Got an engine, now Gremlins?

I found an engine that already had the delete cam and lifters installed. Since I've had a heart attack, my son's friend installed the engine for me. But he has been having a problem with the Stabilitrack system and the front airbag sensors. They both keep intermittently coming on (the warning lights). As soon as he runs down those Gremlins I hope to have our hoe back.

BobM said:

I found an engine that already had the delete cam and lifters installed. Since I've had a heart attack, my son's friend installed the engine for me. But he has been having a problem with the Stabilitrack system and the front airbag sensors. They both keep intermittently coming on (the warning lights). As soon as he runs down those Gremlins I hope to have our hoe back.

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I'm sorry for the troubles and glad you're still with us, recovering from your heart attack.

A decent bidirectional code reader like this one that can read all modules, will help you get at the codes causing the warnings.

Check all the grounds. Especially the ecm grounds. One goes the the passenger side cylinder head in the front, the other is on the driver side of the block down low towards the front.

I forgot I already started this post and started a new one (Remember I'm OLD!). But here is all the info I thought needed to be included.
My '07 Tahoe lost two cylinders. I had the DOD deleted 150XXX ago and it has a cat back and CAI. I found an aluminum block AFM deleted engine with ~114K on it. The engine has an AMS Racing cam and lifters in it. I had a guy install it for me (I've had a heart attack and a stent and am now over 70.). Engine runs good, sounds great with my new cat back (The old one was about rusted out.), but the "check engine light is on and the "service stabilitrac" light comes on. The only other things done were I had new plugs/wires and a set of cheap Amazon injectors installed.
I had a local shop check it out. The shop was po'ed that I didn't pay them thousands to replace the engine and was kinda snarky. After $145 all I got out of them was that it is throwing PO3, PO175 and PO172 codes. They said that, since they didn't put the engine in that they could do no more. They put on the diagnoses that they suspect it "may have wrong engine and or/ components".
The original engine started having an intermittent misfire and then suddenly dropped two cylinders. I assumed that meant that a couple of the DOD lifters had failed. So, this engine came up for sale at the same time and I pounced on it cause I could buy it for what a delete kit would cost me. When the guy put the engine in and started to spin it over to prime the new Melling oil pump, it wouldn't build pressure. He pulled the oil pan and found they had cracked the oil pickup tube. We used the tube off the old engine and it has worked fine. My guy suspects that's why they sold the engine because they couldn't figure why there was no oil pressure.
I haven't pulled my old engine apart (Heart attack.) to see if it was just the lifters. I drove the old engine about 30 miles on 6 cylinders to have the engine replaced. The "check engine" light and "service stabilitrac" lights came on then. I didn't question that since it was only running on six cylinders. But now it still has the lights on and, after I run about 10 miles, the "service stabilitrac" will come on.
Any help from anybody?

besides them pulling codes have you or anyone does any diagnostic on it? like basic misfire stuff? I don't know forsure, but I would expect the Stabilitrak fault codes to be non P codes.

was the old engine tapping badly for 2 cyl to be down from afm, it should have been tapping pretty hard.

you also didn't say if you had the ecm tuned to disable the afm since the new engine doesn't have it and you probably need or at least could use a tune for the cam that's in it.

if you still have the old engine laying around, having your guy pull the valve covers off and turn the engine over while looking for loose rockers from stuck valves might help you know which direction to go with troubles shooting.


on a side note, the shop isn't 100% wrong, usually buying a rebuilt or built engine used from someone you don't know and then not inspecting it really well doesn't turn out great. so hard to say, you're going to need to go back and do all the diagnostics you'd have done to the first engine and then go. from there

j91z28d1 said:

besides them pulling codes have you or anyone does any diagnostic on it? like basic misfire stuff? I don't know forsure, but I would expect the Stabilitrak fault codes to be non P codes.

was the old engine tapping badly for 2 cyl to be down from afm, it should have been tapping pretty hard.

you also didn't say if you had the ecm tuned to disable the afm since the new engine doesn't have it and you probably need or at least could use a tune for the cam that's in it.

if you still have the old engine laying around, having your guy pull the valve covers off and turn the engine over while looking for loose rockers from stuck valves might help you know which direction to go with troubles shooting.


on a side note, the shop isn't 100% wrong, usually buying a rebuilt or built engine used from someone you don't know and then not inspecting it really well doesn't turn out great. so hard to say, you're going to need to go back and do all the diagnostics you'd have done to the first engine and then go. from there

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We pulled the oil pan and checked the rods and cylinder walls from the bottom for wear or slop and it LOOKED great. And no the engine wasn't all that loud.
The ecm was already tuned to disable the afm about 150k ago.

And I'll add the snarky shop is the one that tuned the ecm to disable the afm for me years ago.

The other thread is now closed. And I think I found someone who can tune the hoe. He has a dyno in his shop and is a friend of my son.
Thanks to everyone for their helpful comments.