The NBC...No budget Corvette.

[revhead]

A few years back I picked up a 1985 Corvette. A guy had taken it to the dealership to see about a no-start condition. I didn't know people still took 30 year old cars to the dealership still, but whatever. Anyway, as you can imagine the quote was outrageous and he put it up on CL for $1500. I bought it in the dead of winter, with the dealership wanting it out of their lot. I spent a very cold night loading it onto the trailer in the sleet. I sat on it for a while then tore into the engine. The L98 was done for. Broken rod, a 5-piece camshaft, hole in the pan, cracked pan rail, bent valves and more. After some thought I decided to steal the LS1 and T-56 out of my stagnant '72 firebird project and see about a transplant.

I have some good pictures of the destruction, but I'll have to post them when I get home.

[rchaskin]

....... to see about a no-start condition...... Broken rod, a 5-piece camshaft, hole in the pan, cracked pan rail, bent valves and more.

Yeah, I don't think that one would start.
LOLOLOLOL!!!!!

I really like these vettes.
Good Luck.

[revhead]

Here was the cause of that no-start issue.


107868107869

[andrewb70]

How does that even happen?!

Andrew

[Nicks67GTO]

^^^ I was thinking the same thing

[SickSpeedMonte]

So was I...

I bet it sounded pretty spectacular though.

[IMPALAMAN1]

Wow

[Bob in St. Louis]

That's nuts. I've worked in the service department for a quarter century, and never seen anything like that.

and "yes".....people still bring the old ones in to the dealers. We've had a couple from the late 80's within the past couple weeks in fact.

Rock on man.
Bob

[Hornet LSX]

Looks like it was wide open throttle for a long time. The rod end is cooked!

[rixtrix1]

Looks like it was wide open throttle for a long time. The rod end is cooked!

I hosed off the engine on a 1964 Impala SS I bought for a parts car years ago and decided to run it down the road to dry it off. Ran it up to about a hundred or so, heard a "click, click" and it locked up. Pulled one head and all 4 pistons were up at the top. Pan was full of aluminum chunks and 2 rods were sideways across the crank. Previous owner had installed a spin-on oil filter adapter and it became a spin-off adapter twice before I got the car. No external engine damage!

[srh3trinity]

I have heard of a quarter stick cam, but that takes the cake

[revhead]

Made a little progress. I have most of the 2004 truck harness cut, spliced, and re-routed to fit the ECM back in the original spot and the fuse box above the A/C box. Now I need some connectors to convert the Flex-fuel type injector harness to EV1 style, a matching HO2 sensor plug and to finish the fuse / relay box. Once I get all that done I'll pull it all back out again to clearance a few places, and clean up the harness some more.

[revhead]

A little progress is better than no progress I guess.

While searching through the original '85 harness to find the ignition "START" wire, I found that the PO had melted all the fusible link at the starter. Instead of running them back across the car to the LS1 starter, I decided to use the truck AUX BAT terminal and install it on the vette. I chopped off the angled part of the bracket and will mount it behind the alternator. Now the main wires for body power, A/C power and other stuff are much shorter and I went ahead and installed new fusible links. I used the truck Alt fusible link and ditched the '85 stuff.

Unfortunately the fuel filler / fuel sending unit is not in great shape and now needs a replacement.

Since we are working on a new wiring harness system anyways, we thought we might try a capacitive fuel level sensor in the vette and get use it to develop another add-on to our system.

similar to this, but there are pre-made ones for planes and other stuff.
http://www.instructables.com/id/Building-a-Capacitive-Liquid-Sensor/