dead, will not start

stevexr7sc

Registered User
Here's what happened. I was driving home, only about 2 min. and the car stalled and won't not re-start. So, I got it to the dealer and he said that he could not run a diagnostic on the car because he cannot get the EEC to comunicate. He says the EEC is shot. Also the fuel pump is runnig wide open because of the faulty EEC. Is this accurate? I'm confused. Please, can anyone give me some insight.
Thanks, Steve James.
 
That sure could be the problem.
Since they cannot comunicate with the comp and if theres nothing wrong with the wiring the comp is dead. Be thankfull there pretty cheap compaired to some cars.
I had one go out on my Talon and that baby costs $1,200.00
 
Is that the only dealer in town? I'd ask for some very specific information about how he determined the EEC had failed. It is extremely rare for the EEC to fail without a much more serious condition. (Say a lightning strike, or someone welding on the chassis).

Much more common, and easy to check, is a failure of the harmonic balancer. The balancer is attached to the crankshaft and is retained via an interference fit on the shaft. In addition a bolt is used to keep it from sliding off the shaft. (though it is not supposed to be a primary method of retaining it.) The crankshaft position sensor reads a exciter ring on that balancer. If the balancer fails it sometimes breaks into two parts, or simply begins to wobble greatly. This damages the crank position sensor.

Without the crank position sensor functioning, the engine will not start. the eec and dis need the crankshaft position sensor to know when the piston is on the compression stroke.

If you have an automatic, this is easy to check. Crank the engine over and see if the upshift light comes on. If it comes on during cranking, this tells you the crankshaft sensor is not sending a signal.

if you have a manual, you can visually inspect the balancer. Check to make sure the bolt is still there, and watch the pulley while cranking the engine to see if it wobbles. If so, that's your problem.

While an EEC certainly can fail, it's simply a very unusual occurance and i would want to make sure all other avenues are checked before jumping to such a conclusion. And sense that is the easy conclusion if you don't know what the heck you are doing, I'd want to make sure that the service department can explain what they did to come to the conclusion that they have come to. (And that you can't run the self test seems like an insufficient conclusion to me. They have a breakout box they should be able to hook to the EEC to verify it's functionality via voltage checks).
 
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