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I got an idea - call Cartalk on NPR with 1-888-CAR-TALK and let us hear what the "click and clack the Tappet brothers" have to say about this. It should be fun!!!
Tell em City-data sent ya for our version of "shameless Commerce."
Last edited by Latitude38; 12-24-2009 at 02:38 PM..
If the computer is actually bad the shop will be able to tell without being told this. If the OP has a regular mechanic he or she uses and TRUSTS, telling them would be fine. If the OP does not use a regular, trusted mechanic, I would suggest just telling the current problem giving a better chance that they will first check the battery, terminal cables and alternator. There are shops that will say ECM and then after changing it, when the person comes back with the same problem, they will say it is an unrelated problem and then check for a bad alternator, battery, terminal cables, etc. Again, this advice is if you do not know much about the shop you are dealing with.
Are you saying to not tell the mechanic the whole story? I never understood that reasoning. By not telling all do you think you'll save money and get a better repair? In the real world it's just the opposite.
If someone came to you and said their vehicle was runnung bad what would be the first thing to check? Would it be the ECM? Or maybe the alternator and battery? No, you check with the customer first and get all the info you can about the problem such as when did it start acting up and did it happen all of a sudden or over a period of time.
To use the doctor comparison again, would you hold back any relevant info about why you feel bad in hopes of saving a couple of dollars?
In the end it will save money if you tell the whole story upfront. That's only good common sense.
I got an idea - call Cartalk on NPR with 1-888-CAR-TALK and let us hear what the "click and clack the Tappet brothers" have to say about this. It should be fun!!!
Tell em City-data sent ya for our version of "shameless Commerce."
My wife loves listening to those guys on Saturday mornings. Finds them amusing. I can't stand them.
Yeah, I know they know what they're talking about. But geez louise, cut with all the stupid laughing over every single little thing that is said.
I hate to say this, but, I too once reversed the jumper cables one time on the vehicle I was trying to jump off. (My excuse was it was pitch black dark and I was having to do it by braille...I was proud I even found the terminals on the little crappy side mounted teeny-tiny things...)
I guess you can fry the brains...I've always heard that...but never met anyone who did it, nor did I when I reversed the cables.
What DID happen was much, much less dramatic than what has been described here...a couple of the fusible links between the battery and anything important did their jobs--they fried, sacrificing themselves for the good of the car, the ECM and anything else electronic. Noble, valiant little things. I've head they were invented for just such occasions. My car was a Ford; I assume Chrysler has heard of fusible links...
Spliced in some new ones, hooked up the cables correctly and it started and ran fine until the day it was totaled.
I'd check some other things as has been recommended.
Car talk show with out sense of humor is pretty dry. That's what makes it a show (although I don't know why the English language calls a radio program a show). Otherwise it would be having a conversation with technical representative. If only Rush Limbaugh or Howard Stern could host the show, I would have listened to it religiously.
Are you saying to not tell the mechanic the whole story? I never understood that reasoning. By not telling all do you think you'll save money and get a better repair? In the real world it's just the opposite.
If someone came to you and said their vehicle was runnung bad what would be the first thing to check? Would it be the ECM? Or maybe the alternator and battery? No, you check with the customer first and get all the info you can about the problem such as when did it start acting up and did it happen all of a sudden or over a period of time.
To use the doctor comparison again, would you hold back any relevant info about why you feel bad in hopes of saving a couple of dollars?
In the end it will save money if you tell the whole story upfront. That's only good common sense.
As I have already stated, if you have a mechanic you trust you can tell them. If you do not have a regular mechanic that you can trust and tell the mechanic that the jumper cables were used incorrectly he may very well say you need a new computer even if you do not.
I am not suggesting you never give the whole story to a mechanic but in this case I would suggest not doing so. In this case, if the computer is bad the mechanic will find out easily. Withholding the information on the jumper cables is not going to stop him from finding any problem in this case. It may stop him from saying the computer is bad if in fact it really is not though.
Again, if this is a mechanic you use often and trust, you can tell him. If it is a matter of driving it into a repair shop you do not know much about, my suggestion is to not tell of the jumper cable incident. As mentioned in my previous post, I do a lot of side work out of my home and people would be surprised at the amount of people that come to me AFTER taking their vehicle to a repair shop that misdiagnosed the problem.
I do not know about other people posting in this thread but I have many times had mechanic shops try to rip me off. When I first started working on cars in the 80's I worked as a mechanic for a cab company in Long Island City. I needed a tire and took my car to a Good Year place. I bought two tires and they told me I needed brakes and a ball joint. I told them I did not want them to do the job and when I arrived at work I put my car up on the lift and checked everything. The brakes and ball joints were excellent.
I have also had, on many occasions, people bring their car to me after a shop had done work on their car previously and the customer now has the same issue they had before the work was done. I tend to believe the majority of times these are shops looking to make more money rather than just accidentally misdiagnosing the problem.
Ok, you see it from the customer's view and I'm looking at it from the technician's side of the counter.
I want as much information as possible to help diagnose the problem. It saves a lot of unnecessary tail chasing to know the whole story. What if the running problem turned out to be a wiring problem? I've spent all morning ruling out everything else only to find a melted wire buried in the wiring harness that could possibly have been one of the first things I would have checked if I'd only known the whole story. Guess who pays for the wasted diagnostic time?
By the way, why are a lot of you condemning the computer? It most likely would have blown fuses or melted fuse links before harming the ECM.
I'm still saying a bad alternator was the original problem. The OP had to have a reason to jump it in the first place and that would also explain a running problem because of low voltage to the electronics and the fuel pump. Obviously that's just a guess without seeing the vehicle.
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