99% sure I've found the problem today...

But first, my dumb self somehow managed to not tape my old key (loop was eaten off by the PO's dog, probably went through the dogs gut at some point) to the top of my spare ECU ~ couldn't find it Anywhere ~ so I couldn't test that. Then, while pulling the chip to re-virgin it, I burned off 2 of the pads that go to the traces..... to be fair, I *might* have burned those off initially when "testing".

Today I pulled the one that was in the truck and working fine for the past ~14 months. Used my new hot-air rework station (OMG! Talk about the RIGHT tool for the job!) to practice a little on the now-trashed ECU before pulling the IMMO chip. Pull the IMMO chip only to see that 1 trace came off with the chip. You ever get that "sinking" feeling, where your heart just drops a little? Yeah, well... I felt that. Then felt some other things when I told the wife....

So, I'm guessing that my lack of skills and trying to use the wrong tool to do the job, lead to an early failure... and one that no one else is likely to experience (except those who try to follow my path of making a master key).


What I now need is a new ECU. Help guys? Yup, I'll post in the classifieds too..

89661-3D570

I'm a pre 05/May 1999 (apparently there's a change there), V6, 4x4, AT

Cheers!