DuoWing

I just joined and hoped maybe you guys can give me some direction on where to go with this car. The car isn't mine, it's my brothers, but I'll give you as much as I know. It's an 05' auto with as far as I can tell the full dezod turbo kit. When he first bought the car it always had the CEL on, but it seemed to run fine. Only occasionally does the car stall out. I haven't experienced it, but I haven't driven it enough. Sounds like primarily when coasting/slowing down does it do it. Had all the codes read and turned up all kinds of codes. ECM, Front O2, rear O2, cam position sensor, turbine input sensor(speed sensor?), cylinder 1 misfire. I replaced the cam position sensor and the front O2 sensor a couple months ago, but we never had the codes cleared. I at least thought that they the go away after a while of the ECU seeing that they're working? Eventually we found the exhaust manifold to be cracked like crazy and ended up replacing it with the new design dezod manifold. It's hard to ever get any info out of my brother about when things happen or what they're doing.

Anyway I drove it after replacing the manifold and the thing is shifting and hesitating wildly. If you're in drive accelerating the trans doesn't seem to want to shift up until you let off the throttle. I didn't try, but I feel like I can run it to redline if I just keep accelerating. I got it on the freeway at a slow cruising speed then stomped on it and the thing revved up, jerked and tried to kick down, went to readline, jerked, etc. It was like it couldn't figure out what it wanted to do. I took it up to Autozone and had the codes read again and they're still the same including the cam and front O2 sensor. He doesn't have much money so I'm not sure where to instruct him to go next. I see used ECUs aren't too expensive on ebay, so we could try one, but I don't know if the AEM FIC will cause your ECU to throw a code making it think the ECU is bad? I know that in newer Toyotas the auto trans is supposed to be all tied in through the ECU as well. So I don't know if a lot of these codes would be an ECU issue or these are bad as well. Any advice on where to go would be appreciated.

paul_dezod

Sounds like it needs to be tuned truthfully.

DuoWing

It wasn't doing the shifting thing when he first got it, this seems to have started more recently. I know the craigslist ad said it was professionally tuned, but I never met this guy so I don't know. My guess is that it wasn't. I've seen it mentioned that disconnecting the negative cable will clear codes on OBDII. I thought that it didn't? Anyway may have to get the codes cleared and see what comes back. Also might have to just plug into the AEM and see what everything looks like myself.

paul_dezod

Removing the negative terminal for 1 min will remove all codes and reset fuel trims.

DuoWing

Well I played around with the car a little. He had the codes all reset and it ran good for a week or so and slowly worked its way back to where it was at. Today I drove it and it was running really badly, found that the coupler on the intake side of the turbo was barely connected as the clamp had slid off. Fixed that, but the car still ran poorly. I have no experience with the AEM, but I downloaded the software for the FI/C 6 which is what came up when I punched in the serial number on the box. I just wanted to see if I could get some logging stuff to come up, I plugged it in with the car idling, it loaded the drivers and such, but that was it. Couldn't seem to get anything to connect or even the logging options in the software. Eventually I either bumped the box or something and the car stalled. Car would crank, but would not turn over. I pulled out what I assume is the relay for the AEM and it was really poorly wired with crimp connectors that looked like all the wires were nearly pulled from the connectors.






Here's how the #5 pin was connected to the relay wire, it did have tape on it though.


Also the #5 pin wire with a slight tug pulled out of the connector to the AEM. I cut the 22 pin AEM connector from the dezod plug and play adapter and spliced it all over to the 22 pin connector that came with the AEM and then just taped up the remaining unused wires. I had a relay connector so I nicely spliced that all in.



The remaining 24 pin connector has wires looking like they're about to come out of the pins as the copper is exposed, the picture doesn't show it as well as I'd like. I may end up splicing in the other AEM connector.



Anyway after fixing the wiring to the one connector and fixing the wiring to the relay I went and plugged it all in and the car still would not turn over. It was cranking, but I wasn't hearing popping or signs of even trying to start. I pulled two different plugs one at a time and tried connecting them to the coil pack while cranking to look for spark and I was getting no spark. Then I went ahead and completely took out the plug and play connector and connected the stock ECU. I still couldn't get it to start, and was still seeing no spark. I thought maybe a fuse blew, but the EFI, ECU-B, and OBDII fuses under the hood were all fine. I'm not sure where to go at this point. Any direction would be appreciated.


Oh I also forgot to mention that there was no vacuum line running to the AEM FIC. I'd assume that there should be?

UPDATE: Alright got it running again, it turned out to be the other ignition fuse under the dash was blown and melted. It seems to run significantly better after fixing all the wiring. After about a 15-20 minute drive the check engine light hasn't come back on yet, but the car did stall once on just a straight while coasting at low speeds. Does seem like it needs tuned and probably a vacuum line to the AEM

That_Kid_Ju

Without a vacuum line to the AEM, it cannot properly determine the absolute pressure as the car runs (assuming some or all of your maps are set to output based on the MAP sensor), thus can't adjust the outputs properly. That's probably a big reason why it's running like poo-poo, the FIC probably sees ~14.7 psi all the time. You need to get a vac line to that FIC ASAP!

jct

that wiring looks like s#!t glad you're fixing that mess

DuoWing

A quick question I had is does anyone know what the relay is for exactly, or at least how it's supposed to be wired? The way it's hooked up is pins 85 and 86 are powering the relay with the ignition on, but 87 and 30 are seeing power going through them only when cranking. I'm not quite sure why the relay is there when you could just connect pin 5 from the AEM directly to the other wire going into pin 87 on the relay. Unless someone originally hooked it up the wrong way. Usually I thought the point of the relay was to take the load off the switch and then power it from another source, but right now it just seems like I've just added in another switch that this current has to go through.


Edit: after some searching I came across some threads and figured out that the relay is to stop the power drain issue that the autos seem to have after shutoff. Apparently this ties into the speed sensor as well, so fixing that horrible wiring might be why I'm no longer seeing the speed sensor code. Actually I've seemed to get rid of the all the codes except for the downstream sensor showing up every once in a while. Not worried about that. Got a vacuum line run to the AEM, pulled the negative cable again, and the car seems to run very nice. Apparently the car is still stalling out on my brother, so I guess it's now time to mess with the AEM and try to log/see what's going on, but at this point it does sound like it needs a tune. I'm fairly certain that the previous owner is just running the dezod base tune? Which at least according to the instructions is a tune simply to get you running and driving halfway decent so you can then go get it tuned.