I recently purchased a '96 Trans AM for almost nothing.
And I know about the same amouint about LT1 motors.

I am de-modding my '98 to make it more street friendly and
am building a Camaro/Mustang Challenge car out of the '96.

The starter was broken (cracked in half) and had no battery.
I replaced both today.

The car started, but only seems to be running on something less than all 8
cylinders.
It's also making a helluva noise, like a knock. But it's not quite a metalic sound.

Giving the car any throttle at all will cause it to "bog" and die.
It has a great big glowing SES light ...

It holds good oil pressure, at about 40psi
It has no coolant in it, so I never let it run for more than 10-15 seconds.

All symptoms point to an Opti and I have one to put on it.
But I don't want to go through all th knuckle scraping pain of doing it in the car if the motor has to come out.

I'm curious as to what any of you would suggest as the next step.

Also, how do I keep the car alarm from auto arming?

Thanks for the help ...

 

Next step is to get the code scanned. There is a good chance that will give you an indicaton as to what is wrong.

 

I wouldn't even run it without coolant for starters, I would think the aluminum heads would not like that at all.
once you have cooant in it , you can run it longer, it might clear out given a chance.