Hey all...Hope someone can be patient with me long enough to read this...(and possible tell me who sells PCM's or can test them for a good price)

Once day I was driving to work and the car just died (Seemed to happen the moment I lefted my foot off the gas - but not evertime) so I pulled over to the side of the road pumped the gas a bit then it finally started again...got a little further down the road and it happened again...Finally got all the way to work, parked it and could never get it started again. So I had it towed to the house. Tested the spark coming from the coil (Zapped me good so I know that was working also tested it with spark tester- also have MSD ignition and coil) then proceeded to test the spark coming from the spark plug wires...got nothing!

So I figured I narrowed it down to the Opti must be bad. Well as a matter of fact I just got finished replacing the opti about 30min ago. Darn car is doing the same thing...so I had my brother tap the PCM a little (just out of desperation) and I'll be damn if it didn't crank for a bit as soon as he stopped tapping it would stop running. So we took out the PCM, took it apart, blew out the inside with compressed air then put it back together and re-installed it. This time the car started and ran for like 10min. then just when I thought my problems were over it dies again. While it was ruinning it idled and responded to gas great...

So does anyone have any clues as to what to do next? I noticed the check engine and check gauges like comes on when in the start position (like when the car dings but is not trying to start) and stays on. I can't remember if that normal or if they should go off. Also, it threw no check anything lights whille it was running.

I really don't wanna spend more money on a new PCM just to find out that it may not be tht either. What should I do next?

Thanks in advance,
Jason

 

Maybe a wire that is shorting or grounding out?
Maybe a bad ECM. Do you have a buddies ECM that you could try to see if that fixes it?

 

Unfortuantly, I don't...I was wondering if I can take the PCM to a dealership to have them teste it or if they would need the whole car. I'm also going to try and re-flash it via Tunercat.

I also have TTS Datamast that I'm going to try and scan it with but does anyone know of any other scanner software I can use?

 

You can call the dealer about bringing it in by itself.

For a scanner, check out Freescan. It's... free. Just do a search on altavista.com.

 

Holy f***ing S***....Okay ready for this?
The whole problem wasn't related to anything that I would have ever thought of...After I installed a new optispark...I still didn't work...So today I hooked up the laptop to it and found that the computer was indeed throwing a code (MALF 16 - Low Res Failure)...so I traced that wire down (thanks to help of a wiring diagram that I got from http://csce.uark.edu/~jgbertr/rb/4th_gen_tech1.html) to a wire that I had tapped into for my remote start alarm. That wire ran from the opti connector on the top of the intake to inside the car through the firewall. It seems that the wire had been rubbing against a piece of metal under the hood and was getting shorted out. So $220 and 5 hours later I find out that the damn problem wasn't related to a bad opti (of course found that out when it still didn't work once replaced) but a stupid wire to my alarm.

So with that in mind I have an opti that is less than a year old and has only been used for like 4 months because after I installed the last opti I got about 4 months out of the car before the transmission needed rebuild. Finally got that rebuilt after about 8 months and then got to drive the car for 3 days (yep 3 days) before this problem started happening. It has sat for another month till now. So anyone wanna buy a used opti with 4 months of use on it? I would like to get atleast $100 out of it.

Thaks for all those who gave advise and for those who actually took the time to read this...

Jason