This is totally normal

Post date: Sep 22, 2019 9:46:03 PM

Doesn't everyone fix their blower motors this way?

The blower stopped blowing on the intermediate speeds. I was never very confident on what I did with the blower controller from the Gen 1 LS. A little poking around showed they changed the controller for Gen 2 and used that in some vans and trucks. There was even a specific reference to "PWM". I'm pretty certain the Gen 1 controller is just the power circuitry (a big transistor and some passive components) that really needs the PCM to provide a strong switched ground. Shooting a PWM into it from an arduino worked, kinda, for a while.

Of course, switching to the Gen 2 module required replacing the wiring harness and reconfiguring the blower switch. And some new code on the arduino. Nothing some time in the junkyard, time laying on your back, and some doodling on paper can't fix. Thankfully it's all back together and I'm much more confident it'll actually work, long term, this time.

While I was in the arduino I added a main rail voltage reference so it won't get faked out when the alternator sags. Even went ahead and drew the arduino board on the visio diagrams

Also got an aux electric fan.

The idea is the main fan can't pull enough on hot days with the A/C on. The clutch fan is fine, but crazy loud. Drove around with this setup today and seems to work pretty well. I learned that it also helps if you actually plug in the main fan. The main change was we had to ditch the 3 circuit cooler so the fan could mount directly to the condensor. So the separate trans and PS coolers I used previously went back in. This wasn't a huge loss since the 3 circuit couldn't be used for engine oil.

AND the AEM O2 sensor controller died AGAIN. So that's the second one.

I started digging around on cams and decided to try a smaller Voodoo roller cam. My theory is the current cam is simply too big and the engine can't breathe enough to make use of it. Hope to get that swapped in sometime in the next few weeks.

Shaun and I have gone to a handful of car shows. Unfortunately there's usually nothing very inspiring and our cars (except the C10!) don't hit the audience sweet spot, so it got tiring. I'm still trying to be a little active in the North Texas Olds Club though.

Sadly the car will need to go back to the body shop at some point. There's an adhesion problem around the trunk lip where a ~1" square section of pain popped off. I also managed to embed a couple of shards of metal in the passenger door, and figured out why the driver rocker keeps getting dings. I often have to wedge myself into the driver's foot well to work on stuff. Well, I keep a huge wad of keys in my left pocket. Finally realized I was putting most of my weight onto the rocker, via the keys, when doing that. Ooops.