Ships from our USA and CANADA stock — no extra duties or import fees for US and Canadian customers
Jim’s 1988 C4 Corvette Preventive VATS Delete
Almost every story on this site starts with a car that will not start. This one does not.
Jim’s 1988 C4 was running perfectly. No SECURITY light, no intermittent no-start, no stranding. He was in the dash for unrelated work, looked at the VATS system sitting there, and made a decision that a lot of C4 owners come to eventually.
“I purchased your Pro Module for my 1988 C4 Corvette. I didn’t have a problem, but while in the dash for other reasons considered your Pro Module a good preventative measure.”
Jim M.
Why do it before it fails
Because of where it fails.
A VATS fault does not give notice. It does not degrade politely over a few weeks while you make arrangements. The reading drifts past the module’s tolerance and the injectors shut down, and that happens wherever the car happens to be. A show field two hours from home. A petrol station. Somebody else’s driveway on a Sunday evening.
And on a C4, getting to the module means getting into the dash. If the dash is already apart for other reasons, you are being handed the cheapest version of this job you will ever get. Jim recognised that and took it.
The part worth stealing
His first attempt did not work. He fitted it with scotch locks and the car would not start. Rather than pick up the phone, he went back in and did it properly:
“After initial installation with scotch locks, the car would not start. Prior to making any phone calls, I decided to cut the appropriate wires from the VATS system plug (it wasn’t going to be plugged in again) and solder the wires, wala the car starts.”
Jim M.
Two lessons in one paragraph, and both are worth having.
The first is practical: solder your connections. Scotch locks bite through insulation and rely on a small mechanical contact to carry a signal. On a thirty-five year old harness carrying a low-current reference voltage, that is not good enough. Jim’s car did not start until he cut and soldered, and then it started immediately.
The second is the five words in brackets. It wasn’t going to be plugged in again. He wrote it as a throwaway aside, but it is the whole point of a full bypass. The VATS connector was not being disabled, or tricked, or worked around. It was coming out of his car, permanently, and he knew it while he was holding the wire cutters.
“It looks like the security system is working (looks like)”
Jim’s closing observation, in his own brackets again, is the bit that surprises people. From the driver’s seat nothing appears to have changed. The dash behaves normally. The car looks exactly as it did.
It just starts, every time, and the component that used to be able to strand him is no longer connected to anything.
If your dash is coming apart anyway
Radio, heater core, cluster, gauges, anything that takes you in there: that is the moment this job costs you almost nothing extra. The wiring for Jim’s car is in the 1986 to 1989 Chevrolet Corvette installation guide. On these cars the Theft Deterrent Module comes out of the circuit entirely and the PRO Module replaces it.
Solder the joints. Check your pin-out against the guide first, because colours do vary between cars. And if anything does not match, send a photo before you cut.
More Corvette stories in Corvette VATS Delete: The Cars That Came Back.
