Chevy & GMC Vans

I was losing interest in Astro/Safaris for a while. I think it was because I quit competing in car audio competitions, got married, had a son, and had more problems with my '89 Astro than I could fix at one time (or any time). Last week a bug hit me and I am back. That bug was a 1995 Chevy Astro. Here are the pictures of it, the day I bought it.











I've got a few more pics, but you get the idea of the van with these. It has been customized. Even though it looks pretty nice, the van has some problems. I don't think the previous owner knew anything about electronics. The brake lights come on as soon as I turn the key, and stay on.. hence I have no brake lights due to them being on full time. The transmission has a problem with shifting from 2nd to 3rd. Pretty sure the tranny isn't shot as I have got it to shift all the gears more than once. I believe it's something electrical like a sensor. Front parking lights dont work. Instrument cluster lights dont work. Radio, when I try to turn it up, shuts off and comes right back on. Every wire, it looks like, under the dash, has a T-Tap with a fuse on it.

It's going to be a lot of work but I think it's worth it. A '95 with 155K miles on it and a lot of work put into it. I bought it for $2500.

I forgot about this pic. This is my '89 and '95 sitting together, talking about the things to come in their future.

Very nice. Fixing electrical gremlins can be a daunting task but when you are done and everything works it's very rewarding.

I sure hope so, lol. I have faith in this van even though I am kind of sad/upset about buying it. I evidently wanted it so bad, without realizing it, I didn't check everything over like I normally do. Little things like I checked the oil, but forgot the transmission fluid. I checked under the van, but forgot to check the tail lights. I forgot things that I shouldn't have.

Oh well. This coming week, supposedly, I'll have a person come over and run a diagnostics on the van and print out everything that is wrong with it. My main concern is the transmission, brake lights, and front parking lights. Once I get those fixed right, it should be a downhill battle, but still, it'll be a battle.

I do have a service manual for the '89 Astro wiring. Hopefully that will help out a bit with the gremlins. I pretty much have to restore the wiring under the dash back to factory by taking every aftermarket wire out. Never know, this might fix the problem itself. We shall see. Waiting on it to warm up a little today. Hopefully I can dance between raindrops and work on the van for a bit.

Dennis still from the pictures that is one hell of a buy.Congrats on the buy.

Might be easier to get a complete under dash wire harness from a scrapyard. Of course, starting with removing all the aftermarket junk will probably fix most of it!

I'm thinking about that (getting the wiring harness). However, I wonder if the harness off the '89 will work. that would save some cash.

I thought I had it all fixed today. The headunit was playing nice, clean, and loud, with the van not running. I decided to try driving it to the store and every time I changed from park to drive or rolled a window down/up, or pushed the door popper, the headunit would shut off and come back on. I took the door poppers out of line for now due to not being able to find the ground wire for them.
I do have the tail lights working properly. P.O. took out the fuse and replaced it with 2 fused wires (20amp each).
I took out the alarm that was installed as I didn't have the remotes for it. Still have the wiring for it though and will attempt to remove that tomorrow.
Disconnected the ABS module as I thought it was what was giving me the tranny slipping problem. It wasn't, but not the van is acting like it all one gear. I presume that is limp mode. However, when I drove it to the store today, it changed gears 80% of the time I was driving. All gears were used and it went into them perfectly. It slipped a couple times though. I'm thinking the VSS could be the problem as my speedometer is all over the place.
I'm slowly getting it right and it will take time. I am trying to make everything as close to factory as I can with the wiring so I can start fresh with the aftermarket equipment.

Let's see if this youtube thing works.
http://youtu.be/YhCV-tylXAE

Seems I don't know how to use the youtube thing for the forum.

Watching that video, it looks like major ground problems. Not enough of them.

that's what I'm thinking, HPbyStan. I didnt think anything about the ground wires for the door poppers. I didn't even look for them and hopefully they're in the doors. I am going to run new wires for grounds to them and see what happens.

I am also going to attempt, once again, to find the stock wiring for the stereo, instead of running new wiring like I did.

Going to go get a new VSS sensor tomorrow. I am hoping that will take care of the transmission issues. My speedometer is all over the place and doesn't show the right speed. After reading a lot, I think it's the VSS sensor is either dead or going dead.