yeah give the original ecu a try, smoke on startup is nothing to worry about really, most likely valve stem seals and we all get that problem sooner or later, just wait till you have the head off again or do a cam upgrade and get them swapped out at the same time.

If you get the symptoms again, just immediately pull it over and reset the ecu and see if it goes away, then you will at least have a quick fix (and narrow the problem down some). When I ran an safc2 I learned to keep the negative terminal on the battery finger tight, so I could hop out and reset the ecu in like 30 seconds. ahh the good old safc days...

 

Good thing I bought new battery terminal connectors last year with all of this battery removal lol. The old ones crumbled one day last summer. I believe the ECU I currently have installed is from a '92 which might have had hella miles on it.

 

Car started whining like a 16 year old spoiled girl from Orange County this morning. I just had a new power steering pump installed two weeks ago.

 

Check ur drive belt, today was the first really cold day and that belt or tensioner might be on the way out.

 

Serp Belt is only a year old but I can't speak for the tensioner. The P/S pump was used, but from a vehicle with only 33k miles. The weird thing is that the fluid is full but brown and not pink. I have a feeling that the mechanic did a half *** job on the install and didn't bleed and refill with dextron toyota atf like I requested. I even dropped off the fluid that I bought from the dealer. The noise is definitely coming from the P/S pump as I heard it through my stethoscope. I also learned today that another mechanic didn't install the low side cap back on my A/C recharge fitting. I'm not going to say that this is where a slight A/C leak came from, but it's another occasion where these mechanics really don't give a snot about anything. I wish there was an honest indy Toyota mechanic in our area.