I have a ECU that needs a rebuild, can any recommend vendor that have recent experience?

 

Ecu’s are very simple to repair. Just replace the caps. I’ve done plenty. Open it, match them, replace them.

 

Tanin Auto does them. They fixed mine

 

Darryl Geller does a great job and provides life time warranty. Find him on facebook.

 

Tanin Auto Electronix in Racine, Wisconsin or Driftmotion in Montclair, California (near Los Angeles). I've used them both for ECU capacitor repairs and they're both excellent. Tanin Auto has on site shop cars (an SC300 and SC400 presumably) that they test their repaired ECUs on before returning them to their customers.

 

Hate to bump an old thread, but it looks like Tanin Auto no longer rebuilds ECUs (the service was removed from their website). Any other recommendations for ECU repair? Thank you.

 

If Tanin will not still do a repair based on special request then try Relentless Motorsports in Texas.

Aside, the EXACT brand and specification capacitors can be obtained from Digi-Key or Mouser. An ESD-safe temperature adjustable soldering station and a Velleman vacuum-pump de-soldering tool are all that are needed at minimum to do it yourself. Just practice precautions to avoid static electrical discharge when working on the boards.

 

Thanks, I'll give them a call. Tanin replied back to my email asking what issues I was having to see if it was related to the ECU. If I can't get them to service it, I will reach out to Relentless.

I definitely don't trust myself to do the work. Chances are that I will solder my finger to the board or something.

 

I hope they can still help you!

It sounds like it'll come down to one of those two businesses but IF it came down to you doing it, overall it's not as crazy as it sounds to do this type of repair. If you obtain the right tools and look at some videos on youtube showing how to do it (and how to clean and jumper wire repair traces with damage) it's pretty straightforward.

It just needs to be done safely in an unhurried manner with respect to avoid electrostatic discharge and being kind to the boards even while cleaning them carefully. Buying some old broken electronic device from a used surplus store and practicing soldering and desoldering on a junk circuit board can help build skill and confidence with this sort of thing

The type of soldering station or solder gun needs to be ESD safe for electrostatic protection and it helps to have temperature control adjustment so as not use so much excess heat for the soldering such that any board components might be affected. Basically you can't use just any old ungrounded dirt cheap soldering iron when doing circuit board repair work but neither does it need to be the most expensive station on the market either. A decent Hakko or Velleman with those features will do.

It's also good to have ventilation in your workspace and/or a soldering ventilation sucking fan and definitely wear a set of goggles and a respirator mask when soldering on boards. It's no good to breath in solder fumes so always protect yourself.

 

I emailed Tanin myself to see if they still do the repairs. Here is what they said:

Yes, we still do these repairs. We were having a lot of ECUs come in that were not repairable, so we took down the listing from our website. We still offer this repair, but it's problem-dependent. Please let me know if you have any other questions.

 

I can confirm this. I just spoke to them last week to go over options for instrument cluster repair that my SC will need soon and I addressed this while I had one of their reps on the line. It is basically as they have told you: while capacitor replacement is usually all that most older Toyota/Lexus ECUs need that is not always the case. Sometimes an ECU has other issues requiring heavy trace repair (with jumper wires if necessary) but it gets much more difficult when one of the proprietary Denso chips on the boards has an internal issue.

They have for years worked to find replacement ECUs of the correct part number for customers if they determined there was no way to save the ECU they sent in. They mentioned that it was getting harder to find good used examples for replacement that they could recondition when that was necessary. Also that it was getting harder to find ECUs for SC400's in particular more than those for SC300's.

For all of those reasons they moved this service to a by-request case by case basis. They said they still keep their SC test cars on site for the final quality control testing that they can provide but stated that because of the points mentioned above since these are very old electronics that are only getting older they can't guarantee they'll always be able to find a replacement ECU if the problem wasn't solved with the one that was sent in for repair.

Aside, if not already addressed and given their age most of our old SC ECUs should get brand new correct type and brand replacement capacitors as future-proofing preventative maintenance anyway BEFORE problems develop.

...

My impression from my last conversation with their representative is that a simple capacitor replacement service for an ECU that doesn't even have a known issue is probably a no-brainer for them to do but I defer to their current new policies regarding that.

Again, *my impression and what I gathered* after calling them and asking about this is that it is probably the case that when an ECU exhibits issues they need to evaluate the repair request and details carefully to figure out if it's something they can do for you or not depending on what exactly is going wrong with your ECU. It's not going to be the same for everybody depending on what specific issue an ECU is having versus another ECU.

 

Try these folks..... I just sent them an ECU that failed and they replaced 6 capacitors and 2 trace points (whatever those are &#128527. Expect 2 weeks or so.

https://siaelec.com/product/lexus-sc...repair-return/

 

Thanks for the heads up on that company! Always good to have multiple repair shop options

Trace point repair just means that one or more of the tiny metal “trace” etched-in and sealed electrical connections on one of the circuit boards was damaged beyond the point where it could be repaired normally and thus its original electrical connection from one board component to another component had to be repaired using a small length of wire soldered in at those two points instead.

The wire trace repair is a bypass solution to get that part of the circuit connected again. Usually it isn’t needed but it can be if there has been excessive leakage of electrolytic fluid from bad and bulging capacitors. That fluid is what causes corrosion and damage on the ECU circuit board.