Hi guys!

I'm posting this for my friend...

He's got D15B2 hatch from 1991... car has never been in an accident or anything... never had the body work or anything...

In the last few months he burnt 4 ECU's...

He got CEL and the code was unrecognizable... but the car ran fine without any issues... so they thought it was the ECU itself...

After they replaced it, the car was doing fine (NO CEL) for 14 days... after 14 days the car wouldn't start... the ECU WAS BURNT...

So they replaced under warranty... this time it lasted only 4 days and it burnt...

So they replaced it again under warranty... and again after few days it burnt...

Car is a daily driver and NEVER used for racing... it is bone stock without AYN MODS...

What could be the problem? What to look for? What to do?

 

possibly it has a bad ground

 

ECU can be burnt because of the ground????????

What ground to look for... on ECU pins or ground in general (tranny, engine, chassis)?

 

Does the ecu produce a solid LED? This siginifies a bad ecu.

 

I think YES!!!

There is one RED led and the fuse beside the gas/clutch/brake pedal and that led is always ON

 

does the windshield leak? cause mine had water in the harness, didn't fry out the ecu, but i was lucky, it made the car freak out. check that...

 

There are no leaks at all... the car is in mint condition, never been in an accident...

All of a sudden.... PUFFFF without any obvious reason

 

sell it and get a new one

 

Hmmmmmm... that's the cleverest answer ever...

Why would he sell a car? He's the first owner, car has 120.000 miles, never had accident, mint body, mint engine, mint interior and ONLY the ECU problem...

 

tell you what... i have a pm5 ecu I no longer need, so what you do is find a buyer, pop the ecu in and its gone! lol... but for being the first owner and respectively low mileage, it could be worth quite a bit for resale

 

It has to be a bad ground, or a short somewhere. Have fun testing all ofthe wires

 

ya it seems weird to all of a sudden do that... I would think the grounding would not be the main concern as those haven't been touched since it was manufactured, but it probably wouldn't hurt to disconnect the negative battery wire and sand down the contact points at the chasis and tranny and then do the same at the thermostat ground. any fuses going bad elsewhere? if so check through those circuits to see if anything got shorted...

 

120,000 is low? wow... I just hit 82,000 :-)


Back to the leak idea, has it been rainy in the area where your friends car is? When I lived in San Diego, after every rain I would have four or five drops of water on the carpet just at the foot well of the passenger. Just an idea.

 

i'm gonan say you got some wiring issues....did he ever rplace a/c or any "luxury" in this mint car. B/c sometimes they will mess with the harness to give power to the innards of the car and just piggy back it...no joke. Check the whole under-hood harness....and the ecu connection pieces.....might be a bad stripped wire and making contact and causing it to short out the a/b/c connector. especially if that 12v power is causign the jump...."BAM" no more ecu.

 

Friend of mine had a bum alternator. The thing has burnt about three ECUs.

 

I also have a relatively new alternator available remanufactured in jan. 2003 worked very very well never had problems...

 

PROBLEM SOLVED!!!

It was the engine harness + damaged ground wire...

engine harness was damaged in 3 places and ECU ground wire was bent and damaged in 2 places and that caused the burning...

He replaced the harness, ECU and redone the ground wires (all of them) and for now, everything is OK...

For the first time in 3 months, the red led is not ON anymore...

Thank you guys for your help!!!

 

badass....I knew it was something simple...

91bluehatch

actually that guy called it within 30mins....