Stupid me... I just bought a Chevy!

Ok, back to the Blazer for a min.

Here is the mess of wiring I have to deal with when I get home. It's taking up valuable trailer space and needs to be moved, and if course the dang alarm has a starter disable circuit somewhere.

 

The joys of working on vintage cars.

 

Beats working on a Chevy, that's for sure. Electrical problems is their middle name.

 

That dark blue thing on the black wire is the kind of thing you are looking for.
Every one of those is something added after the car was made.

 

Yeah, if the install is professional, the alarm wiring is cut into the ignition electrical pigtail; then they fold it all up, zippy tie it and put the trim back on. Usually, the purple starter trigger wire is the one they tie into. When my friend Steven bought his '98 C1500, we had to remove the alarm's shutdown connections, and tbat was where they had cut into--the purple trigger wire. It should be about the same place on your column, above or to the side of the switch.

 

Holy crap talk about a damaged column.
Piece is chipped off the top, locking plate cover is bent, and everything looks horrible

 

You didn't buy a stolen car, did you?
Column damage, no keys, altered alarm.
Check the VIN against your paperwork.

 

No, it's not stolen. Column is damaged because the guy who owned it tore it apart to try and get the lock cylinder out before I picked it up. He knows nothing about cars, and screwed things up. Alarm was never altered, it was on because I hooked up a different battery. I already got 2 different VIN reports. Comes back clean. Even looked at El Paso and Arizona PD stolen car records before we paid for it

 

and it's a one owner truck. Can't blame the guy for losing the keys, he is 89 years old

 

There are equally lazy people at Ford and FCA, trust me. In fact, when I was over in SoKo, at Hyundai a few years ago, I saw a guy sleeping in the back seat of a car on the line. To me it looked line an oriental Rouge Plant.

 

Ha. Imagine buying that car and seeing the footprints in the backseat

 

Yup, spent 6 months on and off chasing down a 02 sensor low voltage code on my GMT400 truck. Replaced sensor a couple of times till I discovered the signal wires were somehow crossed!

 

I had a Chrysler Pacifica throwing an ABS light and code for the RR sensor since almost new; I came to discover that the harness connectors for both rear sensors were transposed at the factory, none of the wiring was touched except the sensor pigtails! So I swapped them, had to pull off a couple feet of the harness leg to get the connectors to reach their proper connectors, but after that and a new LR sensor, no more ABS codes.

 

Ok, after struggling with GM's stupid over-complication of a steering lock assembly, I finally got it all taken apart, repaired some damage, swapped IGN cylinders and to answer Skip's question... it runs. Albeit misfiring on one or 2 cylinders, but it runs.

 

Haha, reminds me of a quick story: A guy I worked with was timing a 2.8L S-10, and it ran like crap. He was thinking the damper had slipped, but when I saw him check the timing again, I noticed something. Soooo, I walk over and asked him how the cylinders were numbered; he indicated the odd-numbered were on the driver's side. I told him that vee-block engines always have #1 cylinder on the farthest forward cylinder, and the 2.8L had #1 on the passenger side. So he moves the pickup to the #1, looks at the marks, and declares, "F&%king retarded!" To which I retorted, "The truck, or the tech?"

 

Isn't #1 the furthest forward on any US engine?
That is what I have found, be they V or straight, or slant.

 

I know. It just gets me that 1) GM broke with their standardization and 2) the other guy had stuck to the belief that all GM engines were labelled the same.

 

While we're kicking "gummint Motors"--
I have a 97 GM suburban which my wife refuses to part with. It suffered from among other things the mid-'90s to mid oughts brake lines that quickly turned to swiss cheese (or maybe it was camembert). I replaced the rears, hand-bending new ones. But when the fronts went I bought a complete set of stainless lines thru rock auto. Now the 97 pontiac spare car is suffering the same fate.

And don't even mention the early problems with dex-cool. Or the A/C compressor mount that wasn't true and caused the original compressor to die early. Or the terrible brakes fixed by a TSB (different master cylinder and combination valve). Or the steering wheel position sensor. Or --

 

Reminds me of a 99 Astro Van we had. It kept overheating g due to DexCool clogging up every orifice in the cooling system. On top of that, 3 brake lines exploded in the freeway almost causing my sister to crash into a cement truck. After this, she still drove the van. Then one day, it just lost all compression.

 

Not V-8 Pontiac. They wanted the #1 to be in the same place (location-wise) as the rest of GM family, so the first cylinder in the block is #2 !!!