Pay heed, ye users and potential future users of the Horses of Quarters.
Uh…. *Clears throat*
After about a year and a half of usage, my Quarterhorse fell victim to the dreaded deadly dead memory battery of death. For those of you not aware, some amount of QHs were sold in 2012 with an incorrectly sized resistor installed on the board, which leads to an early and untimely death of the permanently-installed coin cell battery. Because the QH uses “volatile” memory, this battery is what keeps your custom tune in the QH’s memory. Without it, the QH goes brain dead soon after you turn the car off (no outside power supplied to the QH) and you won’t be able to restart the car without plugging in your computer and re-uploading the tune.
You’ll know instantly that you’ve lost your tune if the fuel pump continuously runs with the key in the “on” position. For some reason that is a common denominator with these cars if your tune goes blank.
The good news is that Moates is eager to make good on this mistake, and they will take your “bad” QH and replace both the battery and the incorrect resistor with good ones at no cost to you (you just have to pay to ship it back to them, which is only a few bucks being that it’s so small).
Oddly enough, Moates has stated that in a WORST CASE scenario, a “good” QH (correct resistor) battery will only last about 2 and a half years (with best case being closer to 10 years). This depends on usage and environment; see below links for more info.
Even better news: Through my communications with them, I was told that Moates has been experimenting with a “non-volatile” memory version of the Quarterhorse, which would mean the unit could remember your tune for many, many years without need of a battery. No release date has been announced, but it did sound like it would come to market in the next year or so. I’m not sure that I’m supposed to be sharing that, but I figured it can’t hurt to get people excited about Moates’ products. I have been pleased with my QH, and I would gladly change my battery every 5 years or so if that was what it took to keep using it (though a non-volatile QH would be baller).
Now if only the Ford EEC-IV programming weren't so dern cumbersome and complex… Unfortunately Moates can't fix that.
Links for more info:
http://support.moates.net/quarterhorse-battery-life/
http://support.moates.net/quarterhorse-battery-and-resistor-check/
Uh…. *Clears throat*
After about a year and a half of usage, my Quarterhorse fell victim to the dreaded deadly dead memory battery of death. For those of you not aware, some amount of QHs were sold in 2012 with an incorrectly sized resistor installed on the board, which leads to an early and untimely death of the permanently-installed coin cell battery. Because the QH uses “volatile” memory, this battery is what keeps your custom tune in the QH’s memory. Without it, the QH goes brain dead soon after you turn the car off (no outside power supplied to the QH) and you won’t be able to restart the car without plugging in your computer and re-uploading the tune.
You’ll know instantly that you’ve lost your tune if the fuel pump continuously runs with the key in the “on” position. For some reason that is a common denominator with these cars if your tune goes blank.
The good news is that Moates is eager to make good on this mistake, and they will take your “bad” QH and replace both the battery and the incorrect resistor with good ones at no cost to you (you just have to pay to ship it back to them, which is only a few bucks being that it’s so small).
Oddly enough, Moates has stated that in a WORST CASE scenario, a “good” QH (correct resistor) battery will only last about 2 and a half years (with best case being closer to 10 years). This depends on usage and environment; see below links for more info.
Even better news: Through my communications with them, I was told that Moates has been experimenting with a “non-volatile” memory version of the Quarterhorse, which would mean the unit could remember your tune for many, many years without need of a battery. No release date has been announced, but it did sound like it would come to market in the next year or so. I’m not sure that I’m supposed to be sharing that, but I figured it can’t hurt to get people excited about Moates’ products. I have been pleased with my QH, and I would gladly change my battery every 5 years or so if that was what it took to keep using it (though a non-volatile QH would be baller).
Now if only the Ford EEC-IV programming weren't so dern cumbersome and complex… Unfortunately Moates can't fix that.
Links for more info:
http://support.moates.net/quarterhorse-battery-life/
http://support.moates.net/quarterhorse-battery-and-resistor-check/