evan@absolute
October 24th, 2009, 01:38 PM
Into the Vanagon cutting off at times.
As I had mentioned I was looking for a Vanagon ecu. I had 99% chased this problem down to a failing ecu a few weeks back. There is one new ecu left in VW's system for $1,000 in a New York dealer's inventory. :( That 1% I had left was looking like an expensive 1% if I was wrong. In chasing a used one everyone I knew had replaced lots of them but had no known good ones. This customer loves this old van so much that we put the last VW reman engine available in it 6 or 7 years ago. So they would have bought the ecu if I could say 100% it would fix it.
well today I finally made the time to go deeper.
First I got the ecu boards out of the case and separated. Taping off enough that I hopefully wouldn't short the two boards together and end all hope of a fix.
http://i165.photobucket.com/albums/u80/absoluts4/Pictures3074.jpg
http://i165.photobucket.com/albums/u80/absoluts4/Pictures3073.jpg
then I fired it up and broke out the test light to do some probing.
http://i165.photobucket.com/albums/u80/absoluts4/Pictures3075.jpg
After extensive probing/twisting/hitting the boards with the screwdriver handle etc I finally got it to fail consistently flexing the boards. That meant that bitch was mine. It was just a matter of finding the physical defects and fixing it. More probing/shaking/poking and flexing and I narrowed it down to one area of each board that would make it quit. So I took the ecu up to my soldering room where I do chip installs when needed(not so much these days since most stuff is flashed in but I have the set up that I put together when I was trained at AWE to do GIAC)
http://i165.photobucket.com/albums/u80/absoluts4/Pictures3058.jpg
http://i165.photobucket.com/albums/u80/absoluts4/Pictures3059.jpg
then I cleaned up the areas to take a look.
http://i165.photobucket.com/albums/u80/absoluts4/Pictures3062.jpg
http://i165.photobucket.com/albums/u80/absoluts4/Pictures3061.jpg
and there it was:hiya:
http://i165.photobucket.com/albums/u80/absoluts4/Pictures3071.jpg
http://i165.photobucket.com/albums/u80/absoluts4/zoomedecu.jpg
Resoldered about 12 connections in all(no pics of that because they are all out of focus and I didn't figure out until I put the whole car back together) and it works like a champ:upyeah: And the Vanagon will ride again for 3 hrs of my time(diagnose and repair) and a tune up. Beats the hell out of a $1,000 ecu.
Time to celebrate with some ice coffee.
As I had mentioned I was looking for a Vanagon ecu. I had 99% chased this problem down to a failing ecu a few weeks back. There is one new ecu left in VW's system for $1,000 in a New York dealer's inventory. :( That 1% I had left was looking like an expensive 1% if I was wrong. In chasing a used one everyone I knew had replaced lots of them but had no known good ones. This customer loves this old van so much that we put the last VW reman engine available in it 6 or 7 years ago. So they would have bought the ecu if I could say 100% it would fix it.
well today I finally made the time to go deeper.
First I got the ecu boards out of the case and separated. Taping off enough that I hopefully wouldn't short the two boards together and end all hope of a fix.
http://i165.photobucket.com/albums/u80/absoluts4/Pictures3074.jpg
http://i165.photobucket.com/albums/u80/absoluts4/Pictures3073.jpg
then I fired it up and broke out the test light to do some probing.
http://i165.photobucket.com/albums/u80/absoluts4/Pictures3075.jpg
After extensive probing/twisting/hitting the boards with the screwdriver handle etc I finally got it to fail consistently flexing the boards. That meant that bitch was mine. It was just a matter of finding the physical defects and fixing it. More probing/shaking/poking and flexing and I narrowed it down to one area of each board that would make it quit. So I took the ecu up to my soldering room where I do chip installs when needed(not so much these days since most stuff is flashed in but I have the set up that I put together when I was trained at AWE to do GIAC)
http://i165.photobucket.com/albums/u80/absoluts4/Pictures3058.jpg
http://i165.photobucket.com/albums/u80/absoluts4/Pictures3059.jpg
then I cleaned up the areas to take a look.
http://i165.photobucket.com/albums/u80/absoluts4/Pictures3062.jpg
http://i165.photobucket.com/albums/u80/absoluts4/Pictures3061.jpg
and there it was:hiya:
http://i165.photobucket.com/albums/u80/absoluts4/Pictures3071.jpg
http://i165.photobucket.com/albums/u80/absoluts4/zoomedecu.jpg
Resoldered about 12 connections in all(no pics of that because they are all out of focus and I didn't figure out until I put the whole car back together) and it works like a champ:upyeah: And the Vanagon will ride again for 3 hrs of my time(diagnose and repair) and a tune up. Beats the hell out of a $1,000 ecu.
Time to celebrate with some ice coffee.