APS Racing Products

85 Trans Am carburator or fuel injection?

i just got a 85 trans am about three weeks ago, the car was originally fuel injection but the previous owner liked to mess around with it and tried to switch it to carburator. the car needs a new carb n gauge cluster. but my mechanic says its going to be too much trouble and expensive to completely make the switch. all the electrical stuff is messed up. should i go ahead with and turn it to carb or should i returned it to fuel inj?

Public Comments

1. If this car had the "crossfire injection" on it, it was fuel injected but a crappy system to say the least. If it was a Tuned Port Injection, it is a better system, but buying all the necessary parts will be costly, the tuned port has become a sort of favorite among folks putting fuel injection on their older cars and thus used good parts are kind of pricey and becoming shorter in supply every day. If I was you I would leave the carb on it and just run it as is, a swap to fuel injection is the kind of thing you do if you are the mechanic and you want to do a project, or if you have a cool old car and you want the extra response that fuel injection provides, this is of course assuming you are $$loaded$$.
2. Let me translate what the mechanic said to you. He said: "its going to be too much trouble and expensive to completely make the switch". He meant: "I have no earthly idea how to get this job done without having to learn more than they ever taught me in school". The answer to your question depends on what knowledge and parts you can get available to you. The right mechanic could probably finish the carb retrofit job. If you can't find someone with the knowledge and the patience, then you may come out better converting back. I'll give you a good example of a similer situation. I had a man bring me a truck that had caught fire and burned wires on his engine badly. He did have electronic ignition with a CPU in a Dodge. He'd carried it to numerous mechanics and got the same sort of runaround you've gotten. Everyone told him the truck was either best junked out or they quoted him a price in the thousands. They didn't think of putting a point type distributor in it out of an old junk like the one I had in my bone yard. I charged the man $50 labor and $25 for the used distributor.
3. I agree with greasemonkey. Further, let me translate what YOU (the OP) said: 1. "This car does not run" 2. "I don't fix cars, I have to pay somebody to fix it" This is not how we do these things. Non-running 1985 Trans Ams are for people who fix stuff. This is a $500 car now, and I'll bet if you spend $2000 on it with this mechanic, it still won't run. It's not worth it. You need to fix it yourself (free) or get yourself a car that runs. Or, find somebody like Greasemonkey that'll fix it for $50.