Water In The Footwell, Corrosion On The Ecu And Central Locking Up The

[dave-o]

First post here but I wanted to return something back to the forum that has already been so useful to me.

In the last week, I lost first and second gears, had a sopping wet passenger footwell, no central locking and a window that would decide to open randomly (at night, unattended in the shopping centre, driving along etc etc).

Well, the advice to cable tie the gear selector cable to a part of the block has worked! Unplugging/unblocking the crud in the scuttle drain holes at the edges of the guttering above the wheel arches freed the flow of the collected water that was causing the internal flooding and I wait to see if that is the solution (had to hoover and poke around with a tent pole to loosen up the drivers side after scraping the bulk of the crud out by hand. The passenger side was solved by removing the bottom 3 bolts from the plastic wheel arch protector and then removing the one way drain plug altogether before cleaning the blockage properly).

The central locking problem, combined with the electric window eccentricity, pointed to the ECU under the passenger seat as suggested by numerous owners here. I removed the ECU (two nuts and a fiddly couple of multipin connectors) to find the PCB inside badly corroded and oxidised. Horrors and expectations of a new one with the associated charge. However, thought I would have a quick go at troubleshooting it. Removed as much oxidation with a toothbrush and some contact cleaner from Maplins - gave it a good scrub and concentrated on the traces and areas between component soldering on the reverse side. Put it back in and, hey presto, central locking back in action + the window works. Hopefully this is a permanent thing but I will update here if anything changes. Raised the ECU housing by 1cm by placing wood blocks underneath it before screwing it down so that any ingress of water (should it happen again) may take a little longer to do it's damage.

So thanks again Forum-ites.

[big_kev]

Hi Dave-o nice to see that you got things sorted.