1980 LeSabre Turbo

[Buickracer]

At the Sloan Museum Auto Fair, in Flint, MI, in the cars for sale today is a 1980 Yellow, white leather, LeSabre with a 3.8 L turbo, it turns over but won't start, any ideas, why it won't start. also any idea on how many '80 LeSabre's were built with the turbo, the car is very clean inside, was undercoated, but this car has sat for a long time and the frame is rusty but solid but crusty, has a big stabilizer bar on the rear, didn't see a posi tag but not sure they were still putting them on back then. The price is right at $875 unless he gets it to run, new coil, dist cap, etc. I'll try to remember to take the camera tomorrow, and get some pics, as I think this is a very rare car. RV

 

[b4black]

I had trouble posting this before. I hope it's not too late too help.

1980 is one year I don’t a good grasp on production figures for the LeSabre.
There were about 8300 1980 coupes total (all engines).

One guess about the no-start would be the ESC. During start up, there is a bunch of flase knock. There is a relay that disables the ESC controller during start up so it doesn’t retard the timing. Maybe the relay has failed. You could try unhooking the knock sensor if it’s easy to reach back there on a LeSabre.

Or try this:

TURBO CONTROL CENTER ESC BYPASS - While it is not recommend solution, bypassing the early style (non-ECM) Turbo Control Center can be useful for diagnosis of a faulty controller “To run the car without the ESC connected you should jumper the green wire, pin2, to the black wire ,pin 4, on the distributor side. This is Buick’s test for a duff ESC unit. It has been my experience that the ESC affects the ignition timing under all conditions, and driving the car with the ESC disconnected will result in gross detonation.” Thanks to Peter on the TB.com message board.

KNOCK KNOCK Page
HTH,
Rich