Always do a solid visual inspection first with any type of optical enlarger you have be it a cell phone camera or simpler still a magnifying glass. A hairline fracture in a joint is often the cause and often overlooked at the best of times . Do not use break cleaner on PCU's or electronics ever, anhydrous isopropyl alcohol is best. Reflowing solder joints is usually what I do after a solid visual regardless of any obvious cracking. Clean, reflux, solder heat test, then re-float, clean flux. Use a grounding bracelet for static discharge. Awesome car by the way.
I’m about to buy a Esprit because it’s been my dream car since I was a kid. I’ll be returning to this channel constantly! Thanks for such a detail and helpful info!
Pro tip: driver transistors (or mosfets or igbts) almost never go intermittent. I knew swapping the drivers wasn't going to fix it. Kudos for using flux when working on that board - flux allows much better solder flow at lower temperatures. Also, preheating the board with a heat gun (don't scorch it!) keeps the mass of the multi layer board from sinking too heat from the soldering iron. Nice job.
There’s quite a bit of space in the engine bay to have you hunch in there and squat, thanks for this vid, really shows off your knowledge. Glad to have subscribed
98 V8 Esprit here....also dream car from when I was 9 years old... have spent a whopping sum getting it up to speed... then THE EXACT SAME PROBLEM YOU HAD STARTED PLAGUING MINE! It hasn’t yet ruined my enthusiasm for the car (I did wait 42 patient years for it) but I’m at my wits’ end! You give me hope! Peter J
If yours is misfiring and you've followed the same diagnostic paths, I can fix the ECU for you if thats what you think is wrong, and test it in my own. I'd be thrilled to fix another!
Not sure if this is how to reply to a kind reply! Thanks SO much for getting back. I’ll first use a digital timing light to verify misfire and compare to engine rebuild notes where very intermittent misfire was noted. I’ll carefully remove ECU and have a careful look inside. There’s quite a bit of info to pass to you which might bore others, and conditions upon which I release my ECU to you and conditions upon which you might want to trust me with payment! Tell me how you’d like to continue a dialogue. Boy did you appear at the right time; we LOVE out V8 Esprits and I want to be able to love driving the damn thing! Many thanks for getting back. Peter J
Hi there. Peter J with the 1998 V8 Esprit / possible misfire/ECU issue that you had. I‘ve started looking for spark using timing light. Based on ease and “looseness” of ignition wires, I’ve checked nos. 1,2, 5 & 6. NO SPARK ON 1 or 2!! I’ll continue looking and do rest but wires are TIGHT in the plenums under the two oddly shaped aluminum covers. Weird! Peter J
I know that it is a little late, but if you have to do this repair again, make sure to put a little thermal paste behind each of those transistors. It helps keep them cool and last longer.
I used to repair the boards on GM instrument clusters that had the same issues, not to mention mold too! Mold would grow under the conformal coat and cause problems..so off went the conformal coat, scrub the board with a brush and lacquer thinner, resolder everything then recoat. Problems fixed!
I was an electronic technician for a while. I repaired some, not many, power supplies that had cold solder joints. If you can find huntron tracker you can determine if a transistor is good or not with a dead board. We had the model 2000, a very capable meeter.
Automotive electronics is my job and I can tell you that intermittent faults are impossible to diagnose with 100% certainty. You can never completely relax now because the fault could reappear at any moment. Temperature cycling will kill anything. Have to say, I don't know who made the ECU (not Lotus) but it looks pretty tidy. Good result - you did the right thing there - hope it sticks. The Esprit has got to be one of the best looking Lotuses ever!
One thing I would recommend is you get an aftermarket ECM. Copy the fuel map data from the stock, transfer it to the aftermarket ECM. This way you wont have anything happen to the stock ECM.
Wow, you’ve covered everything an excellent detail. Well done. If somebody is nervous about doing this work, you can get a professional electrician, or instrumentation mechanic, who is familiar With circuitry to do the work for you. **applause**
Great video! I'm a BMW tech, and I have had coil drivers fail...the timing light is a good trick! I found my bad driver because the cop was cold when the others were warm to the touch...
If you get the car running like you want, you need to get into the Sand Hills open road Challenge held each year in Nebraska. There are videos here on TH-cam to give you an idea of what it is like. The only thing you have to worry about when running the challenge are the Jackrabbits and Deer. Sometime a stray dog. The Lotus would look great going through the sandhills of Nebraska. Check it out as it may be something that would interest you.
Awsome, glad i'm not the only 1 who got into their 918 ECU to figure out the ignitor issue. YOu might have seen me talk about it and post pics, my ignitor was actually bad, i replaced with one from a Megasquirt kit. In the end I installed full Megasquirt standalone.
I'm confused because in the beginning of the video you said you had no codes but at the end of the video you said you had codes that you need to clear. On big diesel trucks the codes will tell you which driver is bad. But it's not always in the ECM sometimes it's wiring issues. However I think you're repair may work because I had the same issue with an ABS module where on TH-cam I read that it's common for the solder joints to be bad on the relay on the circuit board and that was the code I was getting so I resoldered them and it's been perfect for almost a year now. U did a great job.
It used to work beautifully (I think!), then was intermittent. I tried to establish a pattern without much success. It seemed to start misfiring (engine tone would drop, gassy stink, increasingly rough idle, lagging power) after 20 mins. or so. Start it cold and it would be fine again. The 20 min. thing was never very convincing. Now it is constant and I dare not drive it. Following engine “rebuild”, mechanic, who was assigned to this car exclusively, noted some misfiring. ECU was removed and sent to a guy in UK who specializes is such, was reprogrammed, put in his Esprit V8 to check, and sent back. He was the last guy inside the ECU which is anything but clean. So here I am!
The clamps on the transistors are heat sinks that attach to the rail to transfer heat efficiently. It's a nice design. You can test a transistor out of circuit to determine if its bad. Some meters have transistor testers in them.
You may also have repaired a cold soldering joint. Those are a common problem, even more so now-a-days when the lead has been prohibited in the solder. Basically, a cold solder joint is caused by too low a soldering temperature and un-leaded solder needs more heat to bond the component to the circuit board properly.
I would think that the transistors (drivers) would be able to be replaced if one or two of them burned out. I owned a Chrysler Crossfire for awhile and they had a huge problem with their circuit boards in the engine bay (I had to reflow a couple of them). Good job fixing your mess.
I admire the breadth of your knowledge and skills. How did you learn so much, particularly regarding electronics? I imagine working in the auto field helped. I have a '95 Volvo 850 that had failed inspection due to a non-working SRS light. Turned out not to be a blown bulb. I took the gauge pod to a friend who repairs electronics and in a matter of a minute or less he identified some suspect soldering welds. He repaired them and I found out I had several lights that weren't working 😂. Obviously, the gauge pod is no longer manufactured and a used one isn't cheap, but the repair only cost me $20 just because I insisted on paying him something. This inspired me to want to learn more about electronics repair.
I had a '94 acura integra that had no ignition. It used a single coil and distributor. I ohmed out the coil per the shop manual and it measured ok. I was about to replace the output transistor of the ecu, but when I took the cover off the ecu and inspected it, it was of such high quality (aerospace quality) that I decided to have a mechanic figure it out. It turned out to be a bad coil.
I did eventually figure out a lot of the individual parts on the board and what they are for, this is a univeral ECU used on other cars so there are a lot of unused transistors on that heatsink there.
@@I_Do_Cars Cool video! I'll be looking at my ECU now ('01 V8). Here's the wiki and website for the ECU manufacturer: www.efitechnologywiki.it/doku.php?id=en:ect_mod_dn I really would like the reflashing software to keep this car going.
Very, very well done. *Claps* this is a blow away for me because I used to work on computers but I've never had to work on an ECM for a vehicle. I was a Honda guy for a long time so that pretty much explains that. Honda ECMs? Yeah.... They're basically a dime a dozen. Swapping a few things around is about the extent of what I would have done and then it would have gone to a Lotus specialist... Probably pretty hard to find here in the states too... I really commend you for how you tackled this and this speaks volumes of your technical knowledge, as if we didn't know already 😉. Very well done my friend! You just earned another sub. Loving this channel already. It was your reflowing and soldering prowess that finally made me jump the hurdle and sub. That's probably 10 times better than the guys who build them. I always get a good chuckle when Jeremy Clarkson says they're built in a shed in Norfolk, England 😆. Same with TVR I think but that might be Sheffield. I don't know my UK very well 😂
Dried solder joints are extremely common on aging electronics. I repair Skyline GTR clocks because of this. Subaru airbag light boards are also known for this.
I would have just switched the wires in the harness. Tomahto tomato. 'Course, I couldn't have fixed it that way. Cold solders are not that uncommon on circuit boards, but that's new boards. You just got a crack in the solder. Nice find.
It's funny how solder can cause so many issues. I've saved many people lotsa money over the years reworking solder in components. You can also hear some ecu up in an oven at the solder rated temp for 15 to 30 minutes... Fixed many misfires, speedo issues etc...
Metcal PS-900, PS-1000 or later models is my recommendation for soldering irons. I use them at work, have a PS-900 at home and replaced the capacitors in my Toyota MR2 with it.
Don't you think that this could have been a bad connection at a couple of the pins on the connector? Maybe un/plugging it a few times restored the connection.
I noticed that you had changed out your injectors. Curious to know what injectors you went with. I tried the RCs but didn't care for them. I've also tried the Bosch Gen III 0280156211 but found them to be a bit on the rich side. Both the OEM Rochester and the RCs have a static flow rate of 260cc/min. Resistance in the 10.8-12 range. I'd like to find a Bosch Gen III with those specs, but no luck.
FWIW, Isopropyl is fine and I encourage it's use but also Methyl Ethyl Ketone (MEK) is also great for cleaning away flux residue. Bacteria can grow in the flux residue, so remove the flux and if possible recoat the PCB.
The fact that after working the first time, issue went away for some seconds and then started is most likely a cold joint somewere. Usually when heating a zone to do a job, some other issue could end fixing itself, just because the sptread heat. If the issue comes back just remember the area you have been working around and closely inspect all the components around. Transistors can die because surges, improper heatsink, etc I do repair switching PSUs and sometimes you get something really blown appart, and other times it looks perfect but transistors are DEAD. Probably you have one, but if not buy the cheapo chinesse component tester called Mtester. Is really inexpensive and man is SPOT every single time. You dont need to swap transistors, you take the suspicious one, put there get its params and thats all. If blown, open, degrades .... it shows up with perfect accuracy. I have been using this for 3 years, non stop ... nothing beats them for the price.
Hello once again with my ‘98 misfiring Esprit. I used a timing light to check the 8 plug leads and holy crap! Assuming plug #1 is far right corner as you look at engine from rear bumper, NO SPARK on #s 1& 2, and probably 4! I say probably because lead 4 was so tight I really had to pull on it to take the reading; not a good feeling. I then disconnected battery and removed ECU. A dirty mess inside! Very little coating at all on board, fine metal dust and dirt all over the place. Replaced top cover as is and looked at back of board. Lifted and flaked coating so bad it looks like clumps of cobwebs! Replaced cover as is. I sure would like you to have a look at it! How do we set this up? Peter J
James Reny hey sorry I haven’t replied yet! With no spark on 1 and 2, and maybe 4 I am concerned it may or may not be ecu related. 1 and 4 are on one circuit and 2 and 3 are on another. You’ve replaced all of the ignition components? Is the misfire a dead miss all of the time or is it intermittent?
Worse case scenario, put a emerald ecu on it. They are in Norfolk, probably have a wiring loom for it too. Easy to tune too. I had an emerald on one of my engine swapped cars.
If you do a fair amount of electronics work you should consider getting a microscope. Some people like the inexpensive electronic ones but personally a find an optical scope to be with it’s weight in gold. If you want recommendations just let me know.
Hello again. I think I’ll have to have a go cleaning both sides of the board and reflowing solder joints as per your instructions. Can you guide me as to the type of solder I’m likely to find here? I have previously done some strain gauge soldering under a microscope and am a “less is more” guy when it comes to solder. I have little option as the ECU is out of the car and it is filthy and the coating is flaking. Any guidance would be of great help. This might just work! Thanks. Peter J
Bad solder joints are a real thing. Of course, you may have fixed it by dislodging or moving something without even knowing it. But, the bottom line that you have fire in all of the holes, now!
Yes for sure. In guitar amps that use circuit boards, sometimes they seemingly randomly fail and the first advice is often to reflow the solder on the pots or jacks and the output transistors as they get stressed the most. I repaired 2 dead peavey amps this way, but he’s right that it’s not very satisfying knowing exactly which thing fixed it. Just that reflowing the joints works. I guess over the years the heating and cooling cycles take their toll.
I have an R33 Skyline GTS RB25DE ECU which has a fault on the input side for the mass airflow sensor as it was throwing a code 13,the spark plugs were fouling up & the engine wouldn't rev past 2000 RPMs so I replaced it. It came with.a Japanese import engine package which I built a twin cam 3 litre Nissan (RB30DE,) engine out of as the.Holden VL Commodore & the Nissan R31 Skyline was released with both an RB30E & an RB30ET engine in Australia !
It is interesting watching you resolder. If I can suggest, is to get yourself a ground strap for your wrist and a static mat. Second, I have concerns about where the computer is located. I have been doing a study on failed components whether it is light bulb or suspension part. Components located on the passenger side of a vehicle have a greater tendency of failing. My conclusions are not very scientific, but still interesting to say the least. The primary reason for failure is the conditions of most roads and the driving habits of many drivers. A lot of drivers tend to drive with the right wheels to the edge of the road (their body located on the centre line of the lane). This puts the right part of vehicle on the most abusive side of the road. It would be interesting to do a comparison on parts vehicles located in the UK and Australia.
Bit of advice. NEVER trust continuity testing, ALWATS run a load through the wires. A wire can have enough continuity to ohm ok, but won’t carry a load. Seen it a hundred times, a couple thin strands of copper will ohm OK but won’t carry the required load. Just a heads up. Btw, one of my fav cars, love it.
I don’t know too much about this car, but all obd2 cars are supposed to have misfire detection and set code for the correct cylinder(2). If the coils are 4 or 5 wire, it uses a induced magnetic sensing coil inside the coil to detect misfire. That’s how my 99 NSX worked. Does this have coil on plug, and 4 or more wire coils?
no shitting, I had a 2002 GMC sonoma 4.3L with 217k miles. with a #4 cyl misfire and it was bad. live scanner showed 2K+ misfires. I never tried to fix it since I have a few other cars. out of the hell of it since I had it already, I put a new fuel filter in it. and the misfires stopped. and the truck ran great.
Great work man!! I know this wasn't your problem but careful with the new spark plug wires. Many times they don't click onto the spark plugs. The lead needs to be pushed deeper through the boot so it can reach and snap into the plug. BTW, you do have the high torque ECU right?
Where did I actually find the pinouts for these kind of things? So engine, airbag computers and so on? I’ve got a moderately old car which runs great, has no codes but a problem in or around the airbag computer and can’t go back on the road until I fix it… and without the pinout of the computer, it’s basically 54 factorial combinations to find which wire goes where…
I have a no-start I'm tracking, with no spark. The coils are getting power from the relay, so I wanted to check the ECU signals. After watching your video I have an idea how to check them, but I feel like I must be an idiot because that's nothing like what I expected. If each coil gets 12V power and two connections to ECU, how does a 12V ECU output do anything? I expected a switching signal from the ECU that grounds the circuit to fire the coil, and I thought I'd need a small LED or maybe analog meter to see the switching. But now I'm guessing that I'm clueless. How does this coil circuit work?
So do you have no spark in any cylinder? The chances of a multi coil driver failure is pretty slim. Have you monitored your RPM signal? If you get no spark I would look at things that affect the entire engine instead of just a couple cylinders.
@@I_Do_Cars Agreed, I don't think it's the same problem you had, but I was curious to see if the ECU was trying to fire the coils or not. I'm guessing no just because I can't imagine both coils could break at the same time (i.e. should run on half cylinders at least if one coil failed), but my instinct is always to verify. I've been distracted from it for awhile so I don't remember if I saw the RPM react, but I had checked the crank and cam sensors and they were OK. But I hate concluding that I don't understand these 4 coil outputs, seemingly at all, so I was curious how the ECU actually fires the coil and how I could verify that, even if I probably don't need to it in this case.
It was a cold solder joint. The lower voltage was a clue. It’s much more common these days (likely doesn’t apply to your car though), because of our nanny government’s removing the lead from the solder.
Here's how you cure the misfire for good. Swap in a Mugen/Honda MF458S 4.5-liter V-8 engine. It's lighter than the Lotus lump, far more powerful and far, far more reliable. Also, the transmission fragility would no longer be an issue....and the cool factor would be off the scale.
It is because I still need to put a faucet inside that garage. It’s heated and air conditioned, and I’m the only ever in there so I’m not worried about
the one pin that had the 10 volts can you re show its 12.5v now ?? also the output transistor re solder work you redid you might want to redo the main connector pins in the same manner , clean the male and female main connector to the cpu using deoxit spray on both then use the shop air and blow the 2 connectors before re plug the transistor out of circuit should have been tested with a transistor tester or on meter is diode test check between 2 pins on trans then opposite is open forward is .650 voltage drop only for trans an fet trans is different
I’m not trying to overwhelm you here! My ECU has NO drivers in 4th from left (IG3 spot) and second from right (IG7) positions inside my ECU! This assumes the multi-pin connector socket is facing your gut.
Bit late now but I think you should be careful of electrostatic discharge when working on the ECU. You can fry components if you are not grounded. EDIT - I watched further and I'm sure you know all that.
Heat are electronics worst enemy, solder losens, circuit boards become brittle and components wear out prematurely so wondering what ecu's are doing in the engine bay.
Solder joints on old vehicle electronics, are notorious for micro cracking. Volvo antilock controllers WILL fail intermittently. It won't shut down the car but it'll randomly xmas tree the dash lights and disable half the gauges. Had to reflow every solder joint.
Two words of advice when working on electronics, STATIC PROTECTION Modern electronics are extremely susceptible to damage from static electricity and you don't even need to touch the board if you have a high enough static voltage build up on you. Most semiconductors used within chips use "FIELD EFFECT TRANSISTORS" that are controlled by creating an electric field rather than "BIPOLAR TRANSISTORS" that were controlled by the flow of current through them. The electric field these transistors create is minuscule and is created by as little as 2 V. If you get a spark from static when you touch something then your talking about thousands of volts sitting on your fingertips and subjecting the thousands of semiconductors in a single chip to such a massive electric field can result in catastrophic damage. Even worse static damage may degrade the performance of the semiconductors which reduces the electronics tolerance to noise and can end up causing intermittent problems that can be extremely difficult if not impossible impossible to isolate and repair. If you ever open up any of the electronic control boxes make certain you ALWAYS USE STATIC PREVENTION PROCEDURES AND CARY OUT ANY WORK IN A STATIC FREE WORK AREA WITH ANTI-STATIC BENCH TOPS
Always do a solid visual inspection first with any type of optical enlarger you have be it a cell phone camera or simpler still a magnifying glass. A hairline fracture in a joint is often the cause and often overlooked at the best of times . Do not use break cleaner on PCU's or electronics ever, anhydrous isopropyl alcohol is best. Reflowing solder joints is usually what I do after a solid visual regardless of any obvious cracking. Clean, reflux, solder heat test, then re-float, clean flux. Use a grounding bracelet for static discharge. Awesome car by the way.
I’m about to buy a Esprit because it’s been my dream car since I was a kid.
I’ll be returning to this channel constantly!
Thanks for such a detail and helpful info!
Carlos Simon Ramirez if you have any questions, don’t hesitate!
I Do Cars absolutely brother!
I’m aiming to do some cool mods to the car, so it will be quite an interesting ride.
Pro tip: driver transistors (or mosfets or igbts) almost never go intermittent. I knew swapping the drivers wasn't going to fix it. Kudos for using flux when working on that board - flux allows much better solder flow at lower temperatures. Also, preheating the board with a heat gun (don't scorch it!) keeps the mass of the multi layer board from sinking too heat from the soldering iron. Nice job.
There’s quite a bit of space in the engine bay to have you hunch in there and squat, thanks for this vid, really shows off your knowledge. Glad to have subscribed
98 V8 Esprit here....also dream car from when I was 9 years old... have spent a whopping sum getting it up to speed... then THE EXACT SAME PROBLEM YOU HAD STARTED PLAGUING MINE! It hasn’t yet ruined my enthusiasm for the car (I did wait 42 patient years for it) but I’m at my wits’ end! You give me hope!
Peter J
If yours is misfiring and you've followed the same diagnostic paths, I can fix the ECU for you if thats what you think is wrong, and test it in my own. I'd be thrilled to fix another!
Not sure if this is how to reply to a kind reply! Thanks SO much for getting back. I’ll first use a digital timing light to verify misfire and compare to engine rebuild notes where very intermittent misfire was noted. I’ll carefully remove ECU and have a careful look inside. There’s quite a bit of info to pass to you which might bore others, and conditions upon which I release my ECU to you and conditions upon which you might want to trust me with payment! Tell me how you’d like to continue a dialogue. Boy did you appear at the right time; we LOVE out V8 Esprits and I want to be able to love driving the damn thing! Many thanks for getting back.
Peter J
Hi there. Peter J with the 1998 V8 Esprit / possible misfire/ECU issue that you had. I‘ve started looking for spark using timing light. Based on ease and “looseness” of ignition wires, I’ve checked nos. 1,2, 5 & 6. NO SPARK ON 1 or 2!! I’ll continue looking and do rest but wires are TIGHT in the plenums under the two oddly shaped aluminum covers. Weird!
Peter J
BTW this is one of your best videos -certainly one of the most useful to me 😎
I know that it is a little late, but if you have to do this repair again, make sure to put a little thermal paste behind each of those transistors. It helps keep them cool and last longer.
Being that's a lotus it's definitely solder with an L lol. I had an ecu fail due to dirt on the circuit board, a good clean resolved the issue.
I used to repair the boards on GM instrument clusters that had the same issues, not to mention mold too! Mold would grow under the conformal coat and cause problems..so off went the conformal coat, scrub the board with a brush and lacquer thinner, resolder everything then recoat. Problems fixed!
I was an electronic technician for a while. I repaired some, not many, power supplies that had cold solder joints. If you can find huntron tracker you can determine if a transistor is good or not with a dead board. We had the model 2000, a very capable meeter.
Glad to see that the magic smoke stayed in all of those components. Though capacitors do tend to fail with age so maybe a re-capping would be prudent.
And I thought ECUs were not serviceable. Excellent work!
pretty much everything is serviceable with proper knowledge and the right resources.
I'd be soooooo tempted to upgrade all those FETs with some modern ones!
The new ones can have significantly better specs!
Automotive electronics is my job and I can tell you that intermittent faults are impossible to diagnose with 100% certainty. You can never completely relax now because the fault could reappear at any moment. Temperature cycling will kill anything.
Have to say, I don't know who made the ECU (not Lotus) but it looks pretty tidy. Good result - you did the right thing there - hope it sticks. The Esprit has got to be one of the best looking Lotuses ever!
Moisture and rust in the plug holes. Welcome to England 🏴. Even your plug holes have our weather 😂
As soon as you showed the 10V output and the fact taht it was intermittent in the beginning, i thought bad solder joint :-) good you got it fixed :-)
Owned a 71 Europa and 2003 Elise. Nice Esprit!
One thing I would recommend is you get an aftermarket ECM.
Copy the fuel map data from the stock, transfer it to the aftermarket ECM.
This way you wont have anything happen to the stock ECM.
That is good troubleshooting. Fantastic component repair. Outstanding job.
Wow, you’ve covered everything an excellent detail. Well done.
If somebody is nervous about doing this work, you can get a professional electrician, or instrumentation mechanic, who is familiar With circuitry to do the work for you.
**applause**
Your sense of intuition is very appreciative. Thank you.
Sounds like there was a dry joint on the pcb. It's not an uncommon problem on circuit boards. Top marks for sussing it out 🙂
Great video! I'm a BMW tech, and I have had coil drivers fail...the timing light is a good trick! I found my bad driver because the cop was cold when the others were warm to the touch...
If you get the car running like you want, you need to get into the Sand Hills open road Challenge held each year in Nebraska. There are videos here on TH-cam to give you an idea of what it is like. The only thing you have to worry about when running the challenge are the Jackrabbits and Deer. Sometime a stray dog. The Lotus would look great going through the sandhills of Nebraska. Check it out as it may be something that would interest you.
I’ll check it out!
I’ve always wanted a lotus esprit. You have a beauty.
Excellent soldering! I'm happy for you!
Awsome, glad i'm not the only 1 who got into their 918 ECU to figure out the ignitor issue. YOu might have seen me talk about it and post pics, my ignitor was actually bad,
i replaced with one from a Megasquirt kit. In the end I installed full Megasquirt standalone.
Mike C I didn’t see that but I can totally see using one for another application without issue, it’s just a transistor after all!
I'm confused because in the beginning of the video you said you had no codes but at the end of the video you said you had codes that you need to clear. On big diesel trucks the codes will tell you which driver is bad. But it's not always in the ECM sometimes it's wiring issues. However I think you're repair may work because I had the same issue with an ABS module where on TH-cam I read that it's common for the solder joints to be bad on the relay on the circuit board and that was the code I was getting so I resoldered them and it's been perfect for almost a year now. U did a great job.
Nice diagnostic work, great explanations of what you're doing, and a fun car too. Who could ask for more?
It used to work beautifully (I think!), then was intermittent. I tried to establish a pattern without much success. It seemed to start misfiring (engine tone would drop, gassy stink, increasingly rough idle, lagging power) after 20 mins. or so. Start it cold and it would be fine again. The 20 min. thing was never very convincing. Now it is constant and I dare not drive it. Following engine “rebuild”, mechanic, who was assigned to this car exclusively, noted some misfiring. ECU was removed and sent to a guy in UK who specializes is such, was reprogrammed, put in his Esprit V8 to check, and sent back. He was the last guy inside the ECU which is anything but clean. So here I am!
The clamps on the transistors are heat sinks that attach to the rail to transfer heat efficiently. It's a nice design. You can test a transistor out of circuit to determine if its bad. Some meters have transistor testers in them.
good vid - glad you figured it out, man. Enjoy the car - maybe we will cross paths with our Esprits some day.
Thanks man! That would be cool!
You may also have repaired a cold soldering joint. Those are a common problem, even more so now-a-days when the lead has been prohibited in the solder. Basically, a cold solder joint is caused by too low a soldering temperature and un-leaded solder needs more heat to bond the component to the circuit board properly.
I would think that the transistors (drivers) would be able to be replaced if one or two of them burned out. I owned a Chrysler Crossfire for awhile and they had a huge problem with their circuit boards in the engine bay (I had to reflow a couple of them). Good job fixing your mess.
I admire the breadth of your knowledge and skills. How did you learn so much, particularly regarding electronics? I imagine working in the auto field helped. I have a '95 Volvo 850 that had failed inspection due to a non-working SRS light. Turned out not to be a blown bulb. I took the gauge pod to a friend who repairs electronics and in a matter of a minute or less he identified some suspect soldering welds. He repaired them and I found out I had several lights that weren't working 😂. Obviously, the gauge pod is no longer manufactured and a used one isn't cheap, but the repair only cost me $20 just because I insisted on paying him something. This inspired me to want to learn more about electronics repair.
I had a '94 acura integra that had no ignition. It used a single coil and distributor. I ohmed out the coil per the shop manual and it measured ok. I was about to replace the output transistor of the ecu, but when I took the cover off the ecu and inspected it, it was of such high quality (aerospace quality) that I decided to have a mechanic figure it out. It turned out to be a bad coil.
Cold solder joints exist. They can be tricky.
I did eventually figure out a lot of the individual parts on the board and what they are for, this is a univeral ECU used on other cars so there are a lot of unused transistors on that heatsink there.
Mike C what other types of cars use this ecu?
@@I_Do_Cars Cool video! I'll be looking at my ECU now ('01 V8). Here's the wiki and website for the ECU manufacturer: www.efitechnologywiki.it/doku.php?id=en:ect_mod_dn
I really would like the reflashing software to keep this car going.
Love all your content! Thank you!
Very, very well done. *Claps* this is a blow away for me because I used to work on computers but I've never had to work on an ECM for a vehicle. I was a Honda guy for a long time so that pretty much explains that. Honda ECMs? Yeah.... They're basically a dime a dozen. Swapping a few things around is about the extent of what I would have done and then it would have gone to a Lotus specialist... Probably pretty hard to find here in the states too...
I really commend you for how you tackled this and this speaks volumes of your technical knowledge, as if we didn't know already 😉. Very well done my friend! You just earned another sub. Loving this channel already. It was your reflowing and soldering prowess that finally made me jump the hurdle and sub. That's probably 10 times better than the guys who build them. I always get a good chuckle when Jeremy Clarkson says they're built in a shed in Norfolk, England 😆. Same with TVR I think but that might be Sheffield. I don't know my UK very well 😂
Dried solder joints are extremely common on aging electronics. I repair Skyline GTR clocks because of this. Subaru airbag light boards are also known for this.
I would have just switched the wires in the harness. Tomahto tomato.
'Course, I couldn't have fixed it that way. Cold solders are not that uncommon on circuit boards, but that's new boards. You just got a crack in the solder. Nice find.
It's funny how solder can cause so many issues. I've saved many people lotsa money over the years reworking solder in components.
You can also hear some ecu up in an oven at the solder rated temp for 15 to 30 minutes...
Fixed many misfires, speedo issues etc...
You said something like you do electronics at work, what sort of work, this is a side business? I really enjoy your videos, thanks for making them!
Metcal PS-900, PS-1000 or later models is my recommendation for soldering irons. I use them at work, have a PS-900 at home and replaced the capacitors in my Toyota MR2 with it.
Don't you think that this could have been a bad connection at a couple of the pins on the connector? Maybe un/plugging it a few times restored the connection.
I noticed that you had changed out your injectors. Curious to know what injectors you went with. I tried the RCs but didn't care for them. I've also tried the Bosch Gen III 0280156211 but found them to be a bit on the rich side. Both the OEM Rochester and the RCs have a static flow rate of 260cc/min. Resistance in the 10.8-12 range. I'd like to find a Bosch Gen III with those specs, but no luck.
FWIW, Isopropyl is fine and I encourage it's use but also Methyl Ethyl Ketone (MEK) is also great for cleaning away flux residue. Bacteria can grow in the flux residue, so remove the flux and if possible recoat the PCB.
The fact that after working the first time, issue went away for some seconds and then started is most likely a cold joint somewere. Usually when heating a zone to do a job, some other issue could end fixing itself, just because the sptread heat. If the issue comes back just remember the area you have been working around and closely inspect all the components around. Transistors can die because surges, improper heatsink, etc I do repair switching PSUs and sometimes you get something really blown appart, and other times it looks perfect but transistors are DEAD. Probably you have one, but if not buy the cheapo chinesse component tester called Mtester. Is really inexpensive and man is SPOT every single time. You dont need to swap transistors, you take the suspicious one, put there get its params and thats all. If blown, open, degrades .... it shows up with perfect accuracy. I have been using this for 3 years, non stop ... nothing beats them for the price.
Hello once again with my ‘98 misfiring Esprit. I used a timing light to check the 8 plug leads and holy crap! Assuming plug #1 is far right corner as you look at engine from rear bumper, NO SPARK on #s 1& 2, and probably 4! I say probably because lead 4 was so tight I really had to pull on it to take the reading; not a good feeling. I then disconnected battery and removed ECU. A dirty mess inside! Very little coating at all on board, fine metal dust and dirt all over the place. Replaced top cover as is and looked at back of board. Lifted and flaked coating so bad it looks like clumps of cobwebs! Replaced cover as is. I sure would like you to have a look at it! How do we set this up?
Peter J
James Reny hey sorry I haven’t replied yet!
With no spark on 1 and 2, and maybe 4 I am concerned it may or may not be ecu related. 1 and 4 are on one circuit and 2 and 3 are on another. You’ve replaced all of the ignition components? Is the misfire a dead miss all of the time or is it intermittent?
Worse case scenario, put a emerald ecu on it. They are in Norfolk, probably have a wiring loom for it too.
Easy to tune too. I had an emerald on one of my engine swapped cars.
Awesome fix !👏too bad for the parts cannon in the beginning
Great post. Great job, young man.
If you do a fair amount of electronics work you should consider getting a microscope. Some people like the inexpensive electronic ones but personally a find an optical scope to be with it’s weight in gold. If you want recommendations just let me know.
Gosh I wish I had known you and seen this video when I had my lotus. I never did get to the bottom of my ECU issues and just let it go
Hello again. I think I’ll have to have a go cleaning both sides of the board and reflowing solder joints as per your instructions. Can you guide me as to the type of solder I’m likely to find here? I have previously done some strain gauge soldering under a microscope and am a “less is more” guy when it comes to solder. I have little option as the ECU is out of the car and it is filthy and the coating is flaking. Any guidance would be of great help. This might just work! Thanks.
Peter J
This guys is so god damn smart
Bad solder joints are a real thing. Of course, you may have fixed it by dislodging or moving something without even knowing it. But, the bottom line that you have fire in all of the holes, now!
In electronics we call it a "cold solder"
Yes for sure. In guitar amps that use circuit boards, sometimes they seemingly randomly fail and the first advice is often to reflow the solder on the pots or jacks and the output transistors as they get stressed the most. I repaired 2 dead peavey amps this way, but he’s right that it’s not very satisfying knowing exactly which thing fixed it. Just that reflowing the joints works. I guess over the years the heating and cooling cycles take their toll.
I have an R33 Skyline GTS RB25DE ECU which has a fault on the input side for the mass airflow sensor as it was throwing a code 13,the spark plugs were fouling up & the engine wouldn't rev past 2000 RPMs so I replaced it.
It came with.a Japanese import engine package which I built a twin cam 3 litre Nissan (RB30DE,) engine out of as the.Holden VL Commodore & the Nissan R31 Skyline was released with both an RB30E & an RB30ET engine in Australia !
It is interesting watching you resolder. If I can suggest, is to get yourself a ground strap for your wrist and a static mat. Second, I have concerns about where the computer is located. I have been doing a study on failed components whether it is light bulb or suspension part. Components located on the passenger side of a vehicle have a greater tendency of failing. My conclusions are not very scientific, but still interesting to say the least.
The primary reason for failure is the conditions of most roads and the driving habits of many drivers. A lot of drivers tend to drive with the right wheels to the edge of the road (their body located on the centre line of the lane). This puts the right part of vehicle on the most abusive side of the road. It would be interesting to do a comparison on parts vehicles located in the UK and Australia.
Bit of advice. NEVER trust continuity testing, ALWATS run a load through the wires. A wire can have enough continuity to ohm ok, but won’t carry a load. Seen it a hundred times, a couple thin strands of copper will ohm OK but won’t carry the required load. Just a heads up. Btw, one of my fav cars, love it.
Really Great Work!
Thanks for sharing.
Kind regards.
Great stuff! I'm great at electrical systems (from 12 to 230), but when it comes to stuff like this, I use the GM theory: KGP, known good part!! 👍
I don’t know too much about this car, but all obd2 cars are supposed to have misfire detection and set code for the correct cylinder(2). If the coils are 4 or 5 wire, it uses a induced magnetic sensing coil inside the coil to detect misfire. That’s how my 99 NSX worked. Does this have coil on plug, and 4 or more wire coils?
This used 4 coil drivers, with two 4-cylinder coil packs and plug wires. Each coil driver is responsible for two cylinders
This inspired me to learn to solder on my F50 ecu and make it run better.
no shitting, I had a 2002 GMC sonoma 4.3L with 217k miles. with a #4 cyl misfire and it was bad. live scanner showed 2K+ misfires. I never tried to fix it since I have a few other cars. out of the hell of it since I had it already, I put a new fuel filter in it. and the misfires stopped. and the truck ran great.
You are the man. Amazing
Great work man!! I know this wasn't your problem but careful with the new spark plug wires. Many times they don't click onto the spark plugs. The lead needs to be pushed deeper through the boot so it can reach and snap into the plug. BTW, you do have the high torque ECU right?
thats so true.
Pancho's Speed Shop yes I figured that plug wire situation out quick! Lol. The car in fact does have the high torque ecu.
Where did I actually find the pinouts for these kind of things? So engine, airbag computers and so on?
I’ve got a moderately old car which runs great, has no codes but a problem in or around the airbag computer and can’t go back on the road until I fix it… and without the pinout of the computer, it’s basically 54 factorial combinations to find which wire goes where…
I have a no-start I'm tracking, with no spark. The coils are getting power from the relay, so I wanted to check the ECU signals. After watching your video I have an idea how to check them, but I feel like I must be an idiot because that's nothing like what I expected. If each coil gets 12V power and two connections to ECU, how does a 12V ECU output do anything? I expected a switching signal from the ECU that grounds the circuit to fire the coil, and I thought I'd need a small LED or maybe analog meter to see the switching. But now I'm guessing that I'm clueless. How does this coil circuit work?
So do you have no spark in any cylinder? The chances of a multi coil driver failure is pretty slim. Have you monitored your RPM signal? If you get no spark I would look at things that affect the entire engine instead of just a couple cylinders.
@@I_Do_Cars Agreed, I don't think it's the same problem you had, but I was curious to see if the ECU was trying to fire the coils or not. I'm guessing no just because I can't imagine both coils could break at the same time (i.e. should run on half cylinders at least if one coil failed), but my instinct is always to verify. I've been distracted from it for awhile so I don't remember if I saw the RPM react, but I had checked the crank and cam sensors and they were OK. But I hate concluding that I don't understand these 4 coil outputs, seemingly at all, so I was curious how the ECU actually fires the coil and how I could verify that, even if I probably don't need to it in this case.
I recall hearing that Lotus is an acronym for Lots of trouble usually serious :) Great fun when they run right
hopefully it stays good. If it fails again just replace all the power transistors. Hopefully Lotus left the part number on them.
If it fails again replace the car.
It was a cold solder joint. The lower voltage was a clue. It’s much more common these days (likely doesn’t apply to your car though), because of our nanny government’s removing the lead from the solder.
Yea, fuck those assembly line workers. A little lead never hurt anyone. And RoHS was definitely in effect in 1999.
Here's how you cure the misfire for good. Swap in a Mugen/Honda MF458S 4.5-liter V-8 engine. It's lighter than the Lotus lump, far more powerful and far, far more reliable. Also, the transmission fragility would no longer be an issue....and the cool factor would be off the scale.
Awesome work!
Is that pex pipe on the wall in the background? Exposed?
It is because I still need to put a faucet inside that garage. It’s heated and air conditioned, and I’m the only ever in there so I’m not worried about
the one pin that had the 10 volts can you re show its 12.5v now ?? also the output transistor re solder work you redid
you might want to redo the main connector pins in the same manner , clean the male and female main connector to the cpu
using deoxit spray on both then use the shop air and blow the 2 connectors before re plug
the transistor out of circuit should have been tested with a transistor tester or on meter is diode test check between 2 pins on trans then opposite is open forward is .650 voltage drop only for trans an fet trans is different
It may have been the cleaning that did it - conformal coatings can trap flux residue causing dendrites and other really strange things!!!
Muito bom ! Quando for ai vou andar nesse carro! abs
Did you use new thermal paste on those MOSFET?
You saved yourself huge bucks, great job.
Nice fix!
I’m not trying to overwhelm you here! My ECU has NO drivers in 4th from left (IG3 spot) and second from right (IG7) positions inside my ECU! This assumes the multi-pin connector socket is facing your gut.
Beautiful car! My bucket list car has always been a Pantera, but I I'm 6'6 and I don't fit in em comfortably. I'd deal with it if I had one tho lol✌
Yes, solder can definitely can go bad, using flux can fix it.
The exact same problem happens alot on the sub woofer amplifier in Nissan cars like the 350Z.
Sorry, I was jogging through the video as i'm mainly curious about what the issue was. So what was the issue?
So go back and watch it. 😒
Bit late now but I think you should be careful of electrostatic discharge when working on the ECU. You can fry components if you are not grounded. EDIT - I watched further and I'm sure you know all that.
Heat are electronics worst enemy, solder losens, circuit boards become brittle and components wear out prematurely so wondering what ecu's are doing in the engine bay.
Probably was a shorted capacitor or something that was unshorted with the reflow.
There are some pretty good Ecu repair places in Florida too
Nice job
Solder joints on old vehicle electronics, are notorious for micro cracking. Volvo antilock controllers WILL fail intermittently. It won't shut down the car but it'll randomly xmas tree the dash lights and disable half the gauges. Had to reflow every solder joint.
I see no electrolytic capacitors in that ECU. Good job Lotus.
Turbocharged with intercooling?
It’s not intercooled
Thanks for posting this vid
I subscribed - I might email you and about my skipping v8.
Very nice video thank you
What’s the best way to contact you to discuss a project?
Jason Pendola you can email me at mazdamiester@gmail.com
Two words of advice when working on electronics,
STATIC PROTECTION
Modern electronics are extremely susceptible to damage from static electricity and you don't even need to touch the board if you have a high enough static voltage build up on you.
Most semiconductors used within chips use "FIELD EFFECT TRANSISTORS" that are controlled by creating an electric field rather than "BIPOLAR TRANSISTORS" that were controlled by the flow of current through them. The electric field these transistors create is minuscule and is created by as little as 2 V. If you get a spark from static when you touch something then your talking about thousands of volts sitting on your fingertips and subjecting the thousands of semiconductors in a single chip to such a massive electric field can result in catastrophic damage. Even worse static damage may degrade the performance of the semiconductors which reduces the electronics tolerance to noise and can end up causing intermittent problems that can be extremely difficult if not impossible impossible to isolate and repair.
If you ever open up any of the electronic control boxes make certain you
ALWAYS USE STATIC PREVENTION PROCEDURES AND CARY OUT ANY WORK
IN A STATIC FREE WORK AREA WITH ANTI-STATIC BENCH TOPS
Do you watch Mister Carlson's Lab?
What a beautiful car but what a nightmare you got things going bounce back when you have A car you love .