Quirky problems

If you followed the episodes with my 91 OCC, you know the wierd symptoms I have encountered. The fix for my LO3 was the ECM ground at the thermostat.

The legacy of that ground issue is one more item. Due to the ground fault, the engine ran rich for a period of time. The symptoms started as quitting at lights, surging, and poor gas mileage, which got even worse over time. The minimal power of the LO3 slowly became a shadow of its former self, to the point that it was scary to pull out on a city street. Along with this, my nice rumble from the exhaust became a meer whisper. This translated into the catalytic converter melting down and equates to another $200 repair.

If there is a moral to this story, it is: keep your grounds in good condition, they can cause a variety of problems, and cost you a lot of hard earned cash. It cost me 50 cents to check and clean the ground. If I had checked it first, I would have saved 6 months of agonizing over whether the car would run that day, and probably $700 in repairs and parts, as well as numerous hours of personal labor (there were a lot of things I would have rather done during that time frame).

For now all is back to normal (whatever that is) and I feel confident that the car will go when I push on the gas pedal. Now to get the hit and run parking lot scrape on my rear bumper and tail gate fixed. It never ends.

An expensive lesson to learn but it's guaranteed you won't do it again.

Glad you have everything back to normal!

Yeah, I keep that in mind whenever I hook up a ground on the '96. Clean, clean and clean...metal to metal!

Glad you have it good to go

70% of complaints after bodyshop work are traced to bad grounds or paint on the grounds. Lesson learned - any weird electrical problems, check grounds first. The notorious LT1 bad ground is on the stud next to the ignition coil.