Hello guys,
First off I will say I'm am new to this forum and bought my first Fox body (88' GT) a couple months as a project. The state of the car when I picked it up on the cheap was the motor (5.0 with T5) was out of the car ready to dropped in. Over the span of a couple months, I installed the engine. (this forum helped a lot with the process!) Long story short, i got it started, but it runs very rough. When it does fire up (not all that often), quite a lot of gray smoke come from the exhaust (good sign that it is not white (coolant) or blue (oil)). This smoke combined with that the exhaust smells of gas leads me to believe it is running VERY rich.
I towed it to a shop last week to look at because I am on a business trip till Friday, but I just got a call from them saying that they looked at it, weren't making any progress after a couple hours, so they essentially gave up. (lame, but at least they aren't charging me anything.) Here is what I believe is causing it to run so effing rich: the previous owner deleted a whole lot of stuff in order to free up more horsepower. EGR, smog, AC (still there, but not hooked up), but most importantly, the heater assembly. So there is nothing for me to plug the coolant temp sensor for the ECU into. Am I correct in assuming that this screwing with the computer's ability to correctly estimate the air/fuel ratio? It could also explain why it will only start when it is cold. (constantly choked in essence) Has anyone ever not run the coolant temp sensor without problems?
Also, regarding the EGR and smog, the spacer between throttle body and the intake is properly blocked off with a delete plate (so now there is nothing to connect the EGR plug to) and the smog pump/related plumbing has been taken out and a delete pulley is in it's place. The only thing left and plugged in is the EGR solenoids, but they are not hooked up to the vacuum anymore, so I assume there aren't affecting anything, but I'm really not an expert with these engines.
Any help here would be greatly appreciated. I see great potential in fixing up the Stang, but I got to get it running first.
Dave
First off I will say I'm am new to this forum and bought my first Fox body (88' GT) a couple months as a project. The state of the car when I picked it up on the cheap was the motor (5.0 with T5) was out of the car ready to dropped in. Over the span of a couple months, I installed the engine. (this forum helped a lot with the process!) Long story short, i got it started, but it runs very rough. When it does fire up (not all that often), quite a lot of gray smoke come from the exhaust (good sign that it is not white (coolant) or blue (oil)). This smoke combined with that the exhaust smells of gas leads me to believe it is running VERY rich.
I towed it to a shop last week to look at because I am on a business trip till Friday, but I just got a call from them saying that they looked at it, weren't making any progress after a couple hours, so they essentially gave up. (lame, but at least they aren't charging me anything.) Here is what I believe is causing it to run so effing rich: the previous owner deleted a whole lot of stuff in order to free up more horsepower. EGR, smog, AC (still there, but not hooked up), but most importantly, the heater assembly. So there is nothing for me to plug the coolant temp sensor for the ECU into. Am I correct in assuming that this screwing with the computer's ability to correctly estimate the air/fuel ratio? It could also explain why it will only start when it is cold. (constantly choked in essence) Has anyone ever not run the coolant temp sensor without problems?
Also, regarding the EGR and smog, the spacer between throttle body and the intake is properly blocked off with a delete plate (so now there is nothing to connect the EGR plug to) and the smog pump/related plumbing has been taken out and a delete pulley is in it's place. The only thing left and plugged in is the EGR solenoids, but they are not hooked up to the vacuum anymore, so I assume there aren't affecting anything, but I'm really not an expert with these engines.
Any help here would be greatly appreciated. I see great potential in fixing up the Stang, but I got to get it running first.
Dave
