Interesting find..

[TurboTerror21]

Troubleshooting a lack of VSS signal to the ecm on my 87 grand national, I found a lack of continuity on the brown wire from the speed sensor buffer (green box) to pin A10 of the ecm. Turn out the wire runs through a connector that is about 14" from the ecm, and is buried behind the passenger kick panel. I found the male terminal on the VSS wire was completely bent over and not making contact. But here's the thing, the foam wrapped around the connector was 100% unopened and appeared original

Could this car have had a CEL code it's whole life? No lock up torque converter ever?

The speedometer does have markings on it that it was serviced in 1991, were they chasing the problem but didn't know how to fix it?

 

[wdxwrx]

It's possible. A lot of techs were not good at diagnosing problems with these new high-tech cars in the late 80's and early 90's.
Discovered a similar issue with a GN I bought in 1989. The car was burned. It was obvious that it was set on fire. I parted the car out. After I took the body off the frame, I discovered a major dent in the fuel supply line at the rear of the car. This dent could not be seen with the body on. It was obvious that the dent was there when the car was manufactured. My guess is the car never ran right under full throttle from day one. The dealer couldn't figure it out. The owner got disgusted and burned the car for the insurance money. This is only a guess, but the dented fuel line was real. The pic is the actual car. I paid $200 for it.

 

[mblum]

I found an interesting factory flaw on my 86 GN. To my surprise last winter I discovered the drivers floor board was rusted out, from the inside out, and that is the only rust on the car. The factory carpet with the rubber membrane backed padding sealed the moisture in and I had no idea moisture was under the carpet. I have heard of this being an issue on the passengers side due to a leaky AC Box, but this was the drivers side. Passengers side was mint.

After replacing the drivers floor and before I put new carpet in the car I needed to find where the water was coming from. Every time I ran water down the windshield near the drivers side I would see a trickle of water run down the inside of the firewall right next to the fuse box and would pool up in the drivers floor board bucket. I though it was the windshield, nope, after spending an afternoon searching on where the water was leaking in I decided to take a look and compare the GN side by side to my WE4, being the WE4 was all original and I purchased it from the original owner, it was the best thing I had to a proper factory example.

Turns out there is a spot behind the windshield wiper motor where the factory applies seam sealer on the engine side of the firewall, the bead on my 86 stopped about 4 inches short of where the bead stopped on my WE4. It looks like they ran short on the assembly line and the car was like this from day 1. The firewall on the 86 is still wearing it's factory paint, so I can only assume it was a Friday afternoon car!