boomdriver
Well-known member
A few days ago I decided to get off my a$$ and install the new battery tray thats been sitting all over the house for the last....year?:eyerole
Anyway, while I had all that mess apart I decided to go ahead and remount the fan relay, 2 MAF relays, FP relay and replace a bunch of old rotted conduit and 25 yr old black tape. This involved taking terminals off the jumper post to arrange things. Put it all back together, cursed the lower side panel bolt and walked away. That was 3 days ago.
Yesterday I go to start it and its harder than usual when cold, and when it does fire its burping and coughing and misfiring all over the place. I'm thinking MAF power relay....nope. Suddenly got 6 new DTCs that were not there before...A code for almost every operating system on the engine. huh?
So I put the fuel gauge on it and notice that its not running the fuel pump....sometimes but not everytime. Near zero pressure in the rails. Inj are firing...but theres no fuel.
After checking a few other things I come to the conclusion that something went south in my "remodel" of the battery box area.
I also learned a longgggg time ago that when something suddenly stops working after service, go to whatever was serviced and see whats out of place.......
I know you;re wondering what the point of this story is..
Electrical connections.
When I reassembled the jumper post I did not take the time to clean and arrange all the terminals on the post. Just stuck them on and ran the nut down. Not good enough. Nowhere near good 'nuff actually. The result was an ECM that was angry, lost and confused.
Today, I took each one and used the wire wheel to clean the post and terminal and cleaned them all and reassembled. Car starts and runs fine again. (reminded me to get the summer oil out of there too...cranks real slow when cold with 10-40wt)
The jumper and the fusable links is where the ECM power comes from to all the control circuits, ECM,fuel pump, injection, all
the 'always hot' orange wires etc. So, if these are dirty, loose, corroded or just plain old, the power to the most important items on the car is intermittent, corrupted or reduced from the unnecessary resistance in poor connections. Now, if thats how sensitive the hot side of the system is with all that amperage coming directly from the battery, how fragile does that make the ground side?.................... VERY.
Whenever there is an opportunity I'll use it to demonstrate how easy it is to have some mystery performance issues over a dirty contact on a single 14g wire, much less all of them.
Hope this helps someone with their electrical problems.
Anyway, while I had all that mess apart I decided to go ahead and remount the fan relay, 2 MAF relays, FP relay and replace a bunch of old rotted conduit and 25 yr old black tape. This involved taking terminals off the jumper post to arrange things. Put it all back together, cursed the lower side panel bolt and walked away. That was 3 days ago.
Yesterday I go to start it and its harder than usual when cold, and when it does fire its burping and coughing and misfiring all over the place. I'm thinking MAF power relay....nope. Suddenly got 6 new DTCs that were not there before...A code for almost every operating system on the engine. huh?
So I put the fuel gauge on it and notice that its not running the fuel pump....sometimes but not everytime. Near zero pressure in the rails. Inj are firing...but theres no fuel.
After checking a few other things I come to the conclusion that something went south in my "remodel" of the battery box area.
I also learned a longgggg time ago that when something suddenly stops working after service, go to whatever was serviced and see whats out of place.......
I know you;re wondering what the point of this story is..
Electrical connections.
When I reassembled the jumper post I did not take the time to clean and arrange all the terminals on the post. Just stuck them on and ran the nut down. Not good enough. Nowhere near good 'nuff actually. The result was an ECM that was angry, lost and confused.
Today, I took each one and used the wire wheel to clean the post and terminal and cleaned them all and reassembled. Car starts and runs fine again. (reminded me to get the summer oil out of there too...cranks real slow when cold with 10-40wt)
The jumper and the fusable links is where the ECM power comes from to all the control circuits, ECM,fuel pump, injection, all
the 'always hot' orange wires etc. So, if these are dirty, loose, corroded or just plain old, the power to the most important items on the car is intermittent, corrupted or reduced from the unnecessary resistance in poor connections. Now, if thats how sensitive the hot side of the system is with all that amperage coming directly from the battery, how fragile does that make the ground side?.................... VERY.
Whenever there is an opportunity I'll use it to demonstrate how easy it is to have some mystery performance issues over a dirty contact on a single 14g wire, much less all of them.
Hope this helps someone with their electrical problems.
otfl
