azmatic anemic just plain sickly

95 buick riviera s/c 192000 miles

This car has felt just plain sick since I have purchased. I gave some info on this thing but I think I put it in the wrong section.
So any who car has no real power. Hard to crank. No temperature gauge. No gear indicator.

I started with a fuel pressure check. 20psi and drops. So I changed the fuel pump, better fpsi but still drops. Changed the regualtor, no change still drops. Finally yesterday I swapped injectors from a gp I had. Still drops, still hard to crank. Has new plugs and plug wires. Just did upper and lower intake. The coolant temp sensor is send accurate information the the pcm. I have no engine codes. Got a tcm code but thats neither here nor there. Every once and a while you can tap the key and she is golden but more often you gotta crank for a while to get it to crank and fire. Oh and I did have to change the pcm due to a bad quad driver and bad prom chip (one caused the other) It had a 765 and 325 code but those are gone and the car hasnt changed tune one iota with all the work I have done to this car.

Might sell it, I dunno yet. Southern car, been in the town I live in its whole life.

Help if any can  

*update*

Well for those of you that may have looked at this thread I'll tell you that the guys that have the odb 2 cars, 96 to 99 have a bit of an advantage in diagnosing most trouble spots. I have a pretty good suspicion that all my performance issues are stemmed from a bad mass air flow sensor. Bad gas milage, hard to start, no power under a load. Last thing I did was pull the plug from the maf, no change. Had one here at the shop so I cleaned it and stuck it in. Ran bad, idle loped but it fired right up. Pulled that one back out and cleaned the original and stuck it back in, the car ran worse than before I touched it. I got one coming and Ill let you all know if it is in fact my problem. Oh and the losing fuel pressure is due to the mac tools fpt kit not being up to par.   

Hope that MAF solves some issues!
Good luck,

Jbird

Thanks jbird,
I put the reman cardone maf on and it got a little power but still loped when you crank it and still hard to crank. I think I am going in the right direction. I ordered a new Hitachi like what the factory installed new, I hope this one does it all the way.

I would check the EGR tube that go's from the EGR to the ass end of the S/C.It is a common problem with the 95s that the egr tube cracks rite at the flange. you will have all sorts of problems when this happens

Thanks robotennis61,

I just did upper and lower intake manifold gaskets and I inspected everything before I reinstalled. There was a small intake leak but nothing serious but I did the whole nine going back with it. Its prolly something super easy and I am just not catching it.

Well, I got the Hitachi mass air flow new and that's what took car of the issues.
Its hard to say about the fuel mileage just yet but I do know that the car has to relearn the air/fuel ration over a period of miles driven. But right out of the box the idle lope and long cranking is gone. Steady power and no more stumbling so that's one more issue resolved. The rest of my problems are electrical. Those are so much fun to trace.

Glad to hear that the new MAF solved your issues.

Thanks bigdave,

Might have been able to save a little bit of money if it would have stood out to me sooner. But no use crying over spilled milk, got bigger problems to cry about   

For the temp gauge and gear indicator issues, see if a wire is loose on back of the cluster. If somebody swapped your cluster the connectors might be loose.

Albertj

albertj wrote:

For the temp gauge and gear indicator issues, see if a wire is loose on back of the cluster.  If somebody swapped your cluster the connectors might be loose.

Albertj

Thanks Albertj, I did that when I first got the car and I noticed there are two wires that have been "repaired". If I had a Diagram could test the circuit, but I don't and don't wanna fry any circuits by going all willy nilly with a test light. I know that the voltage is not big enough to even trigger a light but it an still fry stuff. Resistance is tricky. I also noticed some irregularities in the ribbon cables in the ipc its self. May just need another working one. I did see a NOS one on ebay but good golly its too rich for my blood.

rivi95era wrote:

albertj wrote:

For the temp gauge and gear indicator issues, see if a wire is loose on back of the cluster.  If somebody swapped your cluster the connectors might be loose.

Albertj

Thanks Albertj, I did that when I first got the car and I noticed there are two wires that have been "repaired". If I had a Diagram could test the circuit, but I don't and don't wanna fry any circuits by going all willy nilly with a test light. I know that the voltage is not big enough to even trigger a light but it an still fry stuff. Resistance is tricky. I also noticed some irregularities in the ribbon cables in the ipc its self. May just need another working one. I did see a NOS one on ebay but good golly its too rich for my blood.

try a pick-n-pull

Albertj

I have been looking, found one Riv in the area. Its a 96 so it should work but there are no keys to test before I remove it. In all honesty I am probably going to sell it. Need to pay some stuff down and this car has already cost me some serious cheddar. So whomever did purchase it would already have all the major stuff done.

Well I decided to swap coils and icm from a gp gt I had. It seemed to let it crank faster but we will how she preforms. It felt like it had a miss under a load but nothing serious enough to cause a cel but with these 1.5's not too much will make a light jump on in the ignition side of it. That's mostly, well now that I think about it there is no real rhyme or reason, short of a sensor just plain ole being gone or disconnected. OBD 1.5 is a fickle creature.

That seems to have corrected the long start and occasional misfire. I can put a check mark next to another issue with this car that has been fixed.