Date:         Thu, 6 Feb 1997 12:21:19 -0800
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@vanagon.com>
From:         bayer@sybase.com (David Bayer)
Subject:      Re: '86 ECU (digifant) needed!!!!!

>| I don't think that ECU's get damaged 
>| that much in crashes, so you have a fairly good chance of getting a good 
>| one from a junkyard.

	If you get one that was in a crash, the things that are mostly
going to go wrong with it would be something like a burned out run on
the circuit board or a burned out resistor. You can check for these pretty
easily by removing the two or three screws that hold the connector and
circuit boards to the black body and sliding the guts out. If you find any
really black, charred, ir melted resistors, try another one. If one of
the copper wires is burned off, the ECU may be ok if you solder a jumper
wire from a point on one side of the burn to a point on the other (You
just need something to bridge the break in the copper run, it does not
matter if the jumper wire goes from one burn end to the other, just has to
be on the same bit of copper that was not etched off the board so using
one existing solder point on each side of the break should fix it). This 
is a little more iffy cause bad grounds can fry copper runs and transistors
together. A fried transistor does not necessarily look burned up...
Something to think about at least for a back up ECU...

dave