Looking at a car agn, need input

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numbah1

Not-quite-so-new-guy
Jun 11, 2018
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Hey guys, im looking at getting a g body car agn, having sold my fbo new caprice ppv w/ the 6.0, and i seen an el co for sale near;

Posted as not having working tach or speedometer. Is that a resistor gone bad in dash board? I remember looking this up when it happened to my 3rd gen. But also no heat. Does that the entire dash needs to come out to fix all that?
 

blk7gxn

Royal Smart Person
Feb 7, 2019
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Hey guys, im looking at getting a g body car agn, having sold my fbo new caprice ppv w/ the 6.0, and i seen an el co for sale near;

Posted as not having working tach or speedometer. Is that a resistor gone bad in dash board? I remember looking this up when it happened to my 3rd gen. But also no heat. Does that the entire dash needs to come out to fix all that?
The speedometer is run off cable, the tachometer I BELIEVE is electronic. Two different issues here, either will require you to remove the dash pod (cluster) to fix.

As far as the no heat, that could be VARIOUS things. Let's say you go to take a look, run the engine for a while and see if the heater hoses get hot, both in and out, if they are, try to get the fan to blow heat in different settings, windshield, floor, vent ect, if no heat is extracted, then you may have a gate stuck in the heat exchange box. if this is the case, that may require entire dash removal, NOT FUN.

If you start it up and run it, and there is only one heater hose hot, then you have a blocked heater core, if NO HEAT on either hose, then the engine may have no thermostat, bad head gasket ect ect.

NOW Check to see if the upper radiator hose gets hard as the engine is running (SHOULDNT BE INSTANT, should build pressure as the engine heats up slowly) and stays hard as the engine and hose heat up, this indicates its building up adequate pressure AND SHOULD be supplying heat to the heater hoses and has a thermostat. If you start the engine and the radiator hose gets hard almost instantaneously, another indication of a head gasket issue.

These are just some pointers and it's really difficult to diagnose anything not in person and typing on a blog, hope this helps!
 
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numbah1

Not-quite-so-new-guy
Jun 11, 2018
11
1
3
It was very helpful, i looked up the locations quickly and went to msg the guy but the car was sold haha hopefully i get the next 1
 
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CopperNick

Comic Book Super Hero
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Feb 20, 2018
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Bummer. FYI, the Tach takes its feed/signal from a terminal on the Distributor, which should be the Large Cap HEI unless what is present on top of the distributor is a small cap in which case you are dealing with the 1st Gen EEE set up. Should that be the situation I would just locate the tach signal filter and follow its wire back to wherever it plugs into the distributor or?? . If you do get lucky and have the Lg Head Cap, very close by, hanging off the firewall you will find a tach signal filter plugged into the signal wire. After that it goes through the dash and becomes one of the wires that are part of the combined dash to instrument cluster plug. I would not suspect the tach gauge as my first culprit in a no go situation. Could be something as simple as a disconnected terminal or a broken wire or even a deceased filter. They are available and someone on another thread on the site has posted a link that you should be able to run a local search engine to find.

As for the heater, more complicated due to more possibilities as noted above. You can gain some access to the inner cables of the heater box in the cabin by removing the fascia for the radio/HVAC controls and dropping them out as a unit on their sub-chassis if possible. That gives you a large hole into which to look. The cable housings are clipped into position and have "ears" or loops on the inner cable that attach to the various controls and levers. The easiest way to gain some room for all this is to actually remove the passenger's seat if you can and that gets you a comfy? location to lay in and look up at things.

All this is sort of after the fact as I did read the note that the Elky had gone. Thing here is that most G-Bodies in the era you are looking to buy from were built on a common foundation so a lot of what fixes what works on more than one ride.



Nick
 
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