Good morning everyone,

I am a new member to this forum and also a new vette owner. I have an 85 stock vette with nothing aftermarket or hot rod on it. I have a couple of questions. The first is I have driven this car about 3 or 4000 miles since I have had it and the coolant temp reads between 195 and 207. Is this normal? The reason I ask is that I have some telling me to put a 160 thermostat in it and others tell me that my temp is within the safe range. The other question is I have a knock and ping problem. It does this when I accelerate to pass someone. I'm using Chevron 91 octane gas Is this normal? I am new to vettes so any info on these questions will be appreciated. thank you in advance.

Clayton

 

Hi Clay, The temp is normal. However the knock is not. Do you have a stick or an automatic? If your passing at lower speeds with a stick and not downshifting you will get a knock. However if you are down shifting or you have an auto and it's knocking you have a problem. On my 88 there is a antiknock sensor. This automatically retards the timing enough to prevent the dreaded knocking while otherwise keeping the timing advanced as far as possable for top performence. I don't know if they had it on 85 Vettes or not. I would think they did as I had it on a 81 Chevy truck. Look on the drivers side of the engine by the steering post. There should be a brown wire with I think a white line that breaks out of the loom there that goes to the distributer. Make sure the wire is connected. If for some reason someone set the timeing they would have disconnected the wire to do the timing and perhaps forgot to reconnect it. If your getting pinging it's most likely a timing issue and if this wire is not conected could cause it. Or try gas from another station. Ya never know what your getting now days.

my 2 cents. Good luck

 

Thanks Joe. I'll look this afternoon for that brown wire. I had heard that this car has an antiknock sensor. Just didn't know where it was. My Chevy mechanic told me that this sensor can go bad so if it is plugged into the distributor, I'll just replace it and see what that does. Thanks again for the reply.

Clayton