Re: 97 HELLLP PLEASE PO123 TPS FIXED!!!!! (long)
you have a lot of "must be"s and "dont need to check"s ... it can take a long time that way
Huh? what do you mean by that??
Anyway I GOT THIS THING FIXED TODAY finally.. and the solution does not make full sense to me;
Being a full time college student at 44, I have needed my mind and my time for other things; so the jeep has sat collecting dust and is starting to get stuff piled in/on/around it in the garage. good thing I own 2 more vehicles than I have drivers in the house. otherwise I would have been screwed.
I got the other parts to the 97 FSM in the mail, a while back; (I now have 3 of the 5 books that make up the whole series) and I went thru the "TPS too high" flow chart as soon as I opened them up; and following all the appropriate "Yes' and No's" in the flow chart, it said "REPLACE TPS";
the manual did not get as into depth as I did, meaning that alot of what I replaced, disconnected, and multimeter checks that I did, were not even talked about through out that particular flow chart;
I did not want to believe it, because alot of the voltage checks I did were confusing and contradictory.
Another jeep specific forum that OI posted on, said "REPLACE CLOCKSPRING and be done with it"; being on Disability these last 4 years (money being way short, compared to my past working days) I could not see spending the $156, knowing that it may solve it and may well not do anything for me; that forum said that if I unplugged it and it was the problem, my TPS readings would come back and the code would go away. (it did NOT) but they still insisted that had to be "it";
As I posted here earlier>>> told the wife the same thing>>>, I could replace every dam sensor under the hood, and not solve anything but be "broke-r" from it having wasted the $$ on parts that did nothing to solve; when I was working, I may well have done that very thing. but I also know that 5 sensors get their ground from teh same ground as the TPS and 4 use the same 5V REF; thinking "series circuit" (Christmas tree lights are wired this way) I finally decided to buy several sensors and my original thought was to replace them en masse on account of age; if that did not do the trick the clockspring would be next.
Well I didn't do that either; I bought a new pre cat O2, a new crank sensor and a TPS from Rockauto; (I bought their most expensive choices for all hoping, for US made parts all "STANDARD" brand and none American,, crap)
well. I put the new TPS on and figured why not try it; I started the engine and NO CHECK ENGINE LIGHT! scanner showed normal TPS readings;
this makes no sense at all; having traced the wiring diagrams as much as i did and seemingly having voltage in way too many places that it did not belong; going back to that flow chart part of the FSM and not seeing any references for that code, referring to about 2/3 of the things I tested for. Even though it was a natural progression based on the flow of teh wiring diagrams
add in that with the old TPS on it I had exact same reading whether connected or not; and that known good used one that I tried on there waaaay back. which led me to believe no change=eliminate as a possibility, old sensor must be OK. that thinking actually turned out true for the clockspring though.
but all this crap and a 6 month garage ornament for a dam TPS...... I'm both happy and pi$$d;
I will put my new O2 in anyway because the current one is 15 years and 125K miles old; besides I would have to pay shipping to send it back; the crank sensor will go in the glovebox as a spare since I know that is another common thing to die on these engines.
My next step I was looking at doing, was tearing out the dash to pull that harness completely out, to look for other collateral damage caused by having had the aftermarker remote start setup in there.....another reason it sat as I am not as comfortable laying under the dash working "upside down" as I was in my younger days. I'm so glad I didn't have to "go there".