can someone please help me figure out why my car wont start? ive got a 95 Z-28 with an LT1 and it wont start. one day th ignition got stuck so i forced it back to th off position. and it ran fine for about a month then one day it just wouldnt start. then my boyfriend lost my keys. so i had a locksmith come out and put a new ignition in and make a new key. well he said the electrical system in my car wouldnt let him program th new key. so when i asked a friend he said that if it was just th ignition then all that had to be done was a new key. im lost! what can i do?

 

Have it hooked to a vat and tested if your new ignition will alow you to crank. You can run a starter amperage draw test (you'll do this by putting the vats positive lead to the pos terminal on the battery and the negative to the neg side then putting the inductive ammeter clamp around the starter wire with the arrow on the clamp pointing towards the starter) and that should give you some idea of weather or not your starter is bad. But your posting is a bit fuzzy and hard to understand. Will the car crank with this new ignition or no? Because if you have no ability to crank the vat really won't help much.

 

If you have VATS your key should have a resistor pellet. When the locksmith made a new key and changed the ignition lock, did the key have the same value resistor as the original? Being that you lost the original key, there is a good chance that the new key has the wrong value resistor pellet, in which case it won't work. Secondly, they key is not programmable and has to have the proper value resistor to match the original key.
Another question, when the car refused to start did the starter do anything, or did the "Security" lamp come on and stay on? When this lamp lights it indicates there is a problem with the VATS, and the computer disables the injectors and starter.

 

I thought she was asking about how to use a VAT machine :S oops.

 

No th car wont crank. th security light comes on and blinks I tried push starting it and it won't start that way either. I researched bypassing th vats system and went to radio shack bought resistors but for the life of me cannot figure out how to put them together so it would equal out th resistance on th key pellet
No I don't have th keys to my car. Before I figured out it was th vats system, my boyfriend lost my keys. That is why this is such a hassle for me. Cuz if I had a key I could take it to a locksmith and have him make me another key for my new ignition.
Could th starter going out cause th vats system to act this way?

 

If the security lamp is on the computer will disable the injectors and the start relay, so when you turn the ignition to Start nothing is going to happen. Being that you don't have the original keys, you really don't know what the resistor value is supposed to be. For the VATS bypass to work you need a resistor the same value as the one on the original key.
VATS uses 15 different value resistors, so if you don't know the proper value, you will have to buy all 15 different value resistors and see which one is going to work. The resistor does not have to have the precise value, but has to fall within the range shown on the table.
4th Gen LT1 F-body Tech Articles

This is diagram on how to bypass the resistor on the key with one directly wired to the VATS module.
http://shbox.com/1/vats_bypass.jpg

As for the starter going bad, a bad starter won't damage the VATS. I suspect that the locksmith made you a key that turns the ignition lock but has the wrong resistor pellet, or no pellet at all. Or there is a break in the wiring going from the ignition lock to the VATS module.

 

You should be able to find something out from a dealership about what your original value was.