Bad ECM? 91 Mazda B2600 pickup
Dave Alverson
intermitant. It occassionally loses power and then sometimes stalls.
My son usually drives it, but when I test drove it, it did happen to me
twice. I was moving along (probably accelerating) and the engine
dropped to real low RPM for about 3 seconds, then came back normal. But
then last night a drove it about 20 miles to drop it off at the Mazda
dealer and had no problems.
The dealer had several of their techs drive it on errands, trying to
reproduce the problem. It finally happened for one of them, and the guy
said once it went bad, it really went bad. They said they got 5 codes
from the unit, and the last one was 14 which he said meant the PCM was
bad. And they cost $1600! I told him I'd think about it.
So I've been learning about ECM's from a few places on the web tonite,
and I will probably call a couple places tomorrow to see what they
think. Automotive Computer Supply (ecmfinders.com) has a lot of good
info and they seem like a good place to talk to. Their site seems to
say my Mazda ECM was built by Mitsubishi and these units have a high
failure rate. The other one I saw was FullLogic.com, but they didnt
have as much info on their site.
I'm not much of an auto tech, but I'm a programmer and twiddle with
computers and electronics enough to be comfortable with it.
The thing that concerns me is that when it dies, you can usually turn it
off, turn it back on, and it works fine for a while. (OK, just cycle
power and that will fix it. Ack, this is scary.) But really, it sounds
more like a bad connection somewhere.
Any ideas?
Dave
Death
look for your local Standard/Blue Streak brand parts distributor. if they
don'y have an ECM for your vehicle in stock or in their werehouse.. they can
rebuild yours and have it back to you fairly quickly
In article <davea-3E4D36....@news.xetron.com>, Dave Alverson
And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him...
jeff findley
Similar to a problem I had in an 88 Olds Calais. Car would die, but
would start back up after a few minutes. When it did die and wouldn't
start for a while, I found no fuel coming out of the throttle body
injector. The manual said that the throttle body injector gets its
signal from the computer. Once the computer was definitely singled
out as the suspect (when it died, rapping on the computer case
temporarily "cured" it and rapping on the computer case when it was
running would cause it to sputter and almost die).
A remanufactured (or was it new, I forget) ECM would have cost me over
$100 at NAPA. I didn't even want to know the dealer price, so I
started calling junkyards. Their price was $40 with a 30 day
exchange-only warranty.
I ended up buying a used one at a junkyard (they had stacks of them
and had several which matched the one I had). I think I had to swap
the PROM out of my computer and stick it into the used computer since
that was different. The used ECM lasted until the car finally died
(worn timing gears) about a month ago.
I know nothing about Mazda computers or Japanese computers in general,
but I'd call auto parts stores like NAPA and ask for prices on yours
(find out if they're new or remanufactured). If you're really brave,
you could try used parts like I did. You'll save lots of money with
used parts, but the "warranty" sucks and you could get another bad
computer. The upside is that I could buy 3 used computers for the
price of a one at NAPA, if I was willing to take the higher risk.
Jeff
--
Be generous with duct tape.
Spare the duct tape spoil the job.
Robert Hancock
got may not be out of line if it's a Mitsubishi unit. How they can justify
that ludicrous price I don't know..
--
Robert Hancock Saskatoon, SK, Canada
To email, remove "nospam" from hanc...@nospamshaw.ca
Home Page: http://www.roberthancock.com/
"jeff findley" <jeff.f...@sdrc.com> wrote in message
news:yz9heup...@sgipd267.sdrc.com...
kc8adu
repair.
change ALL of the electrolytic caps.clean up any leaked crap on the board.
very common.
sometimes get 10 a week here from shops here.
"Dave Alverson" <da...@xetron.com> wrote in message
news:davea-3E4D36....@news.xetron.com...
Stan Weiss
David Ruberg <dru...@rconnect.com>
The beginning of July I had him repair the unit from my '92 Geo tracker
which is a mituibitchy ecm. My car would not run at all, when I got back
the unit I just put it back in and the car started up.
Stan