94 K1500 starting issue

Tyke said:

Where exactly are the Big Three Grounds?

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Battery to engine block front lower passenger side
Rear engine block passenger to frame rail passenger side
Frame Rail to Firewall.
The last two are straps that often corrode.

Was just looking at a buddy's 95 last night and noticed his ground off the rear engine block to frame rail was missing. It had obviously corroded and someone had connected the corroded end back to a bolt on the frame rail and so was doing nothing.
It's a pig to get to on the rear engine block. A 48" cable directly from the battery to the frame rail will fix it. But as the jumper cable didn't make any difference I doubt that is an issue.

Tyke said:

With the new oil sensor the readings on the dash appear different. When cold the pressure shows much higher, when hot on idle the pressure shows lower (but still OK) is that usual?.

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Every few years, the cheap-junk Asian-made oil pressure sending unit for my K1500 goes bad and has to be replaced. Every time I replace the sending unit, I have to recalibrate my mind to the new oil pressure readings on the gauge.

Low-quality, wide-tolerance junk sold by "famous" brand names that used to have a good reputation.

96-2D-Hoe said:

Battery to engine block front lower passenger side
Rear engine block passenger to frame rail passenger side
Frame Rail to Firewall.
The last two are straps that often corrode.

Was just looking at a buddy's 95 last night and noticed his ground off the rear engine block to frame rail was missing. It had obviously corroded and someone had connected the corroded end back to a bolt on the frame rail and so was doing nothing.
It's a pig to get to on the rear engine block. A 48" cable directly from the battery to the frame rail will fix it. But as the jumper cable didn't make any difference I doubt that is an issue.

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The whole TBI system is very voltage/amp sensitive.
Pretty primative technology.
In some ways that is an advantage, less things that go bad.
But, OBD1 doent give you a whole lot of info.
Dont discount electrical problems on an OBD1 system.
That is almost always the source of the problem

Update #3

The ICM replacement appears to have fixed the stalling issue. Full weekend with zero issues. In the Hollywood that wood be a wrap !

On to the other issue.

Gauges all work, although the oil pressure now reads different to how it did with the old sender installed.

I have run earth jumpers to several points on the truck with no change to the gauge positions when the ignition is off.

For now I have decided to live with this.

I haven't owned the truck for very long and while it has relatively high mileage it seemed in good overall condition for its age.

I am finding ownership to a series of highs and lows.

The lows of a few niggly issues and finding some maintenance a little lacking.

The highs of finding parts are very inexpensive and working on the truck is easy, takes me back to much younger days working on cars every Sunday hoping to keep them going for another week !!

Of course having a knowledge base at the end of a keyboard helps now.

Congrats on the progress!
Dont put any faith into the dash gauges on these. They are horribly inacurate.
Back in the day, GM used "stepper motors" in the gauge cluster and they go bad a lot.
They also used the same gauge and stepper across the entire GM platform.
And used different resistor values to make the cluster work
An Example, my 94 owners manual says I should have 7 psi oil at idle and 28 hot.
Obvious nonsense.
Dont trust the dash on these.
Pretty much anything you see from a stock Gmt400 gauge cluster is useless input that will lead you down the wrong path

thinger2 said:

Congrats on the progress!
Dont put any faith into the dash gauges on these. They are horribly inacurate.
Back in the day, GM used "stepper motors" in the gauge cluster and they go bad a lot.
They also used the same gauge and stepper across the entire GM platform.
And used different resistor values to make the cluster work
An Example, my 94 owners manual says I should have 7 psi oil at idle and 28 hot.
Obvious nonsense.
Dont trust the dash on these.
Pretty much anything you see from a stock Gmt400 gauge cluster is useless input that will lead you down the wrong path

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I did not know that the gauges were "parts bin" engineered across a wide range of models, but I had come to the conclusion that the issue is a non issue !

Its front brakes today, may start a new thread about that drama !

MichaelGot reported.

Schurkey said:

Every few years, the cheap-junk Asian-made oil pressure sending unit for my K1500 goes bad and has to be replaced. Every time I replace the sending unit, I have to recalibrate my mind to the new oil pressure readings on the gauge.

Low-quality, wide-tolerance junk sold by "famous" brand names that used to have a good reputation.

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Yep! heres a great example. A set of genuine ac delco cr43ts plugs.
One of them doesnt even have threads on it.
"chinese quality control"

thinger2 said:

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Yep! heres a great example. A set of genuine ac delco cr43ts plugs.
One of them doesnt even have threads on it.
"chinese quality control"

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For the record, I'm fighting with a crook in Texas selling stuff on Amazon. He shipped me counterfeit spark plugs that are supposed to look like AC-Delco Iridium plugs.

The center electrodes are too thick, the side electrodes are the wrong shape, the "preset" gap is .010 too small, and they don't have the three "dots" at the plug wire end of the plug. I sent photos to GM, they confirmed that the plugs are "not authentic".

Dirtbag is crying and whining about how I didn't contact him first (I did) and how he's going to call the police on me for theft (He has my money via Amazon) Of course, he wanted to handle it by telephone so that Amazon had no record of his shady dealings. I have everything in writing!

Metro24wholesale, Inc; out of Forney, TX.

Schurkey said:

For the record, I'm fighting with a crook in Texas selling stuff on Amazon. He shipped me counterfeit spark plugs that are supposed to look like AC-Delco Iridium plugs.

The center electrodes are too thick, the side electrodes are the wrong shape, the "preset" gap is .010 too small, and they don't have the three "dots" at the plug wire end of the plug. I sent photos to GM, they confirmed that the plugs are "not authentic".

Dirtbag is crying and whining about how I didn't contact him first (I did) and how he's going to call the police on me for theft (He has my money via Amazon) Of course, he wanted to handle it by telephone so that Amazon had no record of his shady dealings. I have everything in writing!

Metro24wholesale, Inc; out of Forney, TX.

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Ive been in the QC business in one way or another for most of my career.
I have seen the Chinese counterfeit bolts and steel and aircraft components and electrical assemblies.
If you find defective parts in a US process, you shut everything down and quarantine those parts.
You can and probably will be charged with manslaughter if defects lead to death.
In China, if they even do first article and in process QC.
They seperate the bad parts and "salt" them back into future shipments.
Its not just car parts, its steel and bolts and drywall and that cheap crappy walmart crock pot that might burn your house down.