1972 Granada Mk1 coupe build - Still going... 14-10-2024

Call Kronenburg for ECU advice (https://kms.vankronenburg.nl/products/producten/engine-control-unit). Very friendly and knowing. And you can even stay in your own Brabants.
Thom

Bad but could be worse, I know how you feel after I managed to set the wiring alight on my TR7V8 (proper flames!) The same things went through my mind about it being scrap but in the end once I had got the dash stripped out (it was only a little bit melted) it wasn't too bad a job to replace the damaged wiring. You'll feel better once you have found the extent of the damage and formulated a plan, ECU's usually go up in smoke because something somewhere else has shorted out, Tempting as it is don't plug a new on in just to try it!

I'm sure finding the extent of the damage will make me feel better as it takes away the guesswork.

Yes, I'm not tempted to plug in naything till I'm convinced that everything is right again. I'll even swap the engine loom just to be sure.

I hope the ecu is still ok, but I'm doubtful as the first of the two plumes of smoke came directly from where it is mounted. Would make it much easier to fix the problem, as when those components work still it's just a matter of splicing wires...

You might be lucky it could be something as simple as an earth wire running through the loom which has shorted to live (I've seen this before) with this you get smoke in all sorts of places.

A winch will work.

But if money is tight, you can also use one of these.




They are not made to be used horizontally, but if you help the rotating chain along on both sides ( it will make sense when you are doing it ) it works just fine.

You can find them new for $50 or so.

And I've used mine to move cars and even a 40Ft container...

I use one of these to move the range rover up the slope coming out of my garage when the battery goes flat, takes a while but no great effort.

www.ebay.co.uk/itm/314042357211?hash=item491e6215db:g:FaYAAOSwvGZh1Q86&amdata=enc%3AAQAHAAAA4N3oIfohnT%2Fa2Wu29mfg6oS5H0jtFpNptDY7QgV16UvVFtskPId9zPFGUXUanjqWzXqKm0rMOBe89F%2BbO8U224HYSogNqp4%2FfVb4yGQsa0r99Yiu5cTZhDi72mTGqSW8pRy6q2UapVN%2FNbmTVNYpk7FExBsKTONcSoo%2BGxIia9dUjzTwYXfe%2Ff0fougGvExKgyoBXYh6MihHJryzY65cfzkQ%2FZlGv7BJEJuAER1O6RH6gLCyAXzRkn1GHrZQqyjvnYv9l0YqsWVUuZ7daTRs9ne1lyMvyfYJc5jjB%2Br8ja6w%7Ctkp%3ABFBMmN2XxbRg

Burnt out ground wire is usually when something live with a heaver feed cable shorts to it, I would try to work out where the earth wire goes and follow it up the loom. Hopefully The ECU will be OK, if the short was in there the ECU supply fuse should have blown long before the earth cable melted.

Is your engine a BOA or BOB?

Just seen a very cheap BOA advertised locally with all ancillaries, wiring and ECU.

Last update I had made a start at taking apart the car to get to the BOB wiring. It was painfull to have to remove all of the front interior and dash to get to it. I didn’t get far enough in the time I had but I quickly realized I had a problem as taking the car out of the garage and putting it back in without the use of its own powerplant was a tough act.

So let’s go from there. I bought a 900KG winch in the conviction that if I can push my car around with my feeble muscle powers, a 900KG winch surely would be able to pull this rolling vehicle. The winch was meant to be bolted to a car bumper so mounting it to the floor of my garage took a little effort. The winch had to be bolted to the base plate before one could bolt that to the vehicle or in my case floor. This meant access to the nuts on the anker bolts was limited, but I got it done. Now to hope it was secure enough… With the winch mounted in the evening, I had to wait till next day for a test.





A little apprehensive as we all know how much of a danger highly tensioned metal cables can be and also about the hold of the ankers in the floor I started a test. Putting 2x3” thick beams on the drive about 50 cm’s behind the rear wheels (and moving them on when needed). It quickly became apparent that the car would need a push from inside to keep the line taut. I had put some boards against the threshold to ease the transition from garage floor to the drive as it is a 5cm drop. That was the first exciting moment as you could hear and feel the winch now really working with a load on. But the transition went well. The car now being at more of a slope meant the line was slowly keeping more taut. Still it isn’t until the front wheels are on the threshold that the car’s weight is enough and no more push is needed. This pushing is a little inconvenient as the controls are not wireless and the wires reach their max before the car’s weight takes over fully. With the second exciting moment also over and the which still well attached to the floor tha car now nicely rolled back as far as I let it. Put it in park, released the cable tension as not to trip over it and set to work.










As the car is it’s own storage space for the removed components I had to take out the seats to get to work. I then finished taking out the dash facia, the clock binnacle, the extra indicator lights and finally the dash surround to reveal the open dash. I worked my way around all the branches from the central BOB ecu wiring loom to get them out of the dash. I had to cut two wires to do so. Another thing for the list. Create connectors for those kind of situations.








After a while I had isolated all the wiring on the inside of the cabin ready to be put through to the engine bay. But I was also wondering still why no fuses had blown at all allowing the wiring loom melt down. And yet when powered up, the entire original wiring proved dead. So this prompted me to take a side step and look at the original wiring in the dash area. Unfortunately I quickly found bad news. What looked like two (presumably earth) wires, one from the ignition switch and one from the indicator/light stalk had burnt away so fiercely that only a few copper strands were even in tact. This is bad news in a as much as this probably warrants a good look at the whole of the original engine bay to dash wiring. Although simultaneously as far as I was able to look, I did not find any evidence of other wire damage. And the two wires turned out to be one wire between the two connectors. All of the other wires on those connectors look fine. Trouble is, I’ve yet to find the smoking gun. What caused this and why did not a single fuse break. I’ve not found chafed wiring or damaged insulations or anything.

















Time to put the car back inside. This time winching it inside very gently. This first time was just a bit of a proof of concept thing. I did not pay too much attention to how the car was positioned, I just wanted to see if I could safely pull it in. And it worked admirably. I took a short clip of this first carefull action. Having done it a little more often, confidence has grown and I’ve also been able to position the car such that I can push it out and pull it in without needing steering corrections. To get it like that was a fun little exercise though, moving forward and backwards somewhat to gat it where I wanted it so there is some room around it.



After having been out of commission with a pretty hefty bout of C19 I had to drop my work on this. I had all the time of the world, just not the bodily condition to do anything. Only this weekend after 1,5 weeks of issues I finally had some energy to continue the works.
This time the focus was on actually getting the BOB ecu loom out of the car. I’d hopefully find that smoking gun. The root cause. After taking out the grille of the car I had access to the routing of the furthest wiring. Turns out I did a good job of putting it away nicely which made it a pain to get back out in the confines of the engine bay with the engine in… although I originally did it the same way as at that point I still had to see where all wiring and sensors had to go.

But after some hours of finicking about I was finally able to pull the loom out. I laid it out an took pics of it all. Labelled some of the more ambiguous connectors so I’d know where they go in the future.













Took a side step here and decided to see why the original car wiring was so dead. I’d already found that one earth wire burnt, but no other damage so far so it would be weird for this to cause so much death. Turns out during my test I had all of the original wiring disconnected…. Apparently during the BOB or even an earlier conversion (it was a 2.6Liter V6 with the EFI off of a 87 scorpio 2.8i made to fit before the BOB) the factory wiring to the battery had become a bit on the short side to reach the terminal. So I lengthened it using a colour and wire gauge from the BOB loom that was left unused. Hence me now thinking this was also a BOB wire, hence me disconnecting it as well. Hence no power. Given the burnt earth wire it may have been for the better…

Anyway that cleared up made me feel better. Also still not having a root cause didn’t sit well, but also not having found a single other defective wire in the looms so far gave me hope as well.

I have now started to take the insulation back from the BOB loom. So far just that one damaged wire and some doubts about how affected other wires are. So still no clue as to the how and why. I only found this dodgy earth connection. It goes to the burnt out ecu post, and it connects to (well hardly as seen) tot the shielding on half of the EDIS wiring of which the other end just terminates so not sure how much use this was to begin with. Typically the other end of the ground wire going in to the loom looks fine also.







So how to continue? What to actually do? I'm in more than one mind about it all...

I have noticed that the wiring is all a bit stiff. It’s not as flexible as you’d expect on the Ecu loom. And I’ve always found that the way it was made by my friend caused compromises in its fitment. So for this I’m leaning to inventorying the wiring colours and gauges and ordering new lengths. Making it a better fit at the same time. But with 104 wires this may prove costly. And that is using most of the original connectors. Buying a new ECU plug with pins and some other connectors and it’ll soon be an expensive issue. But it will be done right.

Also, I’ll need to replace two connectors and one wire on the original loom. But I’m still debating taking that out as well and looking it over by fully stripping it. It’s modular in that you have an engine bay section and a dash section.

And then there’s step three in the process. Changing out the engine and gearbox loom for the known good one I have. But this means removing the intake section and probably the fuel rail to get to the wiring that is going through the V of the block. Not an easily accessible job on the box end either. And worst of all, no evidence so far that the issue was caused by that part of the loom as all wires at the connectors still look fine. Yet at the same time not replacing it is a pretty big risk to take...

Anyway, not yet come to grips with all this. It’s going to be loads of work. But cutting corners… what if it happens again? And I still have not found any damaged wiring going to or form an actual component other than the ground wire to the ecu and from the ignition to the indicator stalk (which is new). Ok, I’ve not had the insulation off all wiring yet, but I’d expect that damage to be seen at the connectors as well if a full wire is to burn away. And there’s just no sign of that anywhere…even on the wiring I did take the insulation off.

My first focus wil be the ecu loom I guess as this needs some remedial work any how.