We're back at Williams in Tucson, but, at this point, we are just waiting for the bill. The temporary cable for the throttle seems to have cured the problem, so at least we can say we have a solution in hand.
We've decided to just replace the ends of the three wires leading into the ECM, on the theory that the most likely source of cable troubles is the set of well-worn pins in the connector. Also, jury-rigging the throttle, bypassing the main harness, caused our high-idle control to stop working, since it shares two of those pins. If the problem comes back, we'll probably just live with it until we can find the time to excavate into the cable chase to run some new wires. We're pretty confident that the occasional throttle drop-out is not causing any damage.
Williams decided to allow us to keep the ECM that is currently installed, which was their test unit. As such, it's a bit grungy, but seems to be working fine, and this saves us the labor expense of swapping it back out with our original unit. So this morning, the tech removed the temporary cable, lopped off the last couple inches of wire with the connector pins still attached, and spliced them in to the appropriate wires in the harness.
In other related news, I spent a good deal of last night tracing the speed sensor wiring and the transmission diagnostic connector. I was able to repair the latter item, and the transmission tech was able to get into the unit with a reader today and confirm that everything is normal with the tranny. On the speed sensor, it looks like all the wiring is good between the "Maximum Feature Throttle Interface" unit and both the DDEC and ATEC ECM's, so either the transmission ECM is not sending the speed signal, or the interface unit has a problem. I'm hunting around for a replacement interface to see if we can get our speed sensor working.
Just for fun, I will post this map link to our current location. If you zoom in all the way you can actually see the service bay in which we are sitting, compared to the link I posted previously, which clearly shows us in the customer parking area. The level of detail available now on Google Maps (and Google Earth) in some areas is truly amazing. I noticed, by the way, that zooming our January 30th map link in all the way shows us in an empty dirt lot -- trust me, there is a shopping center there now. The detail level is high, but some of the satellite imagery is a couple years old.
From here, assuming all systems are working properly when we drive off the lot, we will head into the mountains east of here, just shy of Benson, to visit our friend who lives in his Airstream a dozen miles down a dirt Forest Service road. We should be able to get most of the way to his property with no trouble, and will boondock on some nearby National Forest land.
We've decided to just replace the ends of the three wires leading into the ECM, on the theory that the most likely source of cable troubles is the set of well-worn pins in the connector. Also, jury-rigging the throttle, bypassing the main harness, caused our high-idle control to stop working, since it shares two of those pins. If the problem comes back, we'll probably just live with it until we can find the time to excavate into the cable chase to run some new wires. We're pretty confident that the occasional throttle drop-out is not causing any damage.
Williams decided to allow us to keep the ECM that is currently installed, which was their test unit. As such, it's a bit grungy, but seems to be working fine, and this saves us the labor expense of swapping it back out with our original unit. So this morning, the tech removed the temporary cable, lopped off the last couple inches of wire with the connector pins still attached, and spliced them in to the appropriate wires in the harness.
In other related news, I spent a good deal of last night tracing the speed sensor wiring and the transmission diagnostic connector. I was able to repair the latter item, and the transmission tech was able to get into the unit with a reader today and confirm that everything is normal with the tranny. On the speed sensor, it looks like all the wiring is good between the "Maximum Feature Throttle Interface" unit and both the DDEC and ATEC ECM's, so either the transmission ECM is not sending the speed signal, or the interface unit has a problem. I'm hunting around for a replacement interface to see if we can get our speed sensor working.
Just for fun, I will post this map link to our current location. If you zoom in all the way you can actually see the service bay in which we are sitting, compared to the link I posted previously, which clearly shows us in the customer parking area. The level of detail available now on Google Maps (and Google Earth) in some areas is truly amazing. I noticed, by the way, that zooming our January 30th map link in all the way shows us in an empty dirt lot -- trust me, there is a shopping center there now. The detail level is high, but some of the satellite imagery is a couple years old.
From here, assuming all systems are working properly when we drive off the lot, we will head into the mountains east of here, just shy of Benson, to visit our friend who lives in his Airstream a dozen miles down a dirt Forest Service road. We should be able to get most of the way to his property with no trouble, and will boondock on some nearby National Forest land.
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