Erratic idle hesitation junk pcm

[Raptorx351]

Anyone have any experience with reman computers being junk? I have a 1993 auto trans and the original computer is junk. Theres capacitors rotted off the board causing a severe erratic idle and hesitation. I have put 3 reman computers in it and it still no luck. I do have a 5 speed computer laying around and when i put it in it runs great so that leads me to believe it is indeed the computer. I have heard of horror stories of people putting up to 6 different computer in before they found one that worked. Im just at a loss with what to do next

 

[CreepingNet]

I dunno what's different about the automatics but I just replaced the capacitors on my 1993 Sport a couple years ago, I also had to bodge wire a few traces eaten up by the old capacitors. It's still got the original computer, just new caps. It's been running great ever since.

As a computer technician myself (I work I.T. By day, and dabble with vintage computers as a hobby), your scenario kinda' raises a question for me as to if the firmware or some other variance in these computers exists that we need to be paying attention to. I can see they have a ROM with some Date Codes on it, and there's 2 different stickers on the case (mine says ANY1, LOL) - did find a cool page full of EEC-IV type utilities - Pete Kvitek's EEC IV page - since they're DOS and Win32, might be fun for me to mess with these on my old MS-DOS/Win95 laptops, looks like I feel another "deep dive" coming.

Looking at the stickers I can see the second row on the one with the barcode is the FoMoCo P/N: in my case that's the F37F-12A650-YB - which in my case is a 1993 2wd manual Ford Explorer Sport. Oddly an DuckDuckGo search shows them as a 1993 RANGER ECU at a lot of places, and 4wD Explorer 1993-1994 (which makes sense). - UPDATE - Found a thread on FordTrucks.com on this. How can I tell which EEC-IV computer I have, and what it will run in? - Ford Truck Enthusiasts Forums

 

[Raptorx351]

What clued you in to the capacitors being junk and needing replaced?

I dunno what's different about the automatics but I just replaced the capacitors on my 1993 Sport a couple years ago, I also had to bodge wire a few traces eaten up by the old capacitors. It's still got the original computer, just new caps. It's been running great ever since.

As a computer technician myself (I work I.T. By day, and dabble with vintage computers as a hobby), your scenario kinda' raises a question for me as to if the firmware or some other variance in these computers exists that we need to be paying attention to. I can see they have a ROM with some Date Codes on it, and there's 2 different stickers on the case (mine says ANY1, LOL) - did find a cool page full of EEC-IV type utilities - Pete Kvitek's EEC IV page - since they're DOS and Win32, might be fun for me to mess with these on my old MS-DOS/Win95 laptops, looks like I feel another "deep dive" coming.

Looking at the stickers I can see the second row on the one with the barcode is the FoMoCo P/N: in my case that's the F37F-12A650-YB - which in my case is a 1993 2wd manual Ford Explorer Sport. Oddly an DuckDuckGo search shows them as a 1993 RANGER ECU at a lot of places, and 4wD Explorer 1993-1994 (which makes sense). - UPDATE - Found a thread on FordTrucks.com on this. How can I tell which EEC-IV computer I have, and what it will run in? - Ford Truck Enthusiasts Forums

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what clued you into the capacitors being junk and needing replaced?

 

[CreepingNet]

What clued you in to the capacitors being junk and needing replaced?

what clued you into the capacitors being junk and needing replaced?

I made a video on it on YouTube awhile back...

Long story short, I was having a rough idle, actually it could not idle at first because the MAF was burned out (burn mark on the wire on the MAF). Had it towed to the shop, shop said it was throwing a bunch of LEAN codes and then contradicted itself by saying they can't work on OBD-1 vehicles anymore and don't know what's wrong with it. They did say I could drive with the MAF Disconnected. Drove it home (just a block), replaced the MAF, pulled KOEO and KOER Codes, found out all the sensors save for maybe one or two were out of range and recieving no voltage, pulled the computer, unscrewed the tuna can top, and then the problem was immediatley obvious as traces had been eaten up by electrolyte and every single Electrolytic capacitor on the board was only attached by one leg. So I replaced them, put the PCM back in, fired up the X, and it started running like it normally does (really well).