Date:         Fri, 17 Mar 2000 08:15:23 -0500
Reply-To:     Scott Grillo <scottgrillo@COMPUSERVE.COM>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Scott Grillo <scottgrillo@COMPUSERVE.COM>
Subject:      Re: ECU Lifespan?
Comments: To: John Anderson <jander14@WVU.EDU>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

Just my 2 cents, but my '85 had 165000 mi on it with no problems with the
ECU.  My '90 now has 175,000 on the ECU AFAIK, and it is ok too.


John Anderson wrote:

>
> At 04:14 PM 3/16/00 -0800, you wrote:
> >With Ken's tale of Digifant ECU failure, and many
> >others ECU failures I've heard about, it makes me
> >wonder why these things fail.  Is there input voltage
> >fluctuations in older vans that would stress the
> >compenents?  Is it from physical shock?  Is the ECU a
> >part that should be changed after, say, 10 years?  It
> >sounds like a spare would be good to have on hand for
> >longer trips.
>
> Solder migrates in the 2 I've taken apart and repaired.  Not an
> uncommon problem in electrical equipment, particularly things
> that have high current paths without quite enough area to dissipate
> the heat.  Plus a lot of the Digifant ones seem to come with
> marginal quality soldering to begin with, and a lot of nearly cold
> joints that with time get worse.  If you got a dead one and feel
> lucky (and don't have anything to lose,) take it apart, and retouch
> all the joints carefully with a nice quality electronics style soldering
> iron.  Pay particular attention around the big drivers along the back
> on the heatsink, and on the early models on the stuff up on the
> daughterboard.  They fail because of poor design or poor quality
> control regardless.
>
> John