Need to Rehab a 1990 LeSabre Custom

Hello all! My first of what I'm sure will be many posts. My wife and I have adopted her Grandmothers 90' LS Custom, with the intention of fixing it up abit and selling it for her. It has just over 145k on it, 3.8ltr motor which leaks, but it's so dirty I cant tell from where! I have NO experience with Buicks or the 3.8 ltr motor and was wondering where to start to get this car ready to sell for Granny! Thanks for your help!

Welcome to AF! What & where does the car leak. Does it leak from the engine, and if so, is it coolant, trans fluid, or motor oil?

Welcome to AF! What & where does the car leak. Does it leak from the engine, and if so, is it coolant, trans fluid, or motor oil?

I'm going to clean the motor off here in a few, hopefully by tommrow I'll be able to ID where it's leaking from for sure. It does have ALOT of old leaked oil under the valve cove in the back and DS of the motor, it looks like a slow OLD leak, but more comming soon. Pics after the cleaning.

Ok tonight I brought to a friends shop and we have found the following;

Leaking VCG's, front & rear, Oil pan Gasket blown, Radiator is shot, heavy corrosion on both sides and leaking from the neck. We are pretty sure the pan gasket is the result of a PCV valve that has NEVER been changed, increasing the crankcase pressure, ect, ect. The car did have 2 codes, a 13 (O2 sensor) and a 22 ( TPS), we checked the O2 sensor on the osciiloscope and it seems fine, but the TPS is reading .5 at 0 throttle. Alldata says it should read .2 or less. I think I can adjust the TPS down to the .2 if not dang close.

So what do you think, where to start??

Ok changed the front VCG and the PCV valve and cleaned out the blowby tube today before the rain started, no problems there, rear VCG on the morrow.

I'm familiar with clearing codes on other makes, but can the codes on this car be cleared with the old remove pos term and waiting awhile? I'd like to see if this helps with the code 13.

Also how do I adjust the TPS on this model??

You need to check AllData again for the TPS voltage specs! If they actually show “.2 v or less”, they had a misprint, or simply wrong! :screwy: It should be .45 to .5v @ closed throttle and it was designed to be non-adjustable!

BTW, always remove the negative battery cable first when clearing codes, or performing any other maintenance functions that requires the battery to be disconnected!

You may never know what set the O2 sensor code. All you can do is reset it and see if it comes back.

Sounds like you are making some progress, keep us informed. :grinyes:

You can also unplug the ECM/Fuel Pump fuse for a few minutes to clear the ECM.