3.5L 3000 Jackaroo Check Engine Light

Hi Darian, do a bit of a search of USA spare parts places.

They have many sensors available for Jacks (Isuzu Trooper over there)

I got an O2 sensor for $US50 versus $660 here, and got a few extras such as Transmission service kit, air filters (I wanted paper for the Cape York Trip rather than the washable one I mostly use) Wheel bearing seals, platinum spark plugs.

Total cost delivered in 5 days was about $330. Cost of stuff here would have been colse to $1000.

Indeed G - will check that at some stage down the track just before the Jack goes to owner number 2 - I bought my Poly Air bag kit direct from the States - 50% of the local outlay.

I'll wager the throttle body sensor is faulty due to oil contamination. Do you have a reuseable air filter?
Best thing to do before replacing it is to remove it and clean it in metho or alcohol. Then replace it and see what happens. GMH has made a fortune out of this brilliant feature designed to defeat people who refuse to pay extortionate prices for genuine air filters...

That's a definate possibility Mr F, but you need to cast the slur on everyone not just GMH for the air filter cost.

In reality, though, it's probably not GMH who invented the air flow meter which is used in pretty much every petrol engine these days. All are susceptible to dirty wires and you read plenty of posts where these devices are replaced. No stats done, but Nissans seem to figure heavily in this area, and without exception they are madly expensive.

I use a washable filter but I am VERY careful how much I oil it after washing, and I have cleaned the wire/resistors with electrolube contact cleaner, the one without lube. That seems to work well, and you don't touch the wire at all with fingers - which is good since my arthritic buggers seem to be getting clumsier rather than the other way round :)

Guilty - I use a Unifilter oiled foam type - I had put the problem re the sensor down to oil quite some time back - I intend to clean the unit out before I buy parts - will go back to paper filters of course - as you say, they are rip-off priced - but I originally went to foam because of the dirt ingested from the wheel well - since putting a snorkel on, the problem is not really an issue. Re the sensor and oil contamination - met a bloke a few years back who had the same issue on the same car and he had used paper right from the start - might have been a different contaminant - and it could be the turbo seals).

Just picked it up from dealer - You got it in one - No apologies etc of course - However it did lose everything on the way into dealer this morning and stopped dead - I was not so confident that it was a sensor after that.
Wife is ^%%$$# she was driving and wonders what would have happened if she had been turning across traffic etc when it shut down.
Such is life

Electronics are so sweet - when they are plugged in :)

I've actually done this myself after re-oiling my filter. Even after reconnecting the plug, you still have to discharge the computer to turn the check engine light off if you don't have a Tech II or a scanguage.

I had a 1988 2.6 EFI Jack before this one, and it would throw a hissy every now and then, just out of the blue it would go into a crude "Limp mode". The RACV man was totally perplexed as everything checked OK, then he had a brainwave - let's disconnect the battery for 10 mins and then see what happens - result was engine running as sweet as a nut again. That one didn't have a check engine light.

Cheers

yep beat me to it, the afm connector is left off all the time on these babys.

now tell me more about the scanguage on a v6 jack? i know the terracan guys use them a lot, but what can they do on a jack. ie - just fault codes or can you "bend" sensor outputs to the ecu etc etc...

cheers Brad.

The Scanguage is just a reading guage, you can't modify sensor inputs as far as I know.

I use it because it's nice to know what the sensors are telling the ECU - you don't always get the engine light even when something's wrong.

It's also great for me because I have 645/75-16s on, only a bit oversize, but the scanguage has a speedo readout which is easily tweaked to allow for the oversize.

If/when you do get a check engine light, it tells you where to look for the problem by looking up the error code.

Then it can be easy to fix, eg plug the MAF connector back in, use the scanguage to clear the code, and all is well again.

In my view they are a great instrument and inexpensive as well.

Cool sounds good, now only 2 more questions, $$$$$ & where from??

www.scanguage.com

$US169.95