I'm in the process of checking lots of things on my '94 TS to buy some peace of mind for a trip in the following weeks (which is why I asked about the ride height sensor... come on! No answers?
).
Today I decided to spend some time checking the codes on the ECU, and logging a few short drives to see what was going on. So... here's what I found:
- The gear selector switch seems to be bad (sometimes seems to oscillate between gears, according to the scanner). There was also a code on the ECU for this. The needle on the dashboard is not aligned correctly with the letters underneath. May this be the problem?
- The car had an unstable idle, and sometimes died when left in park or neutral. AND the dashboard vents were not working from the day we bought it last year. I discovered today that whoever messed up with the engine before me had switched two vacuum hoses: the one coming out of the evaporator canister purge switch was going to the A/C vents, and the one that should have gone to the A/C vents was going to the canister
. Switched them and now I have working vents and a stable idle speed. BUT... now I can feel some "pulling" while driving (in Toyota terms, "longitudinal oscillations"). May the ECU be messed up by running with the hoses switched, or is there anything that may have been damaged?
- This is the best one: at some point in time (while checking the vacuum) the car started running like crap. Lo and behold, when I checked the log file of the scanner, looks like the whole car is shutting down at a very fast pace. That is: the battery voltage -and all the other gauges for that matter- go to zero (or very close to it) for a fraction of a second and then back to a normal reading
. The car doesn't die, but this can't be normal. Any guesses about what can be the problem?
- The speedometer is reading more than the actual speed (I had confirmed this using a GPS). By checking the ALDL logs, I confirmed the ECU is receiving the right speed measurement, and the problem seems to be the speedometer itself. Is there something that can be adjusted on the speedometer, or is there something specific that I should check?
It's amazing how much information can you get by using some cheap scanner software/hardware, isn't it?
Now... if I could only find an easy solution to the problems I discovered...
Any help?