Been reading this forum for a couple months now and it has helped me several times with maintenance issues and performance ideas. I have a 97 regular cab, short box with a 318 and a 5 speed. I love it, but as of late it has been more of a love/hate relationship. Let me explain…

A couple months ago driving down the road the truck just conked out on me. I coasted to the side of the road and tried starting to no avail. I had it towed (thank god for dads AAA) to my mechanic and it turned out the engine control fuse was blown, they replaced it. And it blew again, and again… After a few head scratches they unplugged the plug from the main computer that controls the fuse block, plugged it back in, replaced the fuse and the fuse has lasted me a couple months (and no they didn’t charge me for their time, because they didn’t fix anything). Until this morning when driving, in the rain, to work the engine coughed once and shut down, so I drifted to the side, opened the hood, unplugged the plug on the computer (the one furthest from the motor), replaced the fuse, plugged the computer back in and was on my way… for about a mile when it happened again. So I called in to work, and called the wifey to come and take me to autozone. Put a new fuse in it and drove on home with out any more problems…

So the question is, does anyone have any ideas on what could be causing that particular fuse to blow. The mechanics thought it might be the computer itself, but didn’t want to take the $400 chance that it wasn’t , there advice was to take it to a dealer to hook up to a fancy computer. Sorry for the long post and thanks for the help.

 

You need a manual with a wiring diagram so you can trace the wires coming from that plug to make sure they are not shorted . But , next time it happens try wiggling the plug you mentioned. If it works, it's the wires going into the plug, the plug itself, or the soldered conections inside the pcm.And you know what that means.