No worries- I was born into a Fahreheit world - but IMO it's like most of the old British units of measure: illogical & inconsistent...

Heat is unlikely to burn the PCB material as it's good-quality fibreglass-based, but over enthusiastic application can lift tracks.

I have to confess my ignorance here as I've never used a desoldering gun - I have a rubber bulb device that has always given good service - does it not have a hollow tip to deliver the vacuum & remove solder? If so, I don't see how it would work successfully as a soldering iron (too blunt?).

 

Precisely. A hollow tip, vacuum pump, and tube / chamber which holds the withdrawn solder.

I had planned on using a tipped soldering iron for installation of the new capacitors, not the vacuum gun. But as you and others have advised, I will do this slowly, one cap at a time.

 

As you can see, the wire ends are bent over on installation so the caps don't fall out. Just makes them that bit harder to remove

Ah - OK - that's fine

 

I received the rest of the cap's today, and did my best.

I read somewhere that best practice is to heat the component wire, not the solder itself, but I can never get that to work. So I just tried to fill in with solder. These spaces were very tight - I carefully soldered as best I could, the two middle sized cap's still wiggle a little but for the most part seem to be held in pretty good.

I put it back together, and turned the key on (didn't start it due to the fact it's down for shocks and I don't want to fill the garage with exhaust) -- it gave me the same errors as before, but that's no surprise since the caps hadn't quite failed yet.

Feel good having done this, hope they hold up and the soldering doesn't come apart ~ if it does, I will just pull it and try again.

 

Not to worry. It's still good preventative maintenance. Not necessarily typical, but here's what can happen when one lets go (pic stolen from greenforest56):




What errors are you still getting?

 

Traction / stability control. When I pulled codes with my iCarSoft i930 (just obtained that tool) I saw three wheel speed sensor failures, and an ABS Pump circuit failure.

I've cleaned the wheel sensors *EDIT: and tested via wheel rotation and voltage reading at the ABS plug, so those are good*, but I have a feeling I need to open the case and re-solder those two trouble terminals I've seen in other threads. I really don't want to cut a hole in the case, so I'll carefully dremel around the edge instead

 

Just a tip: Use desoldering wick / braid. It is easier than a solder pump and you will transfer less heat to the PCB

 

Hello all,

Today I reinstalled the repaired ECU, along with the repaired ABS module, and took it for a drive.

The ABS light was on at first, but went off after a short while. No traction or stability errors, no engine codes, and best of all, after shutting off I did not see an engine fault!

I feel good about doing all of this work myself, and finally starting to have some confidence in the car. Thank you all for your tips and advice ~~ Truly invaluable!

One other thing I did, was set up a battery tender, and after 3 days it registered 13.01v at the terminals. So that also helped, I am sure. I plan to have a permanent pigtail to hook it up for extended periods of storage (more than a couple days.) I hope that will preserve the battery and also help avoid any further electrical gremlins from appearing...

Best,
-Jim