• Got the Contributing Memberships stuff finally worked out and made up a thread as a sort of "How-To" to help people figure out how to participate. So if you need help figuring it out, here's the thread you need to take a look at -> http://www.corvetteflorida.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3581 Thank you, everyone! Rich Z.

427 engine (part 2) - RHS block

I was reading up on that Aeromotive fuel pump on their website and saw this in their installation instructions:



30 minutes if the tank has less than 10 gallons in it? Does that mean I could only drive the car if it has more than a half a tank in it? :notallthere:

is that for an intake mounted pump? i thought the one on your car was external and had a big heat sink on the outside of the case? would not having proper airflow, like on the dyno or in the shop cause this to overheat?
 
is that for an intake mounted pump? i thought the one on your car was external and had a big heat sink on the outside of the case? would not having proper airflow, like on the dyno or in the shop cause this to overheat?

Heck, I don't know. It has been hot as blazes out lately, so I certainly couldn't rule overheating out as a possibility.

And yes, the fuel pump is external, located right below the trunk area.

I'm wondering if Harwood put in that voltage control module mentioned. You can drive a LOT longer than 30 minutes on a half tank of gasoline.
 
I talked to Aaron at length yesterday (Thursday) and he said that he is taking this personal now. He is not going to allow that damned car to beat him. Apparently Jim Smith feels the same way about it. He's back down in Orlando. Seems there was a total of THREE PCMs that died. Jim has two of them with him and knows someone who may be able to resurrect them. Aaron mentioned some module that may be killing the PCMs that they are trying to find (tach module?) but GM has had them on backorder for two months now. So they're trying to find one in a bone yard somewhere. Interestingly enough, this module could also be partially responsible for the 1514 error codes earlier, but they haven't had them come back since the throttle body was replaced.

The new fuel pump showed up yesterday so Aaron will be putting that on before Jim comes back up next week.

Well, anyway, I guess NO ONE is going to give up on that car from the looks of things. At least not at the moment, anyway.
 
Well, nothing happening this week. I talked to Aaron today on the phone and he mentioned that Jim is not going to come up this week. He wants to catch that last shuttle take off, and I can't say I blame him. If I was in the area I would want to see that as well. So he's planning on coming up Monday or Tuesday. He has another PCM. Apparently those others couldn't be salvaged.

I did learn on CorvetteForum that it's possible that maxing out that table that some do to try to get rid of that 1514 error code COULD zap the PCM. So in effect, that "fix" can "break" something else. I passed this on to Aaron and asked him to run this by Jim to make sure that this table is back to more normal levels, just in case.

I didn't ask about the fuel pump, so I don't know what is up with that.

Any wagers that I will have my car by my birthday (7/21)?

I wish I had run some sort of lottery when I first took my car into Harwood's place to have all this work done taking bets on what day it would be finished. NO ONE would have won that one! Of course, probably some would have bet on "never" and it's still up in the air about that being the winning ticket or not.
 
I did learn on CorvetteForum that it's possible that maxing out that table that some do to try to get rid of that 1514 error code COULD zap the PCM. So in effect, that "fix" can "break" something else.

Hello Rich,

Where did you get that info please?
Very curious as mine is maxed since 3 years, and wondering...

Christian
 
Oh yeah, I almost forgot.

Aaron mentioned to me that my tires had hardened up over time and it was difficult to keep traction on the dyno with the power it is putting out. So it might be dangerous on the street if I'm not careful. I looked over the tires myself while out there not long ago, and it appeared to be small cracks on the sidewalls. Probably NOT GOOD.

As such, one of the members here advertising as set of polished aluminum GM wheels with new rubber on them for a decent price, so I decided to buy them. I wanted to go with polished aluminum anyway, as I have a problem with one of those chrome wheels flaking the chrome at the bead of the tire. I supposedly had it fixed while Harwood had the car, but not sure how permanent it will be.

I'm supposed to meet up with the guy this weekend and am still waiting for him to contact me about which day would work best for him. I'm thinking maybe I should keep the old tires on there for a while so I can smoke them a little bit before putting on the new treads...... :hehehe:
 
I just did ask the gentleman bringing this point in the thread you linked some more info, let's see if we get an answer.

You know what they say about opinion I guess...:rofl1:
Christian

Yeah, I know....

But honestly, what are the chances that my throttle body, TCA module AND fuel pump could ALL fail at roughtly the same time? I would have to have some seriously bad karma accumulated from past lives, I would think. And if that were the case, I think the cashing in of the bad karma chips would have happened long before now.
 
Yeah, I know....

But honestly, what are the chances that my throttle body, TCA module AND fuel pump could ALL fail at roughtly the same time? I would have to have some seriously bad karma accumulated from past lives, I would think. And if that were the case, I think the cashing in of the bad karma chips would have happened long before now.

Rich,

I am not into karma or some mystic here...speaking of electronic...and want to understand in a rational way, that's it.

I had my Throttle pedal sensor that went bad one on my C5, and it brought me a chain of failure...those Corvette are sensitive, to not say very sensitive with the wiring, the electrical connectors, the grounds...and they hate humidity...not an opinion.

Christian
 
There is nothing mystic about understanding that some things don't follow a prescribed logical understanding. There are such things as "coincidence" and "luck", which just cannot be quantized by a mathematical formula.

Heck, just look at humanity's feeble attempts at predicting the weather more than 24 hours into the future with all of the technology they throw at that endeavor. The 10 day forecast is nothing more than a sick joke.

The cars have gotten so complicated that interactions between components have reached the level where unintended consequences could certainly manifest themselves in unpredictable ways. Heck, I've done enough programming in my day, and observed the work of other programmers to know that ANY programming is highly unlikely to be 100 percent foolproof and absolutely reliable.
 
I just did ask the gentleman bringing this point in the thread you linked some more info, let's see if we get an answer.

You know what they say about opinion I guess...:rofl1:
Christian

Yeah, I know....

But honestly, what are the chances that my throttle body, TCA module AND fuel pump could ALL fail at roughtly the same time? I would have to have some seriously bad karma accumulated from past lives, I would think. And if that were the case, I think the cashing in of the bad karma chips would have happened long before now.

The gentleman just answered in the other forum...

No worries about the PCM failing after maxing out this table...except if you use EFILIVE for this purpose (which is not recommanded by EFILIVE)...

But most of the tuners are using HPTuners to solve the 1514 code on the C5.

Christian
 
The gentleman just answered in the other forum...

No worries about the PCM failing after maxing out this table...except if you use EFILIVE for this purpose (which is not recommanded by EFILIVE)...

But most of the tuners are using HPTuners to solve the 1514 code on the C5.

Christian

Jim Smith isn't using either EFILive nor HPTuners to tune with. I wish I could recall the product name, but I believe it is something he uses in conjunction with his TECH II. I'll have to ask him and write it down this time.

I read that guy's reply and not sure what it meant. It could be taken a couple of ways. It could mean that there ARE values that can be entered into that table that WILL damage a PCM, but HPTuners blocks those values from being entered and EFILive does not. Which means that the tuning software that Jim uses MIGHT allow those damaging entries to be used. The assumption here is that THERE are values for that table that can fry a PCM which both EFILive and HPTuners knows about. The QUESTION is whether or not Jim used such values when trying to fix the 1514 error code.

But in any event, I passed this info on to Aaron and he is going to pass it on to Jim. Still, no one has shown me any evidence that a faulty TAC module can kill a PCM, which is what I was really looking for. I understand that sometimes you have to do a "swap and pray" or "shotgun" approach to trouble shooting a problem, but if something doesn't NEED to be replaced, I certainly don't want to pay for it. I've got enough into this car as it is.
 
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Here's the latest post in that thread over on CorvetteForum about this latest issue by someone who does tuning:

Chuck CoW said:
Yeah, that will do it..... Are you using EFI LIVE or HPT?

Efi Live will warn you if you've over done the ETC tables....I don't think HPT does.

Also, your tuner may have "clicked thru" the warning and cooked it.


It will start and run, but then you apply more than just a bit too much throttle....

You're done and the pcm is smoked.

Is the car running now?

By the way, there are also some ETC tables in efi live that work really well when using larger throttle bodies,

but messing with them "just a wee bit too much" will smoke the controller too... You may be able to re-fix after that one,

but better you don't go there.

Chuck CoW
 
Hi Rich:
Do yourself a favor and call this guy in Boca...He is one of the best tuners around...I have friends that praise him down here is S Florida...Pull up his web page and look at his credentials. Maybe he can offer some suggestions?...
http://www.masportspeedshop.com/ser...dyno in his Boca Raton workshop... Christian
 
Sorry, but I would be out of my depth trying to talk "tuner talk" with these guys. Although I have both EFILive and HPTuners, I have only just puttered around with the data capture part of them a couple of times. They would ask me questions I wouldn't have a clue about what they were talking about.

Aaron Scott has a stellar reputation in this area. There is NO ONE around that has a bad word to say about him that I have heard about. Quite unlike Chris Harwood, that just as soon as my car was gutted in his shop, quite a few people THEN tell me horror stories about him.... :rolleyes: Too late for me, but I still hoped for the best, thinking that my presence there in the shop would make a difference. Which, of course, it did not.

Aaron speaks very highly of Jim Smith, who is a retired GM engineer, and I have mentioned his name here often enough that if someone had any reservations about him, I would hope I would have heard about it by now.

In any event I'm giving Aaron Scott and Jim Smith every reasonable opportunity to get my car done. If things continue to break and/or I begin to have doubts about their competency, THEN I will pull the car out of there, on a flatbed if necessary. It HAS to be close to being done by now. There aren't very many things left to go wrong.

Aaron told me on Wednesday that Jim Smith will be coming up on Monday or Tuesday and they will be working on my car till it is finished. If that does not happen, then I will have to reevaluate the situation at that time. I am NOT going to waste yet another summer sticking around home fretting over this car. It's already pretty much ruined the first two years of our retirement and I just WILL NOT allow that to continue.
 
Well, not too many straws left to put on this camel's back before it breaks...

They checked the ECT table and there is no problem with it or any other related table. Two PCMs got blown up today while the car was on the dyno doing some tuning. They are putting the car on the lift tomorrow and going to go over the wiring with a fine tooth comb looking for a bare wire or anything that might look suspicious that could be intermittently shorting out the PCM. Aaron also asked me to try to find a TAC module on the assumption that mine just might be bad and the cause of the problem.

However, it appears that those modules are backordered from GM and not expected to be available till mid to late August. NOT GOOD.....

Anyone got a line on a TAC module I could buy? Know anyone parting out a C5? Junkyard with a cracked up C5 in it.

This is really beginning to suck BIG TIME. Definitely wearing me down....
 
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