16-92 broken valve question

One can only hope.....

Oscarvan: I have 3406 Cats, two years ago the ECM failed on one and needed to be replaced. Cat mechanic from local dealer told me the issue was failure of the non serviceable EPROM battery and they all eventually die necesetating replacement. Rather than pay for "refurbished" ECM, can the battery be replaced or is the unit truly non serviceable?

Funny you should say that, Capt J. I have dreamed of doing something like that, should anything happen to this current job.

Having the knowledge is one thing, but having all the specialized equipment is another. It might be easier at first to hook up with some established refurb outfit and offer them my services (a la Rod Stewart "I'll find a rock and roll band, that could use a helping hand... ").

For a while, we had a DDEC Reman department in our factory while DDEC was a customer. Some of the Returns units that weren't too badly damaged could be refurbed and sold under the Reman program. I know Cummins also has a Reman facility up in El Paso (I know because they've come to us for help, heheh).

For the DDEC 3's and 4's, the Simulator/Tester box was about 2 by 3 feet, with connectors and switches and loads that allowed the ECU to be powered up and run through all its functions. The Sim/Tester was controlled by a program running under Win31/DOS (don't laugh, remember this was mid-90's technology).

The DDEC 5 Sim/Tester was much more involved, using two computers-- one to control the Simulator, and one to simulate the DD engine itself (in case you didn't happen to have one in the back room).

I always wondered where all that specialized Simulator and Tester equipment went after we lost the DDEC contract. Probably back to Detroit Diesel, which I guess means it's with MTU now.

With the exception of the cable connectors, all the components on the DDEC Printed Circuit Board are Surface Mount. So in addition to knowing the function and analysis of the ECU, a Reman shop would need rework people who could perform fine-pitch surface mount component repair. Well, got that covered too, since part of being an automotive electronics supplier in this industry requires all the technicians to be IPC-4000/610 certified. (One nice perk is, the company pays for this certification, but the certificate is issued to the employee. Gotta like that.)

Anyway, I'm glad you find this topic interesting. What can I say, it's my life's work. I guess at least I should apologize to the Original Poster for hijacking his thread, which started out about a broken valve, and now has vectored to ECUs. Oh well

Don't know. JamesGarfield would though.

As it happens, we do also make the ECM's for Caterpillar, altho I don't work on that particular product (I was DDEC, then OnStar, then BMW Everest, then Cummins). CAT built their big engine plant just up the highway from us, so our plant reps went knocking on their door like Hey neighbor, Yer making engines? Well we make ECU's, wanna do business?

I do have access to most of the CAT schematics and diagrams, and can check to see if that battery is user replaceable or not. What model ECM do you have? In the tractor world, the CAT ECM's are physically huge, much larger than DDEC or Cummins units, because Caterpillar likes to place as much as possible of the tractor's electronics into that one box.

In DDEC's the lithium battery was designated non-user replaceable, although in the DDEC 4's any competent tech could if necessary pry open the unit, solder in a new battery, then reseal the case lid with RTV.

The DDEC 5's went to a very different design, to where opening the unit without disturbing the battery was more difficult. 'Disturbing the battery' means putting too much physical stress on the little battery's leads, to where the case ruptures and starts spewing out the lithium electrolyte. HuuuWEEE what a rancid stink that makes in your shop, you'll never want to do it twice .

Maybe I'm off base, but I find the fact that such an expensive unit is planned to be failing in such a relatively short time, and then require rebuilding all because of a battery is pretty revolting. Pees me off.

Of course replacing a headlight bulb in my wife's Denali didn't put me in a good mood. It required removing two bolts on the headlight unit, then 12 (TWELVE) bolts/plastic fasteners on the grill, wheel well liner and fender/front bumper to get to the last bolt on the headlight. Thank goodness for Youtube. Took me a half hour, and I was moving right along. That means that the dealer would have charged me an hour's labor to change a freaking lightbulb!

Of course on her previous Suburban the oil pressure sender failed, and it is located on the back of the engine and to get to it the intake manifold had to come off!!!! 4 hours labor!

Who designs this crap?

Rant off. Sorry about the thread drift.

Actually, you design it. We all do as consumers. We want this advanced technology and all this equipment but we want it lightweight and fit into a space much too small. So, it can't and won't all fit ideally. That means there are some items which are quite inaccessible. Now, admittedly, on top of that the designers don't always make the best choices possible. Just that we're looking for the impossible sometimes.

One other thing I'll point out on some of these items. The dealer sometimes has special tools or methods to reduce the effort. As an example, I'll offer a vehicle with a lightbulb issue somewhat similar to yours. Typical shop took about 45 minutes doing the job. Dealer could do it in less than 10. Only know that because we have a small fleet of vehicles with that issue.

I always thought that the engineers/designers/architects outta have to work in the field, with their own knuckles bleeding , for a while to appreciate the beauty of a well thought out machine. ( or home, or pump station etc.etc. )

Wouldn't that be loverly?

I think that a year (minimum) apprenticeship or internship in the field after the 3rd year of a 4 year program or between first and second years of a two year program should be a certification/licensing requirement.

I think they should have to actually use the products they design for a period of time before they go to manufacturing.

James, the information on my ECM:
Engine serial number. 9WR02761
ECM Serial Number 3398B028CG
Personality Module Part Number. 2718690-00
Personality Module Release Date. FEB05
Personality Module Code. 40

Hope this helps, won't be on boat for two weeks, at that time I can look at unit for actual part number

Oscarvan, I hear ya. It's partly due to technology, and partly to economics. 20 years ago, using a lithium battery was pretty much the only option for keeping the RAM alive, because advanced non-volatile storage was almost unavailable at that time.

Today, there are higher-tech options, such as the Electrically Erasable Programmable Memory, or EEprom, or we just call it E2. The processor can write data to the E2 on the fly, and that data remains nonvolatile pretty much indefinitely (like the solid-state hard drives in PC's today).

But, E2 costs more than conventional RAM with a battery backup. A manufacturer might have pre-purchased a boat-load (pardon the pun) of the older parts and needs to use 'em up. Or, they might just choose the lower cost option.

Even E2 does have its life expectancy limits. In the Cummins controllers, for example, the ECU stays awake for about 5 minutes after the engine is shut off. The processor is doing some data cleanup, keeping an eye on the keyswitch inputs in case the truck driver comes back soon. After about 5 minutes, the processor writes data to the E2, and then the ECU goes to sleep mode (very low current draw).

The E2 has an expected life expectancy of about 100,000 write cycles. With the way your average commercial truck is operated, that still translates into approximately 5 years of expected service life. So it kinda comes out as a wash either way .

CAD - CAM was supposed to do away with all sins. It didn't, was on a 92 meter Oceanco last week where the engineers couldn't remove the valve cores vertically from the fuel manifolds due to a designed obstruction directly above. This is after 3-D CAD software designed the layout and the manifolds flanges /piping were CAM cut and installed per spec with the other associated machinery so don't feel envious of the engineers on a 200 million mega yacht cause they're breaking their knuckles & bleeding as well as the owner operators on a Hatteras or Bertram.
But I guess that we can feel just a little envious of these engineers as these manually operated valve manifolds are the back ups for remotely mounted pneumatic valves used from a touch screen in a climate controlled ECR for fuel transfer and bunker operations along with most of the other engineering functions aboard.

Oceanco seems to be infamous for that sort of thing. It appears that there is little communication between the designers who develop the layers of systems. It seems like the separate groups don't consider interferences.

One particularly bad example of the above was main engine exhaust flanges that placed the uppermost bolt in a position that was impossible to torque properly. When the gasket failed it caused more than a quarter million dollars damage.

Hi GSCI,

Tonight I was able to check on our Caterpillar models for you. We acquired CAT as a customer only recently, in the early part of 2014.

So we don't have any data on your 2005 model with the battery. In fact, none of these current models use a battery, so looks like CAT finally got with the program and went to E2 for the nonvolatile storage.

Wish I could help you more .

I get that. And, I have no problem with a battery being used. I have a problem with not being able to easily replace the battery. Remember when you just clicked the battery off the back of your cell phone? Try that with an iPhone or equivalent. Same issue. Now there happens to be a GREAT company called iFixit that sells the parts/tools to do this and has excellent instructions on their web site. I just replaced the screen on my wife's 6 in about an hour for under a hundred. But I digress.

The older ECU's should have been designed so that you can plug in a temporary external power source and then click-flip-click put in a new battery without losing the data. A field tech/dealer should be able to do that in 30 seconds. The total obsolescence of the entire unit and it's associated cost because of the stupid battery running out is criminal.

Sure, there are certain situations where this applies. I can tell you for a fact though, that there is no way in hell to get the lightbulb out of the back of that fixture without removing half the front end. It is dead smack up against the washer fluid reservoir and there is no physical room to get it out, don't care what kid of tool you bring. There was also no tool to pull that oil pressure sender out without removing the intake manifold, as the dealer told me with a sheepish grin on his face.

This is highway robbery, plain and simple.

Funny you should say that, Oscavan! I was doing some net searching yesterday for GSCI's Cat ECU battery question, and came across a document: the Wisconsin Highway Patrol Technical Field Guide To Preserving Data From Truck ECU's During Crash Investigations. The document breaks down the procedure per manufacturer-- DDEC, CAT, Cummins, etc. They made a point of mentioning that the DDEC 3 ECU has no internal battery, so if the vehicle battery is going to be removed or disconnected in a crash investigation, an external voltage supply should first be attached to preserve any relevant data.

I knew that the DDEC 4 and later will store not only Diagnostic Codes (DTC's), but it also keeps a 1-month log of engine operation. So if a truck comes in with a spun bearing, the tech can look back and see, 'Oh lets see, looks like we had an engine overspeed event last Tuesday, looks like John was driving that day, maybe we need to talk to John... '.

I guess nowdays the cops can pull engine and vehicle performance data in a crash investigation just like a black box in an airliner.

The new generations of data logging features in control systems makes it so easy to archive operating information it provides an "oh wow" moment nearly every week.

The controller of the SeaClean exhaust treatment system records a minute by minute log of temperature, pressure, power and operating hours on a thumb drive. The engineer can pull the drive even when the system is working and a minute later can produce a spreadsheet and graph of the past year's operating parameters. No gymnastics, special tools, or technician's invoice required. It is designed to make the engineer's life easy instead of more complicated because it was designed by people who look at such things exactly the same as Oscarvan.

If I had a dollar for every time I cursed the air breathed by the designer of some piece of impossible to reach or maintain piece of equipment that is always too hot to touch or requires a proprietary tool I could hire someone else swear at the designer or installer.