Okay, first my car died yesterday, took to shop and pretty sure the ecu is fried. So removed it and found this weirdness.

It appears that someone removed a capacitor and replaced it with all this jumpering, two fuses, and a different capacitor.

Anyone have any ideas on what the purpose of all this is???

Here is shot of the top



Here is a shot of the bottom

 

Whoaaaaaaaaaaaa, the most ghetto thing I have ever seen in an ECU lol, in for explanations

 

I know really, WTF kind of a frankenstein wiring job. I am freaking surprised the car ran with the ecu like that but I have had it for a year and no trouble.
It was the battery shorting out that started the problems and you can't see it from the pic but one of the fuses are blown.

 

What makes you confidently believe the ECU is bad versus some other problem? Gives us more information.

 

Hi Ron,

Not completely sure but the looks of the ecu leads me to believe it is the culprit.

All of this was out of the blue, Got off work at 6Am started car, drove home, at 9Am went to car wash, shut off car, self serve washed, then car wouldn't start, got jump,
car started right away, drove for less than 5 miles and car died with dead battery.

So got it to a shop and found out the battery was shorted, typical bulging of the sides and would not take a charge. Then the electrical system started to really freak out.
Put on headlights and tach needle moved to about 4 grand, of course the car still wasn't running. Then for some reason stereo started to blink then smell of burning insulation.
Stereo got fried, no idea why. Put in a new battery and the tach problem went away. During all this there were no blown fuses. Then unhooked fuel line and cranked engine,
no fuel and no spark to plugs. Noticed one of the wires going to fuel relay had evidence of melting of insulation so got new relay. Still no fuel or spark so then went to ecu
and found the weirdness inside with blown fuse mod.

 

Given that the modified ECU worked fine until the recent car wash, I would suggest that you replace the blown fuse in the ECU and go from there.

It appears that some wires, possibly near the ECU or under the dash, got wet during the car wash. Find that leak and fix it to avoid this same disaster in the future.

 

Given that I live across the river from Portland Oregon there is no way this is a water leak problem. Do you have any idea how much rain we get here?
And I have driven the car for a year without a single electrical problem.

Got a used ecu and the care started right up but the idle fluctuates up and down. Not sure it has anything to do with the ecu or just something else was damaged when the old ecu fried.
When the computer fried my stereo also shorted out, there was weird random display flashing and the smell of burning wires. Not a very good day for me.

 

The correlation between the electrical short and the car wash must have been a coincidence.

 

Rain and car washes are two different things...rain doesn't shove water under quite a bit of pressure onto your car.