Wow, 7pF! That's within the same magnitude as a slight change in circuit board layout -- right there in Tony's bailiwick. I know just how I would find something like that; the problem would disappear when I touched my scope probe to that clock line. The good news is you're gainfully employed at something three Indians can't do for less in Chennai.

I'd be happy to discuss pink label mythology or test any of your ideas in a "spare LH2.4" car. I remember recently posting somewhere that all 5 of our LH2.4 cars still run pink ones, each with a jumper wire in the glove box, in hopes I will catch one of these failing for myself. I gave this old thread for reference, Will a 561 ECU work... which itself has a few links to more pink trivia.

My considered opinion on this electronic color profiling is the primary change from pink to white was made (after production) by re-designing the big, expensive, custom hybrid microcircuit, on which the fuel pump driver transistor exists in chip form. The symptom that correctly marries to the "pink label problem" is sudden and permanent loss of fuel pump ground. All other symptoms folks have attributed to the "bad color" are incidental and part of normal and expected product life.

The capacitor issue has no color bias, just an age bias. I'm not saying the white label 561's didn't get assembled with a new batch of capacitors (everyone remembers the electrolytic capacitor debacle of the previous decade) just that those cap failure symptoms are not the striking feature of the pink label pie chart, like they are in clocks.

Hey, did you see The Social Network? I found myself pointing at the screen when they pulled out that '75 issue of Popular Electronics with my old Altair 8800 on it.
--
Art Benstein near Baltimore

"24 hours in a day, 24 beers in a case. Coincidence? I think not." - Stephen Wright (and on a store front in The Adjustment Bureau)