Truck Computer Life Span

[Tedybear]

Everyone has a personality. Some smooth as silk. And others Smooth as 40 grit.

Just take it in stride. Everyone here does their best to lend a hand.

S-

 

[MrRangerSir]

Sounds like a dirty connection. Clean the plugs on the PCM before you declare it junk. Most electronics problems can be traced to dirty connections or bad solder joints.

I'll second that and add another 30+ years experience.

One thing about ECU failures is that they seldom degrade. They will likely fail completely. If the vehicle still runs, i.e. limp-home mode, it likely is not the ECU. More likely to be a sensor or a connection.

Of course, there may be exceptions, but 99.9% of the time you can count on this.

 

[Mac]

And it's not "Chips" any more but CPU's, used ones on E-Bay for the V-8's go for around $50-75. Last time I bought a brand new one it was over $200 and that was years ago. CPU failure is not a common problem but happens, And sorry but it's a fact of life you have to roll with some of the comments found here. Even mild mannered me gets testy after a hard day and regret it afterwards.
Dave

 

[Mark_88]

Oh, gosh, SC has offended someone again...lol...anyway...glad you guys came to terms...

As for the OP...it might have been an EMP that took out your computer...could have been driving or parked under a space station that decided to see what their EMP could do with a bit of fine tuning...it's a conspiracy to get rid of older vehicles...or they checked your bank account and found that you had a few hundred dollars that you don't need so they did the economy a favour and picked on you...

It happens!

 

[Andy D]

Go easy on StrayCat. He may be a bit abrasive but he will never steer you wrong. You newbs of course will have to acquire a taste for his brand of post.

And yes as BobbyWalter said caps and things do start leaking with age and temperature changes. But after over 30 years in the electronics field I have come to know that dirty connectors and bad soldering cause better than 90% of failures.

Similar experience with the Bosch ECUs in my old BMW. Re flowing the solder joints for the power transistor fixes most flaky ECUs. I also managed to buy a couple used ECUs. If I go to a pick and pull , how hard would it be to find one for the Rat. ?

 

[bobbywalter]

And yes as BobbyWalter said caps and things do start leaking with age and temperature changes. But after over 30 years in the electronics field I have come to know that dirty connectors and bad soldering cause better than 90% of failures.

i agree with this in general.

but theres more to this, the particular sought after processors are subjected to hard use and less then ideal wiring problems from incremental power building and chassis swapping. one processor may go thru 10 chassis from outlaw 10 in stang to rock buggy before it ebays into you rbv project.

so the newer the better. eec5 from a sploder in oem condition is as good as it gets for most.

i repaired my fair share of vm and a9 type processors for damn sure....

rare failure is no longer applied to those.....

 

[85_Ranger4x4]

There are places you can send them off for repair.

We have a place we send computers and electronic dashes for farm equipment. They fail more often than cars due to the heat, dirt, vibration and rodent exposure though. Even then they easily last 20-30 years (which is how old the oldest ones are) Compared to getting a new one it doesn't cost that much to just have the old one fixed a lot of times.

 

[killj0y]

Similar experience with the Bosch ECUs in my old BMW. Re flowing the solder joints for the power transistor fixes most flaky ECUs. I also managed to buy a couple used ECUs. If I go to a pick and pull , how hard would it be to find one for the Rat. ?

Funny you mention that, if I was sure it was the computer I'd clean it up good, reflow it, then redo the bad caps I can see and test it out, wouldn't hurt and can save you some green.