Water in the connector is a top killer of Cat ECMs on trucks and equipment. Corroded pins can be the harness, the ECM, or both. Here is how to tell, and what you do next.
Sale through October 31: $525 on every Cat 70-pin repair (regularly $745). Paid at checkout, full refund if we can't fix it. Failed flash recovery available.
Green or white crust on the connector or ECM pins, pins that look burnt or pushed back, or a connector that came apart wet.
Symptoms: no start, intermittent shutdowns, random sensor codes, the diagnostic tool dropping the connection, or an ECM that goes dead after rain or a pressure wash.
Corroded sockets on the harness side cause the same symptoms as a bad ECM. Inspect and clean or replace the harness terminals before you condemn the module.
Look for green wicking up the wires. If it has traveled into the harness, the harness needs repair too, or the new connection will fail again.
If water got into the module, or pins on the ECM itself are corroded or burned, the ECM needs to be bench-tested. Many of these units are repairable; a board eaten away by corrosion is the exception, and we tell you that up front.
Do not keep powering up a unit with a wet or corroded connector. Each power-up can burn more traces.
Shipping us the ECM from anywhere in the US is the normal way these get done. Pack it with the connectors capped or taped and add a prepaid shipping label at checkout if you need one.
Rule of thumb: power, grounds, and harness first, module second. We bench-test every unit, so if the ECM isn't your problem, we'll tell you that too.
Component-level repair, bench test, and your original programming stays with your module. About 3 to 5 days on the bench. You pay the repair price at checkout, before you ship it. Any normal failure we can't fix, you get a full refund. The exceptions are when the ECM itself is the reason: a board that is cracked, burned, or eaten by water and corrosion, a proprietary chip that is no longer made, or damage from an earlier repair attempt. In those cases, and if your ECM tests good with nothing wrong, $150 covers the bench test, the written report and the return shipping, and we refund the rest.
Often yes. We test the unit first. If the board itself is destroyed by water and corrosion, that is one of the cases where we refund everything but the $150 test, report and return shipping.
Both can cause it. Inspect the harness terminals first. If the harness is clean and the symptom stays, the ECM needs testing.
Yes. You can add a prepaid label at checkout when you start the repair.
More Cat ECM symptoms: Cat 70-pin ECM problems & symptoms · Cat Won't Start After the Battery Died · Cat ET Won't Connect to the ECM · Cat Dead Cylinder With Good Injectors · Cat Throws Many Sensor Codes at Once
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