Max 5Gen I took the ECU out it looks like the previous owner had a refurbished replacement as it had his address and phone # on it when the top lid says Nissan 3T A56-r63 Ze7 1621 What does your says? My car was manufactured on 6/01 think that makes it a 5.5 gen right. Also the ignition driver ship had different numbers than yours this one says 1C23 HD62103. The lay out of the motherboard is a little different than the one you have if you email me I´ll send you a pic of it (pinafrancisco75@hotmail.com). Did notice that everything had a coat of laquer and right were you pointed in the ignition driver switch was a small drop of laquer kind of connecting it to the next pin gonna clean it out and see if that clears the problem everything else looks good and no melted or shorted out parts anywhere.

Nope tryed nothing still the same, Can I put a 2002 ecu on a 5.5 eventhough the engine is 3.5?

 

I sent you email with links to full pictures of my ECU. I also have HD62103 chip and it is not the ignition driver. Laquer prevents moisture to get to the contacts and believe it or not it prevents parts from movement due to vibration. If they didn't do so we would be fixing ECUs left and right due to bad soldering contacts. As part of some old work researchers tested printed boards under vibration so after some time parts were literally falling out from them. So bless Nissan for doing this. If you don't have proper equipment to desolder/extract the chip I can share the ghetto technique which doesn't require anything more than good soldering iron and patience... a lot of it. That laquer is also under the chip but from my experience you can crack it off without damaging.

If my understanding is correct the marked pin of the ignition driver lost contact with its internal MOSFET, so you don't have a short but quite the opposite. Laquer doesn't have any adverse effects on this voltage, don't bother cleaning it.

 

Do share the getto technique I found a working ecu for 75 dollars.

 

OK, you asked for it .

You will need:
Soldering station which has thermostabilized iron, like one of the Weller's
Soldering wire with rosin inside, about 1mm diam
0.2-0.3 mm diam wire which solder doesn't stick to. This is very important, we used wire from broken heating elements. They're made of alloy which is not solderable without special flux.
Rosin and other tools you would normally use.

Set iron temperature to the value that it can easily melt soldering wire but rosin doesn't make smoke when you put it in. You also have to make sure its tip is covered with thin layer of solder otherwise the rest is very hard to do.

You would need to take that wire, get it under one of the chip's pins,
and holding both of its ends in one hand heat the pin with the iron from above. Don't hold iron longer than 2 sec. When solder under the pin melts you pull the loop of wire under the pin out - it will take thin layer of solder between pin and PCB with it leaving pin hanging in the air 0.2 mm off the PCB. Repeat this 19 more times . Then take exacto knife, stick it slightly under the chip and twist. Make sure there's no PCB wire under the knife. This should break it off the board. I never seen one which didn't but i never fixed ECUs either, so be careful. I would start from your original ECU as it is already broken. You're running the possibility of towing, so park the car accordingly.

When you will be putting it back make sure the PCB contacts are clean. Place the chip on the board watching orientation and solder two pins across the chip. Then solder another 2 corner pins and then all the rest. This ensures that all intermidiate pins match their contacts. You won't need much of solder, only small amount otherwise it will connect adjustent pins.

I replaced chips with 0.8 mm interval and 120 pins on 4 sides using this technique. It worked every time and I couldn't afford to damage neither chip nor board but it does requre certain skills.

 

If the above looks like a lot of trouble you could try bring both ECUs to a good electronics repair shop or some place where they sale/repair game consoles and ask them to do it. The latter usually cheaper from my experience.

 

Thanks man, will do it over the weekend. Will the chip of a 2002 ecu work on a 2001 eventhough the engine is 3.5?

 

A chip is a chip, if it has 20 pins and 151007 on it it will work. This is very dumb chip, just bunch of MOSFETs in the same case. As I said people go as far as putting corresponding discrete MOSFET on top of it without removing the chip at all. Not that I advise you to do so, just to show that this is not microprocessor or anything like that. This chip will fit even if you take it from a TV. Not that I know the model though . One more thing - keep iron tip clean. The easy way to do is to wipe it with Kleenex - fold it few times and wipe the iron holding napkin with your fingers. If the napkin is not wet you won't get burned. Good luck!

Please do as I said in post #32 after replacement, I don't want you to get into more troubles.

 

Update after many months, it was the computer like Max 5gen said, the computer was replaced with a used one and the bad coil replaced for a new one and no problem. Ended up trading the car because it was leaking oil from somewhere and needed new struts. Got a 2002 Lexus GS300 which was great until the first snow and now back to a Maxima but this time a 2004 with all the options.

 

lol, I was thinking about trading for a GS300, what was the problem? sideways?

 

Sideways, circles, crazy car. I took me one day to move it from the parking spot and that was only with 5 inches of snow, had to literally clean the whole spot free of snow and ice to get some traction. The computer with the ect snow and the vct completely cut off the power to the wheels so you cant even get some movement and if you turn it off they just spin out of control sending the car in a fishtail. The while driving in the snow while going up a a little incline in the road started spinning and doing circles almost got hit by a semi. Also when the road was wet and you took a curve it will easily fisht tail. So that was it for that adventure now back in safe waters with the Maxima.

 

don't forget you will need to have your immoliblizer reprogrammed if you are gona use the entire ECU.

 

man oh man. So one of my previous employees called me up today, needed me to come down to his garage with the scanner and figure out why his girlfreinds '97 that he just put a motor in (Actually the de-k shortblock from my '95) was running like garbage. Well in addition to........ THIRTEEN CODES! YES, THIRTEEN CODES! it was a record for me, I took a picture of it! They were all irrelevant though, all sorts of emmissions codes and a few for the trans as well. Anyways I found all 3 front coils were melted, replaced them and the new ones started melting & smoking right away.

I won't have a chance to get back down there until Thursday, but I have a feeling I'm going to see voltage @ pin 1 on the front three. Plan is to unplug the ecu and if it goes away then have him get an ecu, and before putting in the new ecu check for any shorts because I'm assuming the coil drivers are somewhat similiar to the injector drivers which can get fried from a short. I might just tell him to get a harness anyways though, almost isn't worth the risk, the car does have 280K on it and had a bad core support for awhile, maybe it got kinked or stressed doing the motor.

Anyways I'm just rambling, no point in my post or bumping a really old thread, it was up on the screen from researching earlier and I really just felt the need to tell somebody that I saw 13 codes on the actron today.

 

Good idea, just disconnect all the coils and compare voltages.

I don't think so - colis seem to contain bipolar transistor and it is controlled by current not voltage. In other words, it looks like a short for the driver inside ECU under normal conditions. So, they are not like injector drivers. 'I think' each channel has resistor connected to +12 inside ECU and some kind of switch which grounds that resistor almost all the time. The switch turns off only when that channel is supposed to produce a spark. If switch gets disconnected/burned/some other trouble inside ECU preventing it from turning on the resistor will turn on the transistor inside the coil and leave it there. This will lead to uncontrollable increase of the current flowing through the coil hence the smoke.

Overkill, IMHO - if you test voltage on coil connectors after ECU replacement and find it very close to 0 (<0.2V) - go ahead and plug the coils in, it shouldn't melt anything. Don't skip this step regardless of the route you choose and make sure you don't connect coils without checking this voltage first..

 

Hello I was hoping you can give me advice on my 2004 Nissan Maxima. I started having problems with it in Dec. 2022. I was driving home, when the battery and brake light went on. The lights dimmed and the car could only accelerate up to 20mph. Thankfully I made it to a gas station. I had to have it towed because we gave it a jump but it would not maintain a charge. I took it to Goodyear. They said it was just replacing the alternator. Then he calls me a couple of hours later and asked if I had smelled smoke when it died on me. I said no of course not. He said he would need to have it checked by another mechanic because he didn't know what was the issue. I was surprised so I went to pick up my car, he said he was so sorry and was not responsible for me taking my car. When I turned on the car, the check engine light was on and it was shaking. It died on me and there was smoke under the hood. I had to have it towed again, but this time to another mechanic. The mechanic replaced 2 ignition coils, valve cover, wires, 2-O2 sensors, struts, 2 motor mounts, and a remanufactured ECU. The old computer was not recognizing the new O2 sensors. It took maybe 3 weeks for me to get my car back due to the holidays. I have spent so much on the car. Then this past Sunday the car started shaking again and the check engine light went on. I could smell like burnt gasoline from the exhaust. I had to have the car towed. Yesterday the mechanic replaced the other 4 ignition coils. He also added a ground from the battery to the ignition coils. Is this safe? Two of the coils had started to melt and the other 2 were bulging. I had bought the 1st two that had melted at Autozone in July 2021. What can cause an ignition coil to melt and cause a fire? I picked up my car today and it drove fine. The only thing I noticed is that when I set the time, the numbers were moving slowly. Like when the car has been out in below zero weather. It seemed odd to me. Even after driving for 15 minutes, the numbers on the radio changed slowly. Is this normal? Did the battery get weak with the added ground? What should I keep my on? I don't know if I should take it to the dealer for a full inspection. All of these issues seem electrical. I cannot afford to buy a new car. Also, back in Nov. 2022, Goodyear steam cleaned the engine to check for a leak. Do you think they did something wrong to cause these issues? For sure they did something wrong with my car when I took it to them in Dec. It just doesn't make sense. What steps should I take? What would you do in my situation? I would really appreciate all your advice. From your responses, I can tell you have experience. Thank you very much

 

welcome, and sorry for your troubles. first you need to start your own thread and not revive a 15 year old thread. 2nd you need to post your thread in the proper generation / year , so people can better help you. 3rd i recommend you find a trusted local mechanic that can work on imported cars ( not a retail chain mechanic like good year) and explain everything to them. ask friend or family to see who they can refer you to.