Sometimes I struggle

rjennings

New Member
Jun 6, 2010
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Ok, had my 97 GT for about six months now, it has left me stranded twice, first time was the clutch cable locked up and wouldnt do anything, second time i had just came from the muffler shop having some "cutting" done and didnt make it home, the car quit running, i drifted right into an old folks home, popped the hood and checked fuses, the EEC fuse was blown (i thought it was the fuel pump fuse at first, no owners manual)..so called the wife and ran and got a fuse, thinking quick fix!! WRONG! car still wouldnt start, had it towed to mechanic, he says, "95% sure its the ccrm, constant control relay module..250 dollars new, i have a feeling it will fire right up when i put this on." WRONG! put the part on, still popping the fuse, so after about a month of sitting in his lot, i had the car towed again, (to a local friends shop, where i shoulda went to begin with), another tow, 50 more bucks..so i have 350 dollars invested in a car that still wont start, so next day the car is at my friends place, im feeling good and tell the wife the car will probably be runnning by the end of the day..RIGHT!! He calls me and tells me the car is running, i say, drive it, drive it all day long!! dog it hard! do burn outs..etc. i want to make sure nothing else breaks..but anyway, what one guy couldnt do in a month, took them 3 hours to get the car running, turns out all it was was the ground from battery to block was loose and pretty bad shape, (muffler guy maybe loosened it???). So when it comes to complicated things, maybe its just the simple things?? Moral of this story is keep it simple, and choose wisely! 26 dollars for parts and labor at friends place, and the car runs fine!
 
Never heard of a CCRM... and I wouldn't have paid the mechanic for throwing a useless unknown part at my car. Lesson learned... don't pay a mechanic to "guess".

ANYTIME a fuse is blowing it's a SHORT TO GROUND. If the main ground was gone, some circuits were getting their ground from somewhere else at the wrong place in the circuit possibly hence short to ground. Short to steel only makes other circuits act weird but doesn't blow fuses.

Get a Haynes Manual and it will make your life easier.

Have fun... ;)
 
At least it's fixed, we all learn some stuff the hard way. Had mine towed home one day because I smelled smoke going down the road and it kept getting worse and worse, to the point I knew it was my car and I literally thought it was on fire.

After it was towed back to my house, I started looking at it, couldn't see anything weird. Start it up and within a minute the smell was back but no smoke, no fire... crawled under the car and found a little 2" piece of plastic had fallen on the catalytic converter (it was part of the o2 sensor wire covering) and was burning. Man it smelled so bad, but I had no idea what it was when it happened.

Easy fix, simple problem, created a headache. I was late for work that day and the tow wasn't free.
 
constant control relay module is under the right front fender well, i think practially everything that is electrical (fuel pump included) plugs into this little jewel, mechanic had talked to another local ford guru(one i really trust and names his shop after the ford emblem, too much for labor) and they had both agreed thats what it probably was..i have an extra one here in the box if anybody needs it..lol, agreed, lessoned learned and anything electrical is a pain!
 
Sometimes it just takes a new perspective on the situation to figure out what the problem is. There was a guy who let his truck sit for a year straight because he took it to 3 different "mechanics" and they couldn't figure out why it wouldn't start. A friend and I got it running within a few hours; as it turns out, rodents had chewed through his cutoff switch wiring.

When it comes to cars, especially modified ones, **** happens. :SNSign: