MickeyAsh

Hello! I'm new to the board but not new to the scene, if you know what I mean. My name is Ash and I've been on some Fiero boards for a while now (I know, it's not a thirdgen, but this is the only PROM board I could find, hey at least it's GM, right?). Now, to REALLY bridge topics, I'm gonna be dropping an OBD1 '97 Cadillac Northstar into my '86 Fiero GT in place of the old 2.8 that just spun a bearing on me. I need to do some work on the Northstar ECM to eliminate unnecessary systems (Pwr Steering, ABS, etc) and I was wondering if someone could give me some background on ECM's in general, or point me in the direction of some caddy ECM resources. I know that the OBD1 N* ECM can be reprogrammed, BUT I don't know where the hell to start, heheh... ANYTHING is better than paying $1300.00 for an ECM that some of the Hotrod N* groups are trying to sell me on. thanks in advance!

mta227

I think you should look into whether or not the northstar eprom code has been hacked yet. If not, you can probably forget about making any changes to the code. I guess you could always just spend the next 6 months hacking the code youself :-)

Here's an idea... we could kidnap the president of GM's daughter, and hold her hostage until they agreed to provide us with a fully commented disassembly of the northstar binary.. thats it!

j/k of course.

MickeyAsh

Sounds like a plan! Who's with me!? Heheheh, j/k... surely somebody is on it with as many people out there use this thing in streetrod projects... hmm...

Sarkee

I guess one of the first things you need to tell is what ECM you're using. There should be a "Service Number" on the outside of the ECM box.

Have you opened the box to see if it uses a memcal with a programmable EPROM? The BCC code off the EPROM (if it has one) would be helpful as well.

'97 Cads used ODB1??? That sounds odd...But good in that there are cables and software listed off Traxions Promintro page that you can use to monitor and log your engines performance.

Grim Reaper

If the ECM is from a 1997 Cadillac Northstar then it should be OBD II. Currently, there is very little info on the OBD II PCMs for Corvettes and F-bodies let alone Cadillac. However, you may wish to consider investigating swapping the 8051 PCM which was used in the 94-95 LT1s. The 8051 is becoming well hac'd, TunerCat has TDFs and it works for Opti-spark, Electronic Transmissions and SFI.

MickeyAsh

My knowledge on the subject is limited, and I'm not going to argue too much with someone who has 7000+ posts, lol, but the word I've gotten from multiple sources is that for some unknown reason, GM kept the N* on OBD1 from it's introduction in '93, through '97... and switched to OBD2 starting in '98, which sounds odd to me as well as I know Buick went to OBD2 in '95, and you'd think caddy would be the FIRST to incorporate a new "reliability" system into their vehicles... hmmm. And unfortunately I'm still awaiting the entire setup to be shipped, so I don't have the S/Ns from the ECM. The guy owns a body shop and pulled the N*, Trans, ECM, Wiring harness, all acessories and Axles, and sold them to me for $1,000. What a deal, eh? His mechanic started pulling it all about two days ago, but he's never crated an engine, so I expect it to take another week or two before it's even near ready to be shipped...

MickeyAsh

I just got word of a guy that has engine mgmt only PROMs for the N* that originally came from a showroom... they were used to run/test the engine on a stand without the extra systems the caddy uses... now if I can only figure out how to get a copy of it, hahah...