First a little background. A few years ago I came across an old ipd adjustable ECU which I put in my 122. It worked OK but had the annoying habit of dying once it was warmed up. The car would idle fine for the first 10-20 minutes but then the idle got slower and slower until I had to pay constant attention to it. It turns out the box was for a 164E, based on part numbers and injector controls in the ECU. Finally I just put a non-adjustable B20E box in and let the other one beat around the garage for a while.

These days I've had more time than money but less sense than either, so I decided to break into the B20E ECU and adapt the ipd fuel controller to it. It was all quite obvious what needed to be done once they were open and side by side. Drill holes in the case, remove 2 resistors and replace with these wires that went through the case. This is the 160 box.



So I removed the same 2 resistor in the B20E box...



In line with the wires to connect were 3 more resistors.



So the whole shebang goes into the B20E box but (here is where the sense thing comes in) the fuel pump was no longer getting power when the ignition was in the on position. A bit of poking about reveals that the 3 resistors inline with the green wires pictured above now have infinite resistance. I imagine these got cooked when I soldered it back together. There is also a lack of continuity between the little aluminum tower thing seen between the 2 horizontal posts below and an adjacent resistor which is continuous on the 3 other boxes I've opened up. This one did take a hit when I was drilling the holes in the case.



So anyway, I'm heading to Radio Shack to get 3 new resistors and an "aluminum tower thing" and try again. What's the real name for the tower? It has 3 legs. So, the point is, how does one isolate a component from soldering heat while soldering without stealing all the heat at the same time? Plus, when I go, the color bands indicate the resistors are valued at 15,000 and 3,000,000 ohms. That one sounds awfully high. Is this even appropriate? Have I read them properly?

Last thing is that in a conversation with a friend, he mentioned that "an old Volvo hot rodder" told him that the best ECU to modify was, in fact, the 164E unit. I've never heard this but it did make me wonder if there was any truth to this. Any thoughts?
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Justin 66 122E, 71 145S
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