Can I remove my ODB1? (not a legal question)

[Cuse99]

I appreciate all the feedback and concern. But my tech is old school and so is 1/2 his crew. He has his own 87 El Camino, 73 Malibu and in his shop you'll often find classic cars from the 50's 60's and 70's. I saw my first X frame car on a lift just a few weeks ago. I did some research on his shop and I've been working with him now for a few months on and off. There is the concern that he will overcharge but at this point I trust him, I won't get into the details. He and his crew know their stuff, I'm not even a little concerned.

 

[ck80]

They don't just drop in, unless its a speciality LS swapping shop with lots of expertise, a regular shop will likely need to spend time doing research, time the customer pays for to figure out how to retrofit and adapt newer techjology into an outmoded car not designed for it. If thd OP ever had to take the LS swapped car to a another shop for repairs, they will charge for the time it takes them just to figure out the other guy's layout before they even begin diagnosis.

The advantage of a stock car is you can easily look up a factory repair manually to kjow how to repair it. When a car is heavily modified, repair manuals can become useless and mechanics will charge for the extra time it takes thrm to study and figure out the custom layout. If the OP wants to go the LS route, then a turnkey crate LS like the Erod may be best as it would at least be a fairly standardised layout by the OEM. But even a ready to run LS will need some custom fab work.

I'll agree with your sentiments on bone stock.

but when swapping in who knows what in-between for the sake of removing the obd-1 setup, then a shop wouldn't even know what came out of what, and, sad as it sounds, guys who known how to work on a poorly tuned carb are few and far between these days.

I like running what you can work on, and absent that, running what people where you live have the experience to competently work on.

 

[Bonnewagon]

But my tech is old school

There ya go. And if he lets you look over his shoulder and explain things then whatever he charges will be worth it.

 

[Clone TIE Pilot]

I appreciate all the feedback and concern. But my tech is old school and so is 1/2 his crew. He has his own 87 El Camino, 73 Malibu and in his shop you'll often find classic cars from the 50's 60's and 70's. I saw my first X frame car on a lift just a few weeks ago. I did some research on his shop and I've been working with him now for a few months on and off. There is the concern that he will overcharge but at this point I trust him, I won't get into the details. He and his crew know their stuff, I'm not even a little concerned.

CCC was designed for old school guys to work on. The main tools are a analog dwell meter and a multimeter which your guy's shop should have. Heck you use a float gauge to measure fuel mixture solenoid travel. I posted a link a in the knowledge section of this forum to CCC service videos on Youtube.

Now rebuilding a E4ME Qjet does require special gauges which you can make yourself out of straws. You can use a pen cap to adjust the TPS. Only special tool you might need is a Brainmaster scanner, $20 used.

 

[ck80]

CCC was designed for old school guys to work on. The main tools are a analog dwell meter and a multimeter which your guy's shop should have. Heck you use a float gauge to measure fuel mixture solenoid travel. I posted a link a in the knowledge section of this forum to CCC service videos on Youtube.

Now rebuilding a E4ME Qjet does require special gauges which you can make yourself out of straws. You can use a pen cap to adjust the TPS. Only special tool you might need is a Brainmaster scanner, $20 used.

You left out my favorite.... pulling codes with a paperclip

 

[fleming442]

LS swaps are cheap and easy!

 

[ck80]

LS swaps are cheap and easy!

99% of 100,000,000 times I agree:

Step one: decide you want ls swap.
Step two: purchase ice pick.
Step three: receive lobotomy
Step four: others tell you that you have an ls swap in a fast car.
Step five: you are happy.

 

[jiho]

Plenty of cars run great long before anything related to OBD was created. I don't see a problem.

How old did you say you are?

 

[69hurstolds]

All I can say about OBD1 is this...

If the chips could have been figured out in a way that were understood on how to actually get more out of the ecm (increase tunability), we would be able to swap in CCC carbureted 455's, 454's, etc., with modifications. OBD1 is very simplistic, but very effective, in trying to maintain top engine fuel efficiency/emissions throughout the operating range, while additionally protecting the cat converter. Unfortunately, that means by concentrating on fuel efficiency, performance would suffer. Sure, the fuel efficiency could affect some performance aspects along the power curve in a good way where needed, but in return, you'll have to give up some performance aspects. Additionally, the engines were generally designed for max fuel efficiency ahead of max performance. Reason for all of this crap? Bean Counters.

There's been a few places that had partially figured out the chips, but mainly they were just timing curve changes. Which helped, but were not a panacea. With the OBDII flash type controllers, tunability increased dramatically. It's too bad OBD1 didn't hang around long enough to make it economically feasible for someone to piggyback a "tunable chip" that the end user could tag onto the ECM to basically amplify or reduce ECM signals that went to the engine. If there were any widely and commercially available, I'm not aware of any.

Regardless, OBD1, when working properly, is way better at run-time on-the-fly adjustments than any human could ever be.

But if you take out the ECM, take out or disable ALL of it. You can't just do a partial. It's not hard, but previous posts explain the things needed to do it. Older carbs and vacuum distributor is in your future. If OG old school is what you want, don't install anything you need a computer for.

 

[565bbchevy]

While I am more about having power when I decided to build my Regal a few years back it was to be more of a "budget build" that would have AC and overdrive.
I could buy a crate engine but instead I built my mild 355 SBC to have around 350 horse using a hydraulic roller cam and to break the engine in I bought a $50 Ebay distributor but upgraded the gear and a $300 refurbished Holley Avenger 670 vacuum secondary carb with electric choke and an aftermarket lock up for the trans.
I am truly amazed at how easy this engine was to tune and how well the engine starts, runs and drives even on a cold morning with this set up, I did later upgrade the module and coil in the distributor for peace of mind.