O.K., so Jorge hasn't sold his Accord yet. That didn't stop him from going to Space Age paint and buying some color-correct black for (WTF?) painting the underbody with his new HVLP gun from Harbor Freight. He hasn't started anything yet, though, since I told him he still needs another regulator at the gun as well as a filter/drier before his last hose. He also has to find a place to paint, so there's that.

I ordered him a replacement/used ECU for his '86 today, Federal emissions-specific, manual transmission-specific, all based on a hunch. Hunch confirmed tonight when I pulled his old ECU and extracted the circuit board. Upon careful examination with my half-century old eyes, I could see a tiny river of contamination sluicing across several circuit paths in the middle of the board. Score!, at least as long as the ECU that Lordtrunks linked us to is good (a $55 gamble). This is my first contaminated board out of all the Monteros I've worked on, so I figure the odds be at least 50/50 on the replacement. A bad ECU explains everything we'd been seeing on this truck, as explained ad nauseum, in previous posts. I'll keep you posted, or at least bored.

Oh, and Jorge's stereo in his '89 rocks the house and his locker works as advertised.

John B.