I visited Tanin Electronix (they spell it with an x) and delivered an SC400 instrument cluster for basic repair..along with cores they expressed interest in purchasing...

I have a background in electonic components and materials; Automtive instrument cluster OEM's Stewart -Warner, Motorola, Littelfuse (fuses), Autometer, were but a few of accounts I serviced.

I am contemplating a write up of my experience with Tanin, however thus far the experience has been unfavorable;

1.) Their advertising turn around time (1-3 days) is inaccurate and almost 2 weeks now do not have an answer.

2.) They have not kept their word to call me neccesitating I call them to follow-up on status.and can never seem to pin them down on a delivery date

3.) I was informed they are backlogged and short personnel and that yet the owner remains "out of town"

4.).I had to request a receipt listing the cores I delivered.

When I have a customer that requires attention I am 24/7...in fact I had two ECU's that the owner's needed the next day and was up until 3 AM to keep my word. (As a favor)

As an aside...I am looking to place my Negative grounding cable design wirh a distributor using Parts from Quick Cable who is 10 minutes drive from Tanin...

I posited to Tanin they could offer this, but instead no one there coukd be bothered to either see me or provide courtesy follow-up to understand the opportunity.

Right now I cannot recommend anyone to Tanin.

In fact am seeking alternates....

Anyone with recommendations?

 

I have no experience with ECU repairs from DriftMotion but they are a reputable company and they have options for ECU repair, around $90 I think.

 

I sent one to them in 2015, it took a little longer than I thought it would and their communication isn't overwhelming but overall it turned out pretty well.

 

I have had good experiences with Tanin Auto Electronix on the service of three ECUs. Yes, it takes a bit longer for turnaround in some cases but they are thorough and only have a few people on site who are tasked with ECU repairs. For SC's they also keep one or two of our cars in the shop in order to final test their repairs to the ECUs to make sure startup can be confirmed. I don't know for sure but I assume that final QC may add to the turnaround time.

What I absolutely have had terrible experience with is Fedex Overnight to and from Tanin Auto, especially if you are sending from and receiving to a California address. I do not feel that this is any fault of Tanin-- it is entirely on Fedex's Overnight division. I do not recommend any overnight service when contracting with them for repairs but Fedex Overnight is not to be trusted-- not worth the risk if they lose your rare shipment or mis-deliver. The wait time may be inconvenient but it is worth it to use a slower shipping tier (Fedex or another) with insurance on the ECU as a precaution. Any other shipping service (preferably non-overnight) is fine.

Now, Fedex Overnight aside... the actual service from Tanin I have been very happy with from three separate experiences. Jason and the staff are very thorough. You do have to keep on them in some cases for updates but I always chalked this up to the small staff and whatever order load they had at the time. Generally they've been good about getting back to me when I had questions. The ECU's always came back in great working order, even a who-knows-the-condition eBay ECU I bought and sent them for capacitor repair.

Alternatively there is Driftmotion and they also do very good ECU repair work. They advertise primarily 1JZGTE and 2JZGTE JDM ECU repair but they can and do work on the NA SC300 and SC400 ECUs and others. I had a 2JZGTE ECU repaired by them and I was able to inspect the boards myself with a one of their staff upon drop off and pickup (for me this was local and in person). I believe Aaron does all or most of these repairs himself.

Both are very good companies to use for ECU repair. I've used Tanin more than Driftmotion but I recommend them both.

I can't speak on extremely fast turnarounds because I never pressed for this myself after my one bad experience with Fedex Overnight.

...

As to whether or not these ECU's actually need capacitor repair in the first place... this is just a matter of time. Not all ECUs are affected at the same rate as others. On the previous page t2d2 linked to a longstanding thread explaining why this is the case for nearly all 1985-1997(ish) pre-VVT-i Toyotas. A poor choice of capacitor was used during those years that has a tendency to leak given enough time. 15 years is enough but some make it well into 25 or so before issues occur. The key factor is that it WILL occur given enough time and you want to catch it early to prevent any capacitor damage that can damage sections of your logic boards. A former Toyota engineer (I believe this is user "Yamae") has participated in that thread many times over the years and attests to this longstanding issue with Toyotas of this vintage. The repairs are done with very specific replacement capacitors that do not have the issue the original capacitors do.

Although every 20 or so years capacitors tend to need replacing regardless. Ask anyone who's familiar with restoring vintage electronics and vintage computers.

 

Dumb question but I'll pose it byway. What are the symptoms of a failing ECU?

 

Irregular and inconsistent "small" problems more than anything else. Lumpy idle, missing through the rev range randomly. The car will likely still run "ok" and get you point A to B.

 

Is it possible to visually inspect to see if the capacitors are leaking? I'm thinking of possibly pulling the ECU the next time I'm doing some work in there and popping the cover for a look.