new to the F-body world... little help.

[nighttrain-89formula]

hey guys, i just bought the wife '89 firebird formula and i need to do some stuff to it, but am not a Big chevy or pontiac guy. first of it was a 305 tbi car with a 700r4 trans. the trny needs some work as it no longer has any other gear beyound 1st and rev. now the guy i bought the car from removed the tbi and installed a carb, plus he disconnected alot of wires and stuff. how much of the electrical stuff do you have to have to make the thing runn proper, and is the trans electronically controlled.
now im not new to the hot rod world just new to the gm side of it, and ive never built anything new enough to worry about computer boxes and the such... any help would Be greatly appreicated. john

[Dave M]

Welcome to the board. Not that I'm trying to get rid of any new members, but check out www.thirdgen.org if you haven't already. They have a lot of third gen experts. Most guys here focus on 4th gens (although everyone is welcome!) and might not be able to help too much when it comes routing wires and hoses.

[TraceZ]

The transmission in your car is not computer controlled. It uses a Throttle Valve (TV) cable going to the throttle linkage to get its input for shifting.

If the previous owner chopped the harness and installed a carb it would have also likely been necessary for them to replace the distributor. The original distributor would had been computer controlled and chopping up the computer system would had likely paralyzed it if not prevented it from working completely.

If you are looking for realiability for the wife I would recommend looking at www.thirdgen.org and asking the members if anyone has a complete harness with TBI and distributor handy. I bet someone there has the stuff laying around and might even give it away.

Your other alternative is to make sure the distributor is set up correctly and tune the carb.