86.5 hardbody z24. I posted some a year ago when I had a no start condition. This is something new. I was going to get some ginger ale for my wife who has been sick Sat night and was about 6 miles from home when the truck bucked once and then shut off. I got off the road, tried to start it, it started, I turned around and headed toward home. About 1/4 mile later it shut off again. I coasted down the hill I was on and pulled off the road again. Tried to start again, it started, ran about 5 seconds and cut off. It would keep doing that, but nothing else. I had to call Mr. Hook who charged me $100 to drag it the 6 miles home. After dinner, just for grins, I went out and tried to start it again. Started up and ran fine. I drove it up to my garage no problems. Today, I pulled the seat and checked the codes and ran it about 30 minutes no problem. It had 11,12, and 21. It really seemed like something electrical was getting hot and cutting off. Last year I replaced the main relay, distributor and wiring, MAF, fuel pump, both temp sensors, plugs,cap, rotor, wires and probably some more stuff I'm forgetting. When it shut off, it was like I turned the key off, not a stumble like it ran out of fuel. Dash lights and other stuff stayed on. I checked the fusible links today and there is no corrosion. Any suggestions? It's killing me that I've been working on this truck for 2 years trying to get it dependable enough to drive in a snowstorm and now that it looks like I may need it for that, it really laid down on me. No way I'd trust it more than a mile from the house now.
I know it's tough, but my advice is to take it to an expert shop and let them figure it out.
Do this: Pay to have the problem found for sure, and then fix it yourself at home.
But when you take it in, don't say anything about THEM not fixing it. This is important, because you'll get a better diagnosis. You see, they will want to give you an estimate on total repairs, and to do that...they have to REALLY know what's wrong. So they'll check it better.
Before you pay the bill, ask plenty of questions. How do you know this is the problem? What happened? EVERYTHING. You deserve this information because you are paying for it. So get it, and then decline their estimate, pay the diagnosis bill, get the keys, and take your truck home and fix it. Z-24's aren't bad to work on, but you have to know what to fix. When you go to pick it up, take notes, ask questions, pry, etc.
Research out a GOOD shop before dropping the ducats on this. Should be $100-$200 max.
Not half the battle...three-quarters is learning what has to be fixed, and FOR SURE what's wrong. With the shops, you have to lead them along a bit and make them think you are ready to pay for the full repair. Otherwise they sort of blow you off on the diagnosis sometimes.
Last edited by SciFiGuy; Dec 26th, 2012 at 03:15 AM.
The only shop I trust to do anything charges $85/hr. By the time they got it to "act stupid" I'd have more invested in it than the truck is worth. Plus, I've made my living as a mechanic for 20 years and have a good shop of my own. The big problem here is that it runs perfectly fine now. As soon as my wife is better, I'll open up the wire harness and look at the splices for the injectors as described in another post. I also have a line on another ECM. When the weather clears, I'll put the timing light back in the truck and ride up and down my road. I had carried it around for nearly a year when I was having a different problem before but I didn't have it when it stranded me so I couldn't tell whether it was fuel or spark.
So, I got a little time tonight and picked apart the wire harness. Found the splices and they were all fine. Soldered them anyway. Installed the "new" ecm. I guess the next step is to throw my bike in the back and drive around the neighborhood for an hour to see if it quits. Timing light is back behind the seat.
Finally, finally found the culprit. The distributor module. I didn't suspect it at first because it was only about a year old. It was, however, a reman unit from rock auto. The good thing is that I figured out you can change the module part easily with the distributor in the truck and minimal tools. So, I will have a spare in the glovebox soon.
That's kind of a bummer--but at least you figured it out. How could you tell? Was it identifiable by the naked eye or was this just the result of troubleshooting?
I've spent $450 on towing in 36 years of owning vehicles. AAA is about $240/year here and the people I know who have it and needed a tow had to wait over 2 hours for a AAA designated tow company to respond. Not worth it to me.
Quote:
That's kind of a bummer--but at least you figured it out. How could you tell? Was it identifiable by the naked eye or was this just the result of troubleshooting?
It was process of elimination. I had swapped in a known good ECM (computer), checked the supply current from the fusible links to the main relay and unwrapped the wire harness from the relay to the distributor. The only thing left was the module itself.
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