Bad E38 ECM - it happens


When the car came in it had the following codes:
P2455
U1000
U1017
U1040
U1088
U1193
U1153
U1024
U1064
B1327
B2375
B2355
B1420
When I first got to the car I started it up and drove it around the block without an issue - at first I figured I just needed to check out the battery. So I took a look and it was only about 3 years old and my sine wave tester showed it was right around 650 CCA. I put my smart charger on it and let it top the battery off. I cleared the codes and went to take it for a ride and as soon as I put it in reverse it sputtered and died.
First thing I did was check the fuel pressure - it was right around 60 psi and it never moved even after I put it in gear and it would die, hooked up my HEI spark tester and there was plenty of spark - it actually sparked once after the car died, checked the #1 fuel injector with a noid light and it seemed like it was pulsing ok. I thought maybe the tune somehow got corrupted so I used my EFI live and took a look at it - then flashed in the newest OS. After the tune it started and kept running when I put it in gear - so I took it for a 20 minute drive, everything seemed fine, until I put the car in park - the gauges all swept, pretty much all warnings went off, Sevice Active Handling, Service ABS, Service Engine Soon.
After that I re-checked the codes and this is what I got:
P0700
U0073
U2100
U2108
U2106
U2105
U2100
The P0700 and the P2544 were pointing toward a bad TCM and there is a TSB out about wiring pulling out of the connector at the transmission plug, so I put the car on the hoist, checked the wiring at the plug, along with all of the visible grounds - and looked at all of the wiring looms - especially the ones under the hood, but everything looked good (the car has a little over 20k miles on it). So since it seemed like the ECM re-flash made a positive improvement I read and re-flashed the TCM. There was no change in the cars behavior - in fact it pretty much reverted back to the symptoms before the ECM re-flash. After thinking about things a little longer all of the U1000 codes then all of the U2100 codes had me leaning toward an issue with the BCM. The BCM is the gateway between the Class 2 data line (all of the U1000 codes) and the GMLAN data line (all of the U2100 codes) - to verify that there was an issue on one of the data lines I used an oscilloscope to watch the sine waves - but I found nothing on any of those lines. At this point I'm back to square one.
I unplugged the ECM, cleaned the connectors and plugged it back it - looked things over best I could for issues with the harness, same with the BCM and TCM. The car actually ran pretty well after that, I took it on two drives and everything seemed like it was ok. I leave to go on a 40 minute drive and fortunately for me the car acted up 2 miles from the shop.
This time it wouldn't just die - it was trying to run but it seemed really confused, sputtering and surging - not happy at all. I nursed it back to the shop and verified fuel pressure again - I also check for fuel flow, they both seemed fine. The only other thing that could be effecting the fueling is the injector drivers in the ECM.
So I installed a new ECM - relearned the security system, did the crank relearn and the car hasn't acted up since.
I'm just hoping this helps someone in the future - it was a pain to diagnose but it's back to normal now.





