marc davis
NAXJA Forum User
- Location
- Portland Oregon
I have a 92 XJ with about 250k miles. Auto, 4wd, 4.0L. The engine has been shutting off at random. At first I shot gunned ALL the sensors, checked all the grounds replaced the distributor, ... Pretty much everything everything I could find in any thread talking about this type of issue. It was hard to diagnose because it will usually start running again in a few minutes, before I can get out tools and a scanner. Finally one day it failed long enough to get a scanner hooked up (old Snap-on unit for OBD1). I got no connection to the ECU. Interesting. I started wiggling wires around the engine bay and finally moved the wire bundle at the ECU. The ECU came to life. Since then I have "fixed" the stalled engine several times by moving the wires at the ECU. I removed the plug from the ECU and cleaned the pins of the connector. I also found that a pipe cleaner would fit nicely inside the pin holes of loom connector and cleaned each pin. I applied some dielectric grease and put it all back together. The issue went way for about 5 months. Now it's back and the same "fix" works. Wiggle the wires and the check engine light comes back and the engine start right up. At this point I'm looking for a more permanent solution. I can try cleaning the connector again. Perhaps hit it with some connector cleaner and scrub the pins, but I suspect that will only buy me a bit of time. I'm looking for other ideas. Replacing the harness with another used one seem like trading one batch of issues with another. I could replace the ECU and hope it helped. I've thought about hacking off the end of the harness and installing a different type of connector, then soldering wires to the pins of the ECU and terminating them in the same new connector. Kind of extreme. But, clearly I'm willing to go to extremes to keep this thing running since I've put this much effort into it already. Another thought or ideas?