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Okay good, I thought I was going crazy looking for it. I'm going to run down to advance and get another battery to swap into it to see if that fixes it. I tried swapping the battery for my Tahoe in and I got the same problem but I want to rule out battery problems 100%
I just looked up the procedure for repinning the harness for a newer PCM, seems like a lot of work for minimal gains with my mods. I may just try and find another 98 to plug in, I'd be pretty upset of I moved about 80 pins in the harness for a new PCM and still had a voltage issue.
I opened up the PCM and computer board knowledge is limited but I believe this copper thing is a coil inductor that helps controls voltage. I couldn't find a pic of a good board, but it looks like one of the coils maybe damaged. Might be causing my problems, or might be normal. All the other circuits and capacitors looked good.
I'm sure I'd get into a groove after moving the first few, and may eventually go that route. But after moving a hundred pins if I see that 15% TPS with throttle closed I may put my shiny new 0411 through the windshield lol
That pic I posted is horrible, but there's definitely signs of overheating and some bubbling glue where the coil separated. If I knew what the inductance of that part was supposed to be I'd replace it but it might not be worth the trouble. Opened up a WTB for a '98 PCM so we'll see what happens. Hopefully I can get one for a decent price and I can put this issue to bed.
I was thinking about what could've caused the overheating since I've had roughly a year of use out of it and haven't changed a thing wiring wise. Then my wife reminded me, "Didn't you charge the battery using that cheap battery tender you got form Harbor Freight?" ....she was right. The battery tender has a maintenance feature on it so it doesn't overcharge, but it's definitely possible the cheap thing is junk and it cooked the PCM.
Well, I brought in the big guns. Took my six month pregnant wife about hour to fix this one. She found a power wire from the previous owner's sound system that was fed from the alternator. It was fused using a large blade 30 amp fuse, and the top of the fuse was touching near a PCM ground. Removed the fuse and everything is back to normal. I thought those fuses were insulated but the top of it just touching near a ground was enough to screw up a lot of readings the PCM was getting.
haha glad you got it sorted out. thats crazy, though I have seen worse. I'm working on swapped fox body mustang right now that was eating fuel pump relays so he just wired it direct, no fuse. pump sucked a mouse turd and melted the bulkhead connector.
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