Skandocious
Post Whores Make Me Sick
My 95 F150 was progressively running more and more like garbage over the past couple of years — stumbling idle, heavy pinging under load, throttle drop-outs while maintaining speed. All of the symptoms pointed towards things like spark/fuel-delivery, vacuum leak, or even something electrical like a faulty throttle-position sensor or a corroded ground (truck has lots of rust…). I went through EVERYTHING and still it was running like crap.
I pulled the inner fender out and exposed the main wire loom to the computer to check for electrical shorts on the ignition control module wire (there’s a known TSB from Ford). Nothing noteworthy — I taped it back up. On a whim my buddy says “the inner fender is already out, remove the computer and look inside, just incase” — I thought that seemed like a long shot but sure enough, I opened it to find a couple capacitors had popped and leaked fluid onto the PCB and trapped it under the conformal coating so it rotted several traces to pieces. After lots of cleaning and some careful soldering the truck immediately was running like a million bucks.
Such an odd and unexpected fix to what seemed like a very common set of symptoms.
I pulled the inner fender out and exposed the main wire loom to the computer to check for electrical shorts on the ignition control module wire (there’s a known TSB from Ford). Nothing noteworthy — I taped it back up. On a whim my buddy says “the inner fender is already out, remove the computer and look inside, just incase” — I thought that seemed like a long shot but sure enough, I opened it to find a couple capacitors had popped and leaked fluid onto the PCB and trapped it under the conformal coating so it rotted several traces to pieces. After lots of cleaning and some careful soldering the truck immediately was running like a million bucks.
Such an odd and unexpected fix to what seemed like a very common set of symptoms.
I'll grab some when I pull it back out to reapply the conformal coating.
That’s such an awesome feeling to find, and then fix! Nice work on the soldering 
