Pick Your Part is a fascinating business. Many of the cars arrive at their yards, driving. But they have a few common problems the motivate their owners to sell. From a CA clean air perspective, this is a clear success.
California emissions laws are much stricter than the rest of the US. And the result is that the cost of passing smog can quickly mount(see previous concerns about getting SMOGGED! when we brought the car back CA).
So this leaves a lot of people with a tough choice. A car might be worth a few thousand dollars but if you have to spend a few more thousand to get it through smog tests, it’s likely not worth the additional investment. Some of these cars could be sold out of state, but a lot wind up at places like LKQ PYP.
What’s interesting about this is that cars a running and driving when they show up and likely have a specific problem, but loads of good parts. So I was exciting to find recent inventory of a 1987 924 and headed out to see what might be available. Some of these things already work, but I’m also interested in spares, especially somewhat unique items like Engine Control Modules and various other electric components like window, headlight switches and the main relay board. Then there are real essentials like the missing lighter assembly – not necessary for Lemons, but an important reminder about 1980s priorities – it’s in the most central part of the center console!
Ok back to parts and prices. Above is a good example. The original relays likely work – have tested a few already. And it’s useful to have backups most most especially ones known to fail like the fuel pump relay on these cars. But then there are harder to get items like the Engine Control Unit.
In researching cars for Lemons, the one scary bit for 924/944 was the ECU/ECM. You could convert to a carburetor to solve fuel/air mix – that’s been common strategy on the 914 we have that had an earlier iteration of Bosch Motronic (D-Jetronic has a great overview here). But I have little experience and rough pricing didn’t seems like it would come out much cheaper.
So options for replacing the ECU are then. 1. customer $900 and up designed for racing/track enthusiasts to get more control out of mappings like air vs fuel under different conditions. 2. is a restored and salvaged unit, starting at $400. That’s practically the whole Lemons budget. To be fair the budget doesn’t apply to spares, though I might be going into the Ford vs Ferrari FIA rules interpretation rabbit hole here. Anyway, back to ECU choices. 3. find an ECU and hope it works. In this case – PYP charges a flat rate for any ECU of $70. Given that the car cant run without this, it seems like a reasonable bit of of insurance.
Testing wasn’t too complete.
- remove current ECU from a 1985 944.
- connect harness and mount (likely required for ground, but not totally sure).
- test in ignition position one which should start the fuel pump and result in an audible relay click from, I think, inside the Motronic black and metal box.
That all works, so turned the key to see what would happen. Expectation is that a damaged ECU, the range of outcomes could be anything from “nothing happens” to “the engine runs rough” and we’d just shut things down.
As it turns out it might run even better than the 1985 unit that came with the car!
Outrun Carbon 