Thought I would crawl into the cargo bay and Deoxit the connectors to the trans ECU to help solve my intermittent retarder issues. But holy cow. Those connectors!!! I of course pulled up the Orange locks and pushed the release and pulled on the cable. It came up about 1/2" and became very hard to pull any further. So I stopped before I did a Samsonite Gorilla on it. So I'm asking the forum as to how hard these things are to pull. When I pull up. The connector comes up and I can see an orange/red accordion type weather sleeve and some white wires under that. But it looks like and feels like I'm about to damage them.
Do I pull even harder? Are these things usually such a bear to pull off?
They are very stiff and have seal tight weather proof connectors on them. I remember them being quite difficult to remove the first time. Try to use the plastic connector body as much as possible so as not to pull exclusively on the wires. I may have even used something like an insulated spark plug wire puller to get a better grip on them, but as I recall, you have to work them gently, but persistently back and forth while trying to extract the plug. A bit of silicone grease on the weather seal and the Deoxit spray on the pins when putting them back in will make it easier next time. To be fair, I think I had to use both the plastic plug body and the bundled wire to get enough traction on it. The wire bundle, which is quite stiff, helps wiggle it back and forth while pulling steadily (avoid tugging!) outwards. It is anxiety provoking to be sure ::) .
Don
Thanks Don.
Anxiety provoking is a huge understatement for sure. Every wiggle and pull I gave it gave me day-mares of huge piles of CB's flying from the bank account. :))
So, did you finally get them pulled out?
No Chuck not yet.
When I first pulled the panel next to the pilot's seat. I cleaned the retarder joystick connection. The next two times i drove the coach the retarder never misbehaved. In fact it was better than it had been since i bought the coach. The brake pressure application of the retarder when stick at zero and rocker switch on is now working. Where it hadn't before. But I thought I would go ahead and clean the ECU connectors as well. But as they are such a bugger to remove, I have had second thoughts. (they look very expensive and difficult to fix if I break them)
So if the retarder starts misbehaving again. I'll have another go at pulling the recalcitrant connectors.
Sometimes the "If it ain't broke don't fix it" is the way to go. Can't count the many things I have broke fixing things that were not broken in the first place!
Keith
There you go. My thoughts as well.
When you pulled the panel by the drivers seat are the wires long enough to pull the panel out far enough to work on it?
Yep you got to resist the urge to keep fixin it until it's really broke. Been there done that 😬😎👍
Hate to say this. But it's kind of in between. You can pull the panel up and "mostly" out of the way. But just barely. And it too often falls back down. The connector for the shift pad is of course right in the middle between that panel and the floor where it's hard to manipulate and it is that wire bundle that is short enough to interfere with raising the panel any higher. If it were say 5-6 inches longer I could lay that panel on it's side making access easier.
This is of course applicable to my coach. Others might have been built with a little more slack in the wire bundle. So YMMV.
One could just remove the retarder joystick to get better access to it's connector blades. It MIGHT be easier on coaches that have the transmission ECU in the foot well area.
The connectors on our trans ECU (located in driver foot well) were tight, but not too hard to remove. I had them out when I had the ECU rebuilt. I have a feeling your connectors are a different design, perhaps because there are more wires associated with the retarder and joystick?
Photos of our ECU connectors in post linked below:
No start, with Allison "snake eyes" (Problem Solved) (http://www.foreforums.com/index.php?topic=25783.msg205167#msg205167)