williamb82

the part numbers i listed are all interchangeable and will work for trac, and non trac cars.

python

iTrader: (4)

most napa's are privately owned,there are some corporate stores so i have no idea,but u will pay shipping upfront. the one i work at is privately owned,we take care of our customers and usually dont mark up the price that much because the customer is in dire straits,but if ur ecm is listed in the catalog then thats different. they usually call cardone and get the info from them..turn around time,% of whether they can fix it or not and so forth.

lex8000

I need to replace a 50141 (93 non-traction control). Is there any way to validate this info that all 3 of these models will work?

williamb82

all 3 will work, traction control and non traction control. i replaced a 50140 with a 50142 in my own car.

StevieA

I did the same '93 LS400 & they both work the same 50142 for a 50140

lex8000

Does your car have the power/econ transmission setting switch next to the shifter (maybe all 93s did?)?

williamb82

yes mine has that switch. iirc all ls400's have it. even my mk2 supras have that switch.

lex8000

While there are a few of these units out there for $250 or so, they are for used "tested" computers of course. Has anyone had success with having them rebuilt and if so, can you recommend a company? I found one company which had many negative reviews, and had obviously shilled a bunch of positive fake reviews for themselves. Buying a used one just seems like it'd be a matter a time before it too died.

zukikat

In my 94 base-model LS400 (non-TRAC, no air-ride, no seat presets, etc) I'm running a 50141 now, the car had a 50142 in it with the back cover missing and yellow paint pen (junkyard) markings on it so I have no idea which ECU this car came with new.

The tranny shifts a little differently (slow/smooth) and the car idles at 1,200 at all times whenever it's in P or N now and I can smell it running a little rich which it wasn't doing before on the 50142 ECU but at least the 50141 isn't threatening to leave me stranded.

I've heard of people having great success with sending their ECU to be refurbished while others tried it and ended up buying a used ebay ECU instead out of desperation which finally fixed their problem when the refurb of their original one didn't fix their problem(s).

So I don't know what to do.

A used one is just going to fail eventually too.
A refurbished one, or having yours repaired, may or may not fix the problem(s).
A "new" one is probably out of the question due to cost and will eventually do the same thing.
So for now I'm rolling the 50141 that I bought from the junkyard and keeping my fingers crossed...

williamb82

all they do when they rebuild them is replace the faulty electrolytic caps, which you can do yourself.

lex8000

Welp I ended up getting a used one for cheap. It works fine apparently, though the last one was working after it was reset. It had a 50141 and I put in a 50140.

But I think the ECU code was just a mask for the real problem as I had an issue today when cranking it: The engine hesitated a bit to turn over before cranking and I got a little bit of white smoke in the exhaust. Wild guess: This is the steering pump valve letting fluid into the engine, and the computer / engine doesn't like it which made it go into limp mode a few weeks ago. Possible?

I'm going to do the plug off pump line this weekend if it's manageable. Any other ideas would be appreciated.

zukikat

I would HOPE they would also check for various cold solder joints elsewhere in the unit but if they don't then it's certainly not worth the money just for new non-surface mount electrolytic cap's.

If it's truly going into limp it home mode then it's extremely unhappy.
The 50142 my car came with would either randomly start shutting the ignition system on and off in about 1/2 second intervals and tell me nothing's wrong and then go back to normal again at random, or literally light the CEL solid, stop managing the tranny, yank the timing back to useless, and go into true limp it home mode for 20-30 minutes and wouldn't even reset at all or report any codes 'till I left it sitting parked and off for 20-30 minutes, and then it said everything was fine with no codes at all which is what prompted me to suspect and replace the ECU and the ECU swap did get my car back to drivable again...
When I test drove and finally bought my car, unaware of the common ECU problems, it was puffing an obvoius moderate smoke cloud on startup and continued lightly smoking the rest of the time it ran and it turns out that it was actually gulping in power steering fluid through that valve into the vacuum system and running the pump dry from full in 45 minutes or less and 90% of the smoke issue was due to that valve going bad on my car and the ECU didn't seem to notice or care at all.
With a new valve on the PS pump now I only get a light oil puff and lots of fuel vapors for a few seconds during the first cold start of the day and no more constant smoke at all...

Leaky valve stem seals will eventually cause a puff or even a cloud on cold starts as they get worse but it doesn't hurt anything to ignore them as they get leaky.

Hesitation during cranking as in not wanting to spin over or hesitation as in spins normal but takes longer than usual before firing up? What ECU code was it?

lex8000

The spins were slightly slower. The car did sit for 2 days but that's never mattered before.

When I originally brought my car in when it was starting off in the wrong gear, idling rough, no power etc (which I'm interpreting as limp mode, may be wrong), my mechanic said the code was for the ECU itself. It's a great shop, and he said he wasn't certain it was the ECU. Regarding the smoke, it never smokes on startup normally.

The only other symptom it had was a random shut off at 60mph a couple months ago.

Really I need to drive it some more. I want to do the PS control valve anyway at this point, though there are no guides online.

Thanks for the info.

williamb82

i had one of my ecu's "rebuilt". they didnt resolve the issue and wouldnt give me a refund, so i took it apart. i started a thread on it. the only parts replaced were the electrolytic caps. and they did a poor job at that. i think the issue with my original ecu was the ic i listed, but i have not tried finding another one to replace it. when you pay $100+ for a rebuild, they install about $5 worth of caps, and i have the pictures to prove it in that thread. the link is in the thread at the top of the forum.

lex8000

That's lame. Reading online reviews of one of the big ECU repair shops (top of google search) of this service leads me to believe they do little. In fact if you look at their reviews the percentage of positive looks decent. Then as you go deeper you see tons of negatives with details and a bunch of positives with generic praise written all around the same few weeks, blatant shilling. Oh and they have an F from BBB. Don't know if it is who you used or not.