sellingthewind

I have had an issue with this car for a few months but have not had the time to look at it.

After about a week of the car being parked, I wanted to start it and let it warm up periodically.

The car became hard to start and intermittently the CEL would not illuminate. After disconnecting the battery and Main Relay, I could get the CEL to illuminate and the car to start.

Soon after, I did not have any luck with disconnecting the battery, it finally would not start (No CEL)

Having an intermittent P0604 Icm RAM error, I figured the ECU had finally given up on me.

I sent out the module to be repaired and I installed it. The car fired up for about 5 seconds, and then died. NO CEL again. Thinking something fried the ECU again, I sent the ECU out again to be repaired.

Before I went and plugged it in this time, I checked some grounds and they seemed to have a good clean connection.

I plugged it in and there was a CEL that I was happy to see. The car sounded like it wanted to start, but it did not. I was not able to get the CEL to appear by doing any of the tricks I could do before

I came online today to do a little more research. It seems that people have had an issue with the Main Relay for the ECU. (some say the braided wire inside the relay would touch the side of the relay and cause similar problems.)

I checked the inside of the relay and it seemed the copper braided wire was reaalllly close the the relay, I moved it aside and plugged it back in.

VOILA the CEL illuminates.

Still the car does not start. No CEL after trying to start it again.

It seems that messing with the 373 Fuse (unplugging and plugging it back in) seems to help regain connectivity with the ECU.

So I guess the questions would be,
Could that relay the main culprit to be supporting the voltage to the ECU, but failing after I try to start it?

Are there other common problems like this that I am missing in my forums search?

Could this ECU just be bad, even after getting it repaired?


Thanks for any information