Situation.

About a month ago my roommate sent his car to the shop to get the valve seals redone. Since his car is in the shop I lend him my Accord to putz around in. While he is off at work I head out to go to my second job (3:50pm in San Diego). I get two turns away from my apartment and hear a POP!!!! Que le fuq? well the car is still running, must have ran over something. Two blocks later, Put, put, put stall, put, stall.

FU<U></U>CK!!!!

Now I am in the fast lane. Broke down, two blocks downhill from home. Luckily there is a Home Depot Parking lot just three lanes over. Oh sweet, the boys in blue are here to help!!!

Cop gets out and comes over. I am trying to figure out what happened and have the hood open. He asks whats going on, and I tell him. Then he looks at the engine bay then proceeds back to his cruiser.

I go ask him if in the next dead spot in traffic if we could just push my car into the home depot parking lot.
Cop: are you serious? that thing weighs about 3,000 pounds.
Me: what did you say?
Cop: my back has lasted me 50 years because I don't do that ****.
Me: ****** lazy *** bastard. *walks back to car*

So I call my towing service (Allstate motorclub) and they send a tow truck from a normal 30 minute drive. Well this is a special moment because it is rush hour in Sunny San Diego so traffic is hell and will take the tow truck about an hour or so to get there. Then the cops tow truck gets there. Well you have to take the first tow available so we hook up and I go home.

Hooking up the tow truck was $55, Followed by $5 a mile after that. My total bill was $60 even. I inform my motorclub of this and they say "ok Mr. Hill. Send us the invoice and we will reimburse you up to $50.

$50?!?! the bill is $60. I get 200 miles of tow a year!
Allstate : well sir, had you used our truck it would be fully covered.

ok, **** you too. *mental note, cancel Allstate*

Now onto the trouble shooting.

Before the tow driver handed me my bill the valve cover was off.
Tensioner - OK
Belts - OK

hmm...


Pull codes.

14 and 41. - Primary o2 sensor heater and IACV.

Well I just so happen to have a spare IACV in a box. swap it out. reset battery, pull codes. now only 41, sweet.

Pull codes again just to be sure. SOLID CEL. ****. Solid CEL is a Dead ECU.

I pull the ECU to find this.







So now my ECU is toast. Ok, Ill order a new ECU from someone. Just so happens that 92hondalude is selling a 97 SH ECU. I send him my $$ and he promptly sends me my ECU (thanks nick!).
While I am awaiting the ECU I find out that the 97 ECU has a completely different setup and once my gas tank if filled it wont start again. well crap. I Figured Maybe I could just take the parts out of it I need and put it into my ECU.

I take my ECU to work with me (NAVY) and we (my boss as I watched ) swap out the chip that poped and fix the foil run on the back.

FIXED



I get it home and nothing. Maybe I need to redo a couple of the connections? look around and sure enough there was a wire with some exposed metal. The tape came off after three years.

ARGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

My wiring harness has had a VAFC and a Secondary o2 sensor simulator all hacked into it. Ok, might as well redo ALL of these connections.

Go check the Mail and my o2 Sensor came in from Denso. $48 shipped with plug. Jack up the car and replace the o2 sensor. Check the codes again. none. nothing. blank. ok, well I guess its time to start the car hopefully.

crank crank crank crank. ARGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

at this point im about to pull all of my damn hair out if it hasn't fallen out already.

Ok, what are we up to now?

IACV
Primary o2 sensor
ECU
about 15 wire connections on the harness

all bad / needing repair.

well what the hell else is there?

I check the spark again. Nothing. Remove the coil, check the resistance, everything is decent but there is still no voltage going to it. Now I run an MSD coil, so I have messed with the wiring. Well its time to check that all out. cut the zip ties, pull the tape and what do I see. a cold solder joint. argh. snip, snip, strip solder, shrink wrap.

Ok, now we have that done. I did measure it and it was still grounded so the cold joint wasn't too bad, however it did need to get fixed.

Im fed up. Go into my room and listen to some XM for a while. After a beer I pull out the Helms. I am flipping through and end up at the IAB page. This made me remember that the pin on the ecu that fried was the IAB. I start to dissect it and there is a control solenoid that I know is kinda in a weird spot on my car due to the swap. There is also a check valve in the vacuum system of it all. Whatever, ill give anything a try at this point. I go out to the car, unplug the vacuum hoses for the IAB's and put the key in.

VROOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

WTF?

So the total count comes to

IACV
Primary o2 sensor
ECU
about 15 wire connections on the harness
Cold solder joint on the ignition wiring
IAB vacuum solenoid stuff.

damn man. what a set of issues.

CLIFF NOTES: READ, Its good for you!

 

Like I said, if it were me I wouldn't even know where to begin diagnosing all of this. Glad you finally got it figured out, I know it was alot of frustration. eBeer!!!

edit: post # 1500! took long enough


Modified by piotrush at 4:32 AM 12/19/2005

 

what would cause the ECU to fry like that? anyways, also glad to hear that you figured it out yourself. That itself saved you a little bit of money.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by Jos3ph &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">what would cause the ECU to fry like that? anyways, also glad to hear that you figured it out yourself. That itself saved you a little bit of money. </TD></TR></TABLE>

the chip that fried was a power transister. one of the wires that connects to the circuit shorted most likely causing an increase in current which would have overloaded the IACV, created the cold solder joint and on the return poped the foil run in turn making the chip pop.

not 100% sure on the order, but I think its about like that.

Just a really crappy sequence of events that happened at the right time to cause it all.

 

told you it was in the helms the whole time

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by Turbo Sam &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">told you it was in the helms the whole time </TD></TR></TABLE>

haha, thanks for your help bro!!!

 

glad to hear you got the beast running. You need to drive your *** down here and we can drive the ludes off the Cliffs in Laguna at the same time. Videotape that ****.

I still need to pull my IM off and replace my T belt and auto tensioner. hooray for me.

 

shakes did you figure out the problem with the IAB system or just leave it off....sounds like a bastard *** problem though....gotta hate those things...

 

Man, I got a headache reading the whole thing. Imagine me diagnosing the problem?

Congrats on the fix though. is the problem solver!

State Farm &gt; Allstate

 

nice to see you got it running <TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by Shakes &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">Situation.
Just so happens that 92hondalude is selling a 97 SH ECU. I send him my $$ and he promptly sends me my ECU (thanks nick!). </TD></TR></TABLE>
your welcome
nice doing business with you.
cant wait to do it again

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by Shakes &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">
Im fed up. Go into my room and listen to some XM for a while. After a beer I pull out the Helms. I am flipping through and end up at the IAB page. This made me remember that the pin on the ecu that fried was the IAB. I start to dissect it and there is a control solenoid that I know is kinda in a weird spot on my car due to the swap. There is also a check valve in the vacuum system of it all. Whatever, ill give anything a try at this point. I go out to the car, unplug the vacuum hoses for the IAB's and put the key in.

VROOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

WTF?

</TD></TR></TABLE>

so when you unpluged the IAC vacume hoses, did you also unplug the wiring connectors for the solinoid that is inline? so the pin the cooked on the ecu was the IABs? do you think you have a bad solinoid that smoked that power transistor? were there bad wiring connections at the IABs?

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by prelittlelude &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">

so when you unpluged the IAC vacume hoses, did you also unplug the wiring connectors for the solinoid that is inline? so the pin the cooked on the ecu was the IABs? do you think you have a bad solinoid that smoked that power transistor? were there bad wiring connections at the IABs?</TD></TR></TABLE>

lol, the IAB solenoid plug hasnt been connected for over a year now. long story.

The wire that was exposed was the vtec pressure switch.

Something very odd had to have happened to have caused all of this. nothing seems to be directly related. possibly in the ECU itsself, but I would need the block diagram of that to figure it out.