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2021.12.31 escape ECU replacement:


My newer Escape suddenly started idling rough and suffering poor and stuttery acceleration, as well as a heavy
smell of gas out the tailpipe. I had recently experienced this with my Explorer, and it had turned out to be
a bad oxygen sensor. Cheap part, but they put it basically right on top of the engine block, under a ton of
other stuff, so the labor was a bit high. So that's what I was expecting again.

NOPE. After many hours of troubleshooting, the local garage concluded the ECU was bad. It wasn't commanding
the 5th cylinder in the coil pack to fire. They had no good source for an ECU for this model so I gave my
wallet one last hug and went to the dealership for them to see if they could fix it. Turned out to be kind of
a good-news bad-news situation. Normally a dealership will only present you with the most expensive option,
but in this case, the ECU wasn't available new. (probably too many of them went out and depleted stock) That
meant they had to search for a refurb. It was cheaper than a new one, but did take them a few days to dig up.
Still wasn't cheap though. $400 for the ECU, and about that much more to replace it. Of course since it has
chipped keys, so I got a new set of keys with the new ECU.

And that meant my remote start didn't work anymore because the chip-bypass for the remote was using a clone of
the old keys. So I also had to drop off my truck for a day for the accessory shop to update the bypass module.
But now it all works again. For now. Until next time. But that's just the joy of owning a vehicle. You're
just living from one repair to the next.



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last updated 09/08/2023 at 09:38:20