

Welp, while I'm in there, I may as well change the plugs and wires, right? HA! Wires? Nobody has any stinkin wires around here! I'm not talking the original GM LT5 wires. No, any wires! Here's where I give props to a great ZR-1 owner and all around damn good fellow: Chris Reinhardt! He had a spare set of wires and was willing to sell them to me! Thanks again Chris, I owe you big time!

Well, I got the whole thing buttened up Sunday afternoon, went for a test drive and it ran GREAT..... until.... key on, second gear, roll into throttle, 3200 RPM.......brick wall. Check engine. No secondaries :cry :cry

Checked everything I could. Pump ran for 5 seconds then turned off and stayed off. Hmmm... odd. Check codes, 61. Yeah, I could have guessed that. Pulled vacumm line off of sensor from under the ECM and pulled a vacumm. According to the schematic, that should have opened the secondaries but the only thing I heard from under the plennum was psss psss psss!

Damn. I didn't expect to pull the plennum twice in a year let alone twice in a week! :lol:

Had the plennum off in 30 minutes. Slight mishap the second go-round though. Managed to break another vacumm line :rolleyes: damn hard lines are brittle!

Found the leak in a matter of seconds: While reinstalling the coil packs, I mush have hit the vacumm line going into the rubber T on the drivers side actuator. Snapped it like a twig. Oh, well. Easy fix. I cut the end off to clean it up, and reinserted it into the T and tie wrapped it! That'll teach it!

All back together, test drive, key on, second gear, fingers crossed.... WHEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!! :hurray: :hurray: :hurray:

Ahhhh, 'tis good to have power!!

Thanks goes out to Chris, Brandt (who gave me much assistance in pointing out vacumm leaks ;) ), and Steve (Wegone)!! :cheers: :cheers: :auto: :hurray:

96LT4

Wondered if you were gonna mention that I broke 2 of the vaccuum lines. :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

Remind me not to touch that car again. :grouphug:

FASTAZU

:cheers: Good work, I found a large rats nest in the starter well when I had to go under the 90s for an injector change.

ShawnZR-1

Hey! I never pointed the finger at you!!! :leaving:

Aaron71771

Welcome to the club. Pulling the intake is not nearly as hard as it looks.

96LT4

I know my friend....just trying to clear my guilty conscience. :blueangel:

ShawnZR-1

Nope. A dozen bolts, half as many vacumm lines and a few connectors that must have been assembled by Oompa Loompas and she came right off! Hell, I may make it a hobby of mine to take the plennum off once a month, just for grins! :lol: :lol: :crazy:

phrogs

Now I wouldnt say all that! :D

threestar40

I joined it last month for a code 61. broke 2 of my brittle lines as well.
Taking the plenum off is a cake walk, its getting it back on thats the B1tCh.

I bought the whole vaccum rebuild kit from limey and got some wires too but didn't install them...saving for later and I'll do the screamin' demon coils too if I can find some.

My vaccuum problem was the solenoid stuck open.

Works like a champ now.

My other problem I had was that I sucked a bunch of coolant out of the car with my vacuum pump before I started and then when I restarted and didn't know how to "burp" the system, I overheated the stupid thing...that sucked.
I still don't know how to burp the cooling system If anyone has any hints that would be awesome.

It finally burped itself somehow and the motor seems to have survived pegging the temp gauge for now, but I was really stupid for that, It was there for long but it still sucked.

I guess I just don't know the cooling system well enough to know how much to take out before pulling the plenum. For what it's worth, I didn't spill a drop of coolant when I took the thing off, but putting it back on and trying to burp it an worm the car up with the cap off I puked out a quart of it out of the radiator cap.

The cooling sytem sucks on these cars.

At any rate, Welcome to the club.

Rick :chevy :smash: :thumbs: :flag