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JensenHealey

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Posts posted by JensenHealey

  1. On page 54 of this manual it says:

    "The headlight wiring is protected by a circuit breaker in the light switch. An electrical overload will cause the lights to go on and off. If this happens. have your headlight wiring checked right away."

    Now I have a separate thread here where I have discussed the fact that even thought I have working brake lights, hazard flashers, and turnsignals, I do not have any working headlights, taillights, or dash lights. Now I am wondering if I might have a bad headlight switch that is not sending power to these circuits (recall no power to fuse 12 for the taillights). For the 1989 cars is this headlight switch with the circuit breaker in it a special custom Avanti part or is this headlight switch a GM part from the doner car? If the headlight switch was malfunctioning would that also cause this condition of no power to fuse 12 for the taillights?

  2. Yeah, I am aware that that dimmer switch is hanging loose. The guy I bought the car from had no keys to the car when he got it and he disassembled the steering column and steering wheel in an effort to unlock the column so he could move the car. As a result a lot of stuff is screwed up or lost inside the steering column around the horn button and turnsignal cancelling mechanism.

     

    BTW, your website appears to be a single dead page with no links.

  3. Here are some photos of the under dash wiring and a closeup of the fuse box itself on the 1989 convertible car where the headlights, taillights, dash or gauge lights and a few other things do not function. For a complete list of functioning versus non-functioning items see the first post in this thread.
    If anyone would like to see them I have fullsize 4K resolution files for these.
    As I have said before there is no power to the fuse socket that is marked "taillights". I do not see a corresponding circuit or fuse for the power to the headlights or a fuse for the dash lights.

    1989_under_dash_wiring1.thumb.jpg.3b981942d198e3b76a4306dd66ac1780.jpg

    1989_fuse_box.thumb.jpg.2dd28ee1596e19eba5b551d35d3c37a8.jpg

  4. I bought a GM manual that is supposed to cover 1989 GM CARLINE B SERVICE MANUAL ST-329-89 CAPRICE SAFARI LESABRE CUSTOM CRUISER off ebay and the seller says it has wiring diagrams in it. Hopefully this will help with the fuel system and engine management stuff.

    But I spoke with a knowledgeable former Avanti employee and he tells me that only part of the car's wiring harness is from the Caprice. He said parts of the body harness is a custom Avanti harness. So my hope of using the Caprice manual to help with the no power to headlights, taillights, and dash lights is probably not going to work out since those parts of the electrical system are probably not covered it the GM manual.

  5. So I normally work on various European cars and it has been my experience that finding good wiring diagrams for european cars is MUCH easier than finding wiring diagrams for american (GM) cars. For instance I can find complete wiring diagrams for the 1988 - 1994 Jaguar XJ6 cars or the 1995 - 1997 Jaguar XJ6 cars that I do a lot of work on. Or for the 1985 - 1989 Merkur XR4Ti or 1988 - 1990 Lotus Esprit cars I also work on. But for the last few days I have been trying to locate wiring diagrams for the 1989 Chevy Caprice that I believe my 1989 Avanti convertible is built on. But so far my search has not turned up any information. I had this same problem years ago when I first purchased my 1986 Chevy K30 pickup truck. Nearly impossible to find good General Motors car or truck wiring diagrams.

    Does anyone have a suggestion where I can find good detailed accurate wiring diagrams that would help me work on the 1989 Caprice based Avanti and the 1988 Monte Carlo based Avanti cars?

    Thanks in advance

  6. Some who have been following my progress may recall the post I made a few days ago where I said I have been successful with removing the one broken spark plug from the engine in the white 1989 Convertible.

    I put new spark plugs in the engine tonight. Then I installed the battery out of my pickup truck, sprayed starting fluid down into the throttle body, and when I turned it over on the battery, it started!!!  Just to be sure I sprayed starting fluid down into the throttle body twice and each time it immediately fired off and ran until the starting fluid was gone from the intake.

    There is no fuel getting to the engine at all so that is the next issue. It has an electric fuel pump in the tank so I will have to do some diagnosis to see if it is an electrical issue or a problem with the actual fuel pump in the tank.

    BTW, working on the spark plugs in a Chevy V8 in these cars is a real HUGE pain in the ass!
    Compared to changing spark plugs in any of the european engines I normally work on.

  7. Two of the car I have in my shop are BOTH missing the headlight surround on the driver's side of the car. I have included a photo of the passenger's side part from one of these cars below. Where can I get two of these or even one for right now?

    Again I need two driver's side parts and the piece in the photo below is the passenger's side part.

    1989_headlight_door_frt.thumb.jpg.e27b82e1c121d3f77fcc327394173ad1.jpg

    1989_headlight_door_bck.thumb.jpg.a4b2aa22f61d9e44ac59d4a16bd634a9.jpg

  8. I think 1989 is long before ODB1 so I will check for the ODB1 receptical on my 1989 convertible with TBI fuel injection but I have my doubts that it is available on these cars. 
    Since the 1988 cars are carbureted I am 100% positive those have no self diagnostic ports on them at all.

    Also I am not sure but I don't think this sort of info is accessible at all in a OBD1 system.

  9. I jacked my 1989 convertible up and carefully looked around underneath at the transmission and I was not able to find any indication of any sort of number on the transmission case. Isn't there any place on the actual frame of the car where something is also stamped?

    Any chance of posting a photo of where this number on the transmission case is supposed to be found?

  10. I attempted to remove all the plugs from the engine on the white 1989 Convertible and I was successful with seven of them.
    However the eighth plug in the right front corner of the engine broke apart as I was trying to remove it.
    Here is a photo of the eight plugs lying on my work bench. One of them does not look like the others.

    So now I am working on trying to get the broken off part of the spark plug out of the cylinder head.

    BTW, I don't know about anyone else here but I ALWAYS put a light coating of never-seize on the threads of all spark plugs I install into engines I am working on. The strange thing here is the threads on these spark plugs are not really that corroded but the outer part of the plugs beyond the threads looks really bad. This car has 50K miles showing on the ODO and I bet it has NEVER had a plug change during those 50K miles.

    broken_sparkplugs_warr.thumb.jpg.a21a32170c2ee70cef6240cff453d847.jpg

  11. While I was over at the shop this evening I snapped a couple photos of the dash in my 1989 Convertible. I am puzzled by the dash because it looks totally different than the dash layout I have seen in other 1988 or 1989 Convertibles.

     

    Here is a photo of another 1989 Convertible (car # 469) that is for sale in Orlando FLA
    1989-avanti-convertible_forsale53sm.thumb.jpg.d578c36004a634520fd8275f8b001c23.jpg

     

    Here is a photo of the dash of my 1989 Convertible,car # 486

    1989White_dash_wo_wheel.thumb.jpg.dfdd53a6cdb2fd61100762f5d9326821.jpg

    Why are these so vastly different? Pictures of every other 1989 Convertible I have looked at on the internet has the same dash at this car # 469 shown above in the first photo. I have not seen any cars with the dash layout that matches this car # 486

  12. While I was over at my shop this evening I took a couple pictures of the radiator neck on the 1989 white convertible.
    As can be seen from this photo the neck of the radiator where the cap fits is a remote neck that sticks out the back edge of the upper right corner of the radiator.

    If I go to rockauto and look at the radiators shown there for a 1989 Caprice I see that the radiator cap neck is on the upper right corner of the rad but it is directly on the top corner of end tank rather than having this remote neck extension stick out the back of the rad.

     

    Does the existence of this remote neck extension agree with what other folks are calling the "original Avanti type radiator" ?

    1989White_radiator_neck2.jpg

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