Entry 18: Making Progress....

Installed the door scuff plates, mounted the tach, swapped in the new battery tray, started cleaning the interior and blocked off the dash bezel where the heater control goes. Later I'll add a gauge there but for now it works. Still need to wire up the tach, mounted it up high to crosspiece to avoid destroying the dashpad or any of the plastic pillars. 79-86 parts are getting hard to come by and are not being reproduced in any mass scale like the 65-73's. 

 

 

Spread some filler on the rocker panel where I welded the exterior patch piece in. Tomorrow I'll sand it down and prime/paint it.

Code Reader:

Purchased a code reader to determine if there were any further repairs to be made. Equus 3145 is a digital readout model I purchased for $30 shipped to my door. Looks like this......

.....and plugs into the OBD port under the hood:

When I dumped the KOEO codes received the following:

Stored:

Code 81 - Smog Equipment Delete

Code 82 - Smog Equipment Delete

Code 85 - Smog Equipment Delete

Continuous:

Code 18 - Ignition System Fault Thanks to NikwoaC at stangnet for figuring this out...

1. Faulty distributor, coil, TFI causing car to run poorly or not at all

2. Wiring issue surrounding the ECM Return Signal from TFI Connector. Car runs. Pin "5" on the TFI connector splits into three paths to trace back: Tach, Negative side of coil and ECM Pin 4 IDM (Ignition Diagnostic Module) which has an inline resistor of ~22,000 ohms. Check the resistor first if the car is running normally and throwing a code 18.

Verify resistor is bad by using DMM to measure resistance from in to out with car OFF. If out of range, or a huge number, find a 22K ohm 2W resisitor and cut out and splice in the new resistor.