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New Member Mark and 'Christine'

Started by Driver8, August 19, 2013, 05:03:38 PM

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Driver8

Hey everyone, Mark here from the Midwest Chicago area. Recently signed up and come from a family with several Cadillacs over the years ( '73 SDV, '73 Eldo, '74 Fleetwood, '82 Fleetwood, '83 Eldo Biarritz) and been pretty obsessed with cars since I was like 4yo, but especially Cadillacs :)  Other personal and very missed cars (should'a never sold): 1995 BMW 540i & Mom's 1989 Lincoln Mark VII LSC.

Just to get things started a bit here, I thought I'd post a dropbox link to some various pics of Christine, my 1979 37K 2-owner Laramie Beige/Saddle Cadillac Seville.

I'm also copy/pasting in most of a forum post that I wrote on another Cadillac forum, mostly because it involves Club member Bruce Roe.

Happy to be here and looking forward to getting to know members, work together to keep improving our cars and attend some meets/shows next season.

Here's my post (it contains follow-up from the other forum message threads), but I figured it to be of interest here as well.

post: Lot's of progress since last week @ Wednesday.

First regarding the Fast Idle control, in 'fiddling' around with it, a couple brittle plastic parts cracked. I was able to crazy glue them just like new, but then when twisting the heater in place, a chip flared off the side right where it retains the fragile silver arm on the unit body. So, I built my own bypass with some garage parts since it has no effect with our current weather conditions. I was able to negotiate with an ebay seller to come way down on a used unit, verified to work, (since CadillacKing wanted $220+), so when that one arrives, it will be installed along with a spacer for the brass plunger to push down on. This way, I won't have cold start issues in April, May or October before the car is 1st taken out or before storing away for winter. I obtained a couple of back up EFI air/temp sensors that test 100% at @ 1000 ohms.

I also removed the catalytic converter and installed a tubular resonator in place last week, then installed new HD Monroe air-shocks (nice to have my ride height back Eventually, I will tear down the ELC compressor and sensor to find where the inop problem lies. For now, I have the common Schrader valve installation behind my license plate. Next on the agenda is the new timing chain (on Bruce's concern over the disintegrating nylon used on gear teeth) and replace all flexible fuel lines/clamps underneath the car.

A small interior thing that was driving me nuts was the worn, chipped chrome strip running across the 1979 horn pad. I used a $3 Chinese adhesive backed, flexible chrome strip from ebay in place of the original rigid plated plastic insert (which pops out gently with a tiny flat screwdriver), it worked! and now looks just same as new. I even have enough left over to replace it 3 more times if needed. Will also post pics of this on my Dropbox folder soon for others to see the results.

So... took the day away from my work on Wed. to drive out and meet Bruce Roe (forum member, retired Electrical Engineer & 70s EFI specialist), 2.5 hr trip from home. I was gonna take my Jeep, but decided to chance the road trip with the Seville (much more adventurous AND enjoyable!) Bruce is an amazing guy to hang with, very smart and very kind.

The car drove quite well overall, but I still experienced that same persistent hesitation/bog when starting from any stop and/or asking for more power at cruising speeds. Well, my GPS was out on my new phone, so I got lost a couple of times out in the corn-fields, but after a phone call to Bruce, he set me on the right path and Christine and I arrived safely.

After touring his @ 5 acre property, viewing some cars, buildings and self-sufficient solar panel installations, we removed the ECU from the Seville to bring it into the Engineer's room for testing. Nothing I had done to the car yet had resolved the hesitation/bog issue (although there was quite an improvement with a new ACCEL adjustable vacuum advance installed last week in the distributor).

In a short time, Bruce verified what he had already suspected and indicated here on the forum thread, that, in fact... my original MAP sensor was failing. He handed me an alternate ECU for the car, I went out to the driveway, hooked it up and went for a 25 minute test drive to grab some lunch for us. Immediately upon starting and pulling out of the driveway, Christine felt like a different car. ZERO hesitation now. In addition, once on the country road, I opened her up and nothing but smooth, strong power, another thing the car had lost.

When I returned I gave Bruce the great news and after grabbing a bite, we went to look at my original ECU opened up. I had purchased a working 1979 Eldorado ECU off ebay and exchanged it for a backup unit for my Seville. So what we ended up doing was, installing one of Bruce custom designed/built MAP sensors into my computer. He then tested it and made some tweak adjustments. I swapped the new backup for my original with the new design MAP and am now an official real-world road tester for this modification. I promised to report back regularly with good/bad input on performance with the new chip.

Since Wednesday, I had the 3hr + crawl home (construction and horrid traffic), and several local errands along with some cruising, the car is really running great. What a difference.

I also bought the new wired external fuel pump relay setup from Bruce, and as I write this, Christine is out in the garage with the ECU wire harness down under the dash ready for me to solder in the new bypass.

So now I have a modern reliable MAP sensor, a safe fuel pump relay and a backup ECU just in case. I just couldn't be happier right now, I love my Cadillac. I had a great day out at Bruce's home, learned alot about the 70's EFI ECU's and made a new quality friend on top of it.

BTW, I also formally joined the CadillacLasalleClub where they are sending out my packet soon. A link to some random pics here, including one of my 1 owner 1999 55K Grand Cherokee Limited with @ $20k in suspension/performance/custom mods, and a local boneyard donor '78 Seville (that was already heavily stripped) with not much left to grab.

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/6qtr1acy4kdao7i/hrSPijD_PB

I will get some new pics after I do a much needed touch-up, machine compound/cut & Mothers synthetic polish.

Thanks much, Mark~
Mark Allen  CLC # 28250
'79 Cadillac Seville  http://bit.ly/1VEbnNo
'15 Chrysler 300S AWD   https://ibb.co/2Z21vng
'99 Jeep Grand Cherokee Limited   http://bit.ly/1VE758Q

Chris Conklin

Welcome, very nice Seville. I wasn't aware there was a 5.7 in those.
Chris Conklin

Driver8

Hi Chris,

Thanks. Yes the car was factory issued with an Oldsmobile built 350 with a Cadillac Bendix EFI system.

As a personal touch, I updated my deck lid emblems to use the modern Cadillac script along with a deck lid emblem from a 1992 Brougham 5.7L (which was a Chevy L05), optional engine '90-'92.
Mark Allen  CLC # 28250
'79 Cadillac Seville  http://bit.ly/1VEbnNo
'15 Chrysler 300S AWD   https://ibb.co/2Z21vng
'99 Jeep Grand Cherokee Limited   http://bit.ly/1VE758Q