I cringe any time I leave my truck with someone to "fix".

 

I do have air intake duck. I hadn’t put it back on yet. It’s on now.

 

So, a final (I hope) update. I had the truck towed to the transmission shop that rebuilt the transmission last winter. They couldn’t get it running well enough to do any transmission diagnosis. Then I had it towed to a mechanic’s shop. The owner Steve, told me two things:

- I wish you had brought it in before you started working on it.
- He tried to talk me out of spending any more money on it.

I had him look at it anyway. A couple weeks later, and with a considerable amount of cash involved, here is what they did:

- replaced the crank sensor, ECT sensor and MAP sensor.
- repaired many, many splices in the wiring harness harness
- realigned the distributor
- new pigtail for the ECT connector
- repaired a couple small vacuum leaks
- repaired a connector for the fuel pump harness
- confirmed that the original PCM was bad
- renstalled the ABS warning light relay and did something to fix the ABS problem.

Runs great now. Steve did mention that sometime, before he got it, the engine had caught fire. Don’t know how that could have happened.
-

 

Good grief!!

 

Good to know what happened and that it is solved. I hope it gives you a lot of good years.

 

He deserves it after all that.

 

So, hopefully a final update. It has been 7 months now since the truck went crazy. The core cause of the problems was the wiring harness. I replaced about a third on the harness, about 150-200 feet of wire. Runs great now.

But, as I posted in someone else’s thread about oil in the coolant, I had one remaining problem, overheating while idling. During the 7 months I was working on it, a head gasket blew. I put on new heads. I changed the oil several times and flushed the radiator many times, a couple times with commercial flush and once after dumping a bottle of Simple Green in the cooling system, running it 15 min, then flushing. I still had oil in the cooling system.

I searched the web and found a video that said to add about a cup of liquid dishwasher detergent to the water in the cooling system, let it run a while, then flush again. That did get almost all the oil out. However, the overheating at idle started. I put in a new fan clutch and a 180 degree thermostat. No luck. Then I thought, maybe that thick, gel, liquid detergent plugged the radiator. I replaced the radiator and it no longer overheats. It still runs warmer than it used to though. It is possible I restricted the flow in other parts of the cooling system. I’m going to drive it for a while and flush it some more, with water. As it is, it doesn’t run warm enough to be concerned about now.

Moral of the story, DON’T DO STUPID, CRAZY THINGS YOU SEE ON YOUTUBE!!!

 

But, but, but.... If it's on the internet, it HAS to be TRUE!

 

Congrats Flounder. Electrical has to be the biggest headache there is.