Had a look at my ECU today as my car is behaving strange lately and look what I find inside the box?? WTF??
I did some research and it seems the capcitors leak, they are the big black ones right? The smaller resisters seems to be the funky ones with wax crap on them. On the other side of the board its bloody everywhere.
I know FTO's suffer the water on the gearbox ECU but WTF is this? It doesnt look that hard to repair? But im no electrician! The two behind pictures is where its everywhere. That part of the board is at its highest and there are no capacitors there!
to me it looks like left over flux that ise used when soldering componets to boards and after time dust has accumulated and has been trapped in the fliux.
WARNING : DO NOT TOUCH YOUR ECU BOARD IF YOU ARE STANDING ON CARPET OR HAVE ANY STATIC ON YOU BECASUE YOU WILL FRY MOST OF THE COMPONENTS (resistors)
WARNING 2: IF IT WAS JSUT TAKEN OUT DO NOT TOUCH ANY OF THE CAPCITORS AS THEY DO HAVEA HEFTY CHARGE ON THEM AND IF THEY DECIDE TO DISCHARGE YOU CAN GET SERIOUSLY HURT.
the capcitors are the cylinders on the board that store charge.
if it is flux or even glue or whatever it is it may be conductive enough to transfer signals (voltages) from one trace to another.
EDIT: other thing i jsut htought of is under extreme tempartures and time the top clear layer of your pcb (the green thing) the clear coat can soemtimes melt or warm up and soften tha could be the ovject on your mainboard and yes this conducts electricity.
Last edited by AMACHA on Sat Oct 25, 2008 11:11 pm, edited 1 time in total.
that looks quite bad, btw, where is the ECU? well, i have built computers before, and quite frankly, i have never come across such a board before, its suppose to be very clean, not have that stuff everywhere, why not try taking some spirits (alcohol) and wipe it clean... does your car run weirdly?
Its bolted to the front quarter panel just in front of your left door.
Yeah its a bit weird, im going to go buy some contact spray tomrrow and see what happens.
I've had tiny issues with gear shifts, idle probs, slight juddering sometimes. I've checked everything else and it seems fine, so everything comes back to this!
Also I cannot be the first to cop this? I mean it is a standard item never been touched?
Leaking/damaged capacitors are problematic for most mitsi's in a certain age range. The most common problematic ones are the early 90's ugly as f*ck VR4's and boats *cough* GTO's *cough*. Those are the models I have seen it the worst in anyways.
Search the MSport Forums for details, as there are people there who fix this problem for other members there...
