Need your thoughts please

Almighty-Si · Post by **Almighty-Si** » Tue Apr 28, 2009 3:04 pm

Very wierd issues yesterday. I was down in NC all weekend for a meet in Deal Gap and on Saturday morning I ran the update. During the day on saturday I made a couple adjustments, everything was fine, car ran great. Sunday morning, started it up and it was running a bit on the rich side but as the car warmed it clear itself out, no biggie probably just need adjustments on some ECT stuff, drove the car all day sunday and went back to my aunts later on that evening. Monday evening I get in the car to leave and again car is rich on start up, didn't bother with it figuring it would clear up like it did the day before and I took off. About 3 miles from her house it started sputtering pretty bad, let off the throttle and stall. Cranked it back up and limped it back to my aunts, whipped out the laptop and started playing with the ECT/IAT tables and setting them to 0 correction still had the car running super rich. Went to the battery offset table and set it to 0 and got the car lean so now they are set to .10-.30 which is way far off what they were, but the car was clear and I started to make my way home. About 100 miles from home i'm crusing at about 80mph and all of a sudden I get a wicked shake out of the engine compartment and the CEL comes on and that car just stalls. Pulled off the side of the road thinking the engine let go but coming to a stop no smoke, no nothing. Too dark and too dangerous to sit there to try and figure things out, I get the car running again and limp it back to the next service area. When I get there I check all wiring, fuses, plugs anything I can think of and it all checks out. I hook the laptop up get the emulator connected and try to connect the datalog and it won't connect, weird. It would connect for the life of me but I thought what the hell and just reloaded the calibration file that was in it before hand and wouldn't you know it, the CEL went out and the car ran absolutely without a hitch the rest of the way home. Sorry for the long story but I want to give you all the most accurate account of what happend to help best determine what you think my problem may be. I mean how does a tune change so drastically from one day to the next or just fail completely in the middle of a drive? Error in something I did with the tune? But I don't know how it would be fine right after a reload of the same .cal. Hardware issue? Let me hear your thoughts...and thanks in advance.

fah · Post by **fah** » Tue Apr 28, 2009 4:40 pm

when you got the check engine light, did you check the code??? get your ecu checked, check your wiring for broken or loose grounds.

David974 · Post by **David974** » Tue Apr 28, 2009 11:11 pm

I had some weird issue a bit like you try to change your battery in the Ostrich check Ostrich to ecu ribbon cable

greasemonkee · Post by **greasemonkee** » Wed Apr 29, 2009 3:48 am

I had similar on a less severe scale. I believe the resistorless plugs to be, in part, responsible for the hiccups. If I turn the heater blower off while the fuel pump is priming it will go wacked.

Post by **calvin** » Wed Apr 29, 2009 5:21 pm

so ostrich is working now? could be plugs or battery. if cell could be solid cell that ecu can't read the ostrich anymore. let us know.

naturalalloy · Post by **naturalalloy** » Wed Apr 29, 2009 7:01 pm

voltage regulator maybe?

Almighty-Si · Post by **Almighty-Si** » Thu Apr 30, 2009 2:30 am

Plugs are fairly new, changed them about a month ago. I couldn't pull the code didn't have anything to stick into the jumper and I couldn't get the datalog connected for some reason. All grounds and everything I have wired is soldered and covered with heat shrink tubing. The ECU has been working fine for me for 5+ years and with the .cal uploaded to it again, it's running flawless. The ribbon cable to the ECU from the Ostrich is pretty straight, there is a small kink in it but now with the car running again I bend the ribbon cable and shake the Ostrich to see if I can get the car to bug out but it does nothing, runs just fine. The battery on the car is less than a year old and has been sitting in my house on a charger for 4 months over the winter. Battery voltage is excellent. It's really weird, it's like the .cal just got erased in the middle of the ride. Also another couple things I have noticed, when I make changes to the ECT correction, I show no change on the wideband. I had a 20 value in the 167 and 177 degree range and when the car was running rich, I made the 20 a 0 and it made no change on the wideband. Also a while ago I posted a problem I had with my throttle cutting out like a fuel cut, when I held it in the 2500 to 3000 rpm range. Everyone said it was because I needed to do a TPS calibration but when I did it, it was still doing it, and as of today it doesn't do it anymore. Had the car out today for a couple hours and it's been fine all day. I mean i'm happy I am not having a problem anymore but at the sametime I am a little worried that if I go out with the car and it happens again while I don't have the laptop with me, it's going to leave me stuck somewhere.

David974 · Post by **David974** » Thu Apr 30, 2009 3:25 am

Strange but seem like the problem i had car was running great and sometime got like missing a part of the program, flood the car with CEL I found 3 possible cause: i did these changing ostrich battery also i remove my ZIF socket and plug the ribbon directly in the DIP socket and i had a IAT sensor wire cut (jumping in the datalog) i think the battery change resolve my problem try to charge your battery they seems to be rechargeable IMO these rechargeable batteries are 1.2V and don't react like 1.5V alckaline so it's a possible problem

borat · Post by **borat** » Thu Apr 30, 2009 4:42 pm

David974 wrote:try to charge your battery they seems to be rechargeable IMO these rechargeable batteries are 1.2V and don't react like 1.5V alckaline so it's a possible problem

I think he was talking about his car's battery, not the ostrich. Using rechargeables in the ostrich would be the worst idea ever.

xenocron · Post by **xenocron** » Fri May 01, 2009 8:55 pm

I have (and others) I know have had WICKED usb driver issues lately that have cause this issue...I think two of my old Ostriches are dead because of it. Since I wiped my old drivers, reinstalled and used a new Ostrich 2.0, I havent had any issues...

Almighty-Si · Post by **Almighty-Si** » Sat May 02, 2009 7:53 pm

Well I would think the issue was because being connected to the laptop but it was unplugged the whole time. I mean I made my changes in NC and pulled the laptop from the car and started to make my way home. It wasn't well into the drive 7 hours in, that this problem occured. I will be updating the drivers and what being I just got in a new latptop today so I will see if that fixes anything.

Bindegal · Post by **Bindegal** » Mon May 04, 2009 9:57 am

Sometimes/often sudden changes in fueling are caused by mechanical issues, Like cambelt jumping over 1 tooth, a muffler collapsed on the inside, stuff like that. Only rarely (if ever??) do I find these things are actually Ostrich/ECU related. /Allan

Almighty-Si · Post by **Almighty-Si** » Mon May 04, 2009 6:24 pm

Nothing has changed on the motor for the past 3 years. I don't drive the car very much at all as well (its a 99 with 28k) I have never opened the motor for anythingl. 100% stock internally so, never messed with the timing belt or anything else.

thething96 · Post by **thething96** » Mon May 04, 2009 6:32 pm

It might've been mother nature,(solar flares)?????????

greasemonkee · Post by **greasemonkee** » Tue May 05, 2009 1:36 am

I was thinking the same thing. The same reason we have - what is it EEC? ram on our PC's now? Or simply an area or field of extremely high electromagnetic radiation of sorts. Isn't that why checksum exists or is that completely different?