At 11:59 AM 4/13/2010, mark drillock wrote:
>Installed his spare ECU from his Westy under bench storage, fired right up!

I think carrying one would be a good idea for everyone nowadays, and
here's why.

The last five 2.1l ECUs I've examined under the 'scope (all working,
one with a half-second fail when the rear wheels passed a sharp bump,
various mfg dates) have had between dozens and hundreds of instances
of solder fatigue.  The worst ones were of course on the devices
secured to the heat sink, large or heavy or hot components, and on
the flexible connectors between the two boards on the Bosch 022
models.  The T/A units had decent-looking solder to begin with; the
Bosch solder looked pretty nasty -- but all had lots of mostly
microscopic fatigue problems.  The one 022D model I have has a bunch
of surface-mount components on the solder side of the big board and a
big shield soldered over the smaller board.  The overall solder
quality didn't look bad but *IIRC* there were still lots of fatigue
problems on the through-soldered components.

Judging from the couple 1.9l ECUs I looked inside years ago, they're
likely in similar condition.

I personally doubt that the people who recondition these examine them
as closely as I have, and I've never seen one fresh from
reconditioning.  So my *suspicion* is that even recently
reconditioned ones will have a bunch of fatigue problems not visible
to the naked eye.

Yours,
David
PS -- I'll add my usual note that it's quite amazing how much faulty
electrical gear can be fixed by reflowing all the solder joints.  Not
least my gas boiler which for years would occasionally shut down (on
the coldest nights, naturally).  After ten years trying to chase it,
finally opened up the main control box which had maybe twenty solder
joints and every single one was visibly bad.  Resoldered them and one
of these days I'll look and see how they're faring.  In the meantime,
the heat works.