Installing SRI Gold kit today - little help?

Lol, except Delphi likely outsourced it to China Bob....

 

Looks like the connectors are Delphi or ACDelco style, but I'd still like to find out the exact part numbers...

 

You REALLY don't want to know! I have seen it done to a very high degree of workmanship in just over a day in some cases. No two are the same, each requires special efforts in one area or another. Following the same question as "what's involved in a Major Service?", the individual car defines how long it will take. From just over 1 day to 3 days straight (engine in), depends on the model, the condition of the components, an endless host of variables, none of which can be ignored to follow a time schedule. I am Blessed with an in-house Smurf who fits in all the tight little areas....... PRICELESS! For the record, I myself am unable to do this job in the times spoken, this body is far too used up for that!

Your experience with the blackened wire is not unique, good thing you didn't keep cutting in search of clean wire, you would have ended up at the ECU plug! I have studied this closely in a number of examples, I am now confident that this wire was flawed (exposed to corrosive agents) in production, prior to it becoming "a harness". The one example that continues to come to mind was the Fiat 850, where rolls of body and chassis panel steel sat outside next to a chemical factory prior to becoming a 'car'.

If there is a positive involved, the wire cross section used in most areas of these systems is vastly higher than is required. Even with some corrosion present at the crimp, if done correctly the wire strands deform and external corrosion is flaked away in the process of a crimp. Frankly, that knowledge is not good enough for me, I choose to scrub it clean prior to installing a new connector. One day this may require we make new harnesses, when it does I have pages of notes of changes I want to incorporate into these. For the time being building a new engine harness does not fix the problem "in the cheapest possible manner able to assure positive results".... so I didnt.

On the 456 and 550's where the injection harness was poorly designed by the engineers, those required I make new harnesses as part of the kit. Repairing the originals would amount to a waste of time and effort with future failures all but assured. When that was proven to be the case, jigs were made, design changes made, components sourced and then resourced and new harnesses were made. Send a set to FBB for a design debate......... and then start all over again! Folks have no idea how much help his (FBB's) feedback was in many of these designs! On the same topic most will never know how much money he cost me by the numerous times he said "start over"...... it Is what it IS because of his efforts and honest opinions/debates.

""I agree that if a code is thrown it is not necessarily a bad part. But it's not a ghost. A thrown code is an indication of a problem: bad sensor, broken wire, bad contact.... I guess it's just the anal engineer in me that says ........""

A game of semantics John..... Shake your preconceived notions and assumptions, it is what is holding you back from learning. I too am guilty of the same but my mistakes cost people a great deal of time, money and frustration for a great many years. We chased Results, assuming they were Source problems. I now know we could have Prevented untold amounts of problems that plagued these cars for decades... if only I would have dropped assumptions and opened my eyes.

 

No not semantics. Difference of opinion. As I am sure you know, if you look at any manufactured manual on diagnostic error codes they all indicate the proper sequence of events for tracking down the cause of an error code. And they always indicate that the circuit connections should be checked for continuity and grounding. I don't have any preconceived notions. I'm just going to track down the actual cause of a problem. Replacing all the terminals makes the assumption that the problem is continuity and by replacing all the terminals you stand a better change of fixing the one(s) which are actually causing the problem. It is not different than having a blown stereo power amplifier and rather than looking for the problem, assume it's a failed power transistor because they all do that, replace them all, and hoping it works. You never find the real problem, or the cause. It's just not one size fits all.


FYI, that black color on copper is not unusual and not defective wire. It is copper oxide (tarnish) and will occur on any copper wire if exposed to certain environmental elements. It should also be noted that copper oxide is a semiconductor and was used in the old days to make diodes before silicon was used. It may well be that the connectivity problem you kit actually "fixes" has more to do with the crimp to the wire and breaking through the oxide than the contact between male and female pins of the connector.

That copper oxide is the same thing you see on pots and pans with copper plated bottoms. There are lots of way to clean it...[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytPWwiALi9M]Experiment Five: Removing Tarnish From Copper - YouTube[/ame]

 

In your opinion if your obd2 tester flashes an upstream 02 sensor code and you replace the upstream 02 sensor and the light goes out and the code goes away have you fixed the problem?

 

Nice to see this thread stay on track. Good on all of you

 

Good to know a little vinegar will fix feminine hygiene problems AND my car's electrical system!
I guess I was surprised that wire coated in plastic insulation would still oxidize. I presume that's where Dave's theory of pre-manufacturing contamination comes in. It looks so nasty when exposed from striping the insulation off, one would think no signals could ever get through there.
Now if someone could figure out how to convert it all to fiber-optics...

 

Mercedes tried that with the new 48V battery system and gave up. There was too much momentum in the legacy 12V system to switch to something else.

However, with the adoption of the new battery system in the new electric cars, perhaps they will give it another try.

 

Precious, I will be requesting permission to use that line in the future!

Your new with the 355 John, in time you will understand. You have the benefit of knowledge of this issue now, that should assist you a great deal on your ownership path. Once you have a few decades of ownership under your belt.... get back with me, we can revisit your thoughts on the subject and I can then get schooled on it.

"I don't have any preconceived notions"..... Really? In a growing number of instances we do installs on cars with ZERO history of problems of any knid, just to obtain the benefits spoken of. Have no problems? Wanna bet? You have a sample number of One, I have had Hundreds.... yes that does make a difference.

 

I find John's comments very interesting and as a fellow engineer I think he makes a lot of sense.

Dave, you and I had spoke about your kit and you offered me an oppurtunity as a beta tester but I wanted to push this until winter.

While I'm still interested in exploring this kit, can you provide the benefits again and some data to support it? I'm not sure how I feel about unscientific data such as "the car runs better"

 

Dave Rocks, As an engineer you would then know that you would need to design a double blind experiment at great difficulty and near impossibility, and great cost. I suspect that if you tried a minimal sample size you would need to find say 20 identical cars in identical condition, with identical mileage, with identical error history the limits right there make that an impossible task. At best you might be able to catalog through retrospective study things like frequency of before and after error codes still almost impossible to do. Who kept records of how many prior codes they had? How many don't have obd2 readers and have codes that don't set MIL's and thus have codes they don't know they have? You might be able to do a before and after dyno pull for horsepower and torque then have to defend the results when people start throwing around air correction factors, differences in dynos, car variation with wheels and tires and a host of other issues. The issue of the positive benefits of the gold kit have long been accepted as fact by those of us who benefit from it. The gold kit has been around for years even before I started getting involved with it. At this point in time I see no reason to have to defend it.

JohnK the engineer is correct in his engineering. Engineering is never wrong and that makes sense to an engineer. It is the failing of understanding all the parameters that takes perfectly good engineering and creates the epic failure such as the Tacoma Narrows bridge. Please no disrespect intended to JohnK. Instead of thinking about a failed sensor or a failed connector, or a bad wire, think of a combination of issues that conspire to throw that code. Remember the airplane crash of Alaska Airlines off California coming up from Mexico about 15 years ago? Everyone died. Engineers would be correct in laying cause to the "jackscrew" for forcing the plane out of control. But I remember the news stories and timeline on the news. The pilots had a long time to discuss options and fixes as they left mexico, past Miramar, SD international, El Toro marine base, John Wayne , long beach, and los angeles int airport (6 places to land) before finally crashing in the ocean on the way to san francisco. A host of other factors aided the crash. If they landed in SanDiego when they still have control the result would be different. The engineering is still the same.

Engineering of the control systems in our cars is a control "system." They can engineer for exactly what they want meaning to last forever or not. The technology is out there in our daily driver Toyotas. Why can't Ferrari make a reliable electrical system as in our Toyotas? They can but they just have decided for their own reasons not to. So we suffer with 02 sensors same as in a Toyota that last 20k miles instead of 100k. What is going on there? It is a problem in control system design and we need to think in a "systems" way to solve the problem not part replace our way out of it and get the customer out the door.
When you look at what SRI is doing with their products you begin to understand this philosophy.

 

Wow, you sure are good at getting your point across, very well said.

 

FBB,

My point is, without some data and facts supported by data, I'm not going to dive into this project.

I think you miss understand my point, I'm not saying it's not worth it, I'm saying convince me with good data.

I'm not atheist, I'm agnostic ;-)

 

I do understand your point and it is valid. I'm just a user so I can't offer what you want. We will "double blind" to prove a drug but it is also about the process to make treatment a success. In science we also do things empirically and the results may be our proof. For example you go to the Doc with a green spewing head cold and he gives you an antibiotic without first culturing to see if that antibiotic is the right bug killer. There are many reasons that treatment is successfully done this way until proven otherwise by a cold that doesn't want to go away. Sometimes the task of the proof is harder than treating the disease and if a high percentage of times the empirical treatment works it becomes accepted SOP over long periods of time until proven otherwise.

We all talked about real data in the "early" gold pin days but it was harder to get it than "just to do it." The results spoke so loudly that all shouts for data were quickly extinguished and just accepted. I'm a pretty skeptical guy and as Dave has posted I am sort of a pain in his backside on many details. I have read all the potential negatives years ago trying to find holes in Dave's logic. There have been long discussions with my brother an electrical engineer over details above my pay grade. 2 years after my beta test install I have not had a single code. My 550 which was great before is still better after. You can ask Dave himself the skeptical me is still looking for problems. Unsolicited, I recently pulled some connectors looking at gold pins for pin spreading and corrosion with a dissecting microscope. The gold pins look the same as the day I installed them. Independent of this thread Dave got an FYI from me about my positive findings.

So I have this newly acquired 90pt concourse 2nd 550 with a cascade of non-engine/gearbox mechanical and electrical problems and a half dozen codes and some melted stuff. One of my 550's will become my new gutted out racecar. The new 550 was a victim of 4 pros swapping parts and I have picture proof of the quality of workmanship which will not be posted here. Amazingly, in a month of weekends, at no real cost I have debugged the entire car into a perfect runner with perfectly running ODB2 reporting and Cali smog passing. Still the new 550 idle and rev up the RPM range is noticeably not as smooth or responsive as my old gold pinned 550. It is really quite an amazing contrast when you have two 550's side by side, one only running good while one runs great. I am convinced more than ever that the gold kit is valuable. 2 years ago I posted on Fchat that the gold kit was the single best improvement I have ever put in a Ferrari. I still believe it. All this is a little consolation to you but I will "put my money where my mouth is" ...twice. I will be calling SRI next week for my second gold kit to see if I can get my new 550 running as well as my old one. Thanks for putting up with my rambling...

 

Your circuit is a chain of devices. This chain is only as strong as its weakest link.

 

Since you asked, in my opinion, if the O2 sensor code flashes and you test the O2 sensor and it is bad then you have to ask why the sensor failed. Replacing the failed sensor, if all else is functioning correctly will correct the problem. However, that does not preclude the possibility that the new O2 sensor will not fail at some time in the future. If this wasn't the case in the majority of cases the OBD II system would be useless. But since you brought it up, if the code comes on and you replace all the terminals with what ever kit you choose how does that fix the problem if it is the O2 sensor that failed? As I said before, replacing the terminal will at best correct poor connections and at worse should do no harm, unless the installation is screwed up.

Interesting that you brought up Toyota in your subsequent post. I just replace the upstream O2 sensor in my 2002 Tacoma. It when out at 150k miles. The OBD II code told me the heater circuit failed. Tests showed the heater in the sensor was open. Next question was why? Old and worn out or control system failure putting too much voltage across the heater? Further tests showed the voltage applied to the heater was indeed correct. At that point replacement seemed the reasonable path to follow. That said, how does an O2 sensor lasting only 20k miles in an F355 have anything to do with connector terminals. Ask why it fails. The possibilities are more aligned to the operation environment. Why do Ferraris have cat temp sensors while my Toyota truck, my BMW 328is and my wifes Honda don't? That should be a clue as to why an O2 sensor in a F355 may fail more frequently.

When you talk about the control system and the need to think in terms of the system, and not just parts, "It is a problem in control system design and we need to think in a "systems" way to solve the problem not part replace our way out of it and get the customer out the door", how does replacing connector terminals do anything but address parts? The control system is the ECU (made by Bosch). Every thing else is I/O.


As for your examples of the Tacoma Narrows bridge and the plane crash are just strawmen that serve no purpose in the discussion. They are not examples of good engineering. They are example of engineering failures brough on by lack of knowledge or by setting the design operational window incorrectly.

 

Hi Dave,

I would not recommend using vinegar. It is painfully slow. If you want something fast acting try muriatic acid. But be sure to rinse the aid off or you may create more problems in the future. Actually, if I were doing such an install I would solder after crimping. This would prevent the possibility of oxidation reforming between the wire and the terminal in the future.

As for my stay with the F355, we will see what time brings. I have no plans of selling it, as is the case with my 308.

 

You tell me EXACTLY how your car is running, defined purely in numbers, the fuel trim averages you are getting, your exact O2 sensor frequency average, 5 gas readings throughout the RPM range along with compression and leakdown readings and a history of code issues.......

With that data presented accurately, I can give you a realistic list of expectations. Without that data your request is not reasonable, but as an engineer.....you Knew that. The "unscientific data" point flows Both ways...... the GCK kit doesn't fix a flat tire. Please do not misunderstand me, I have the highest respect for engineers, quite a few work for me on this and other projects, without them this wouldn't have so much as a toe hold.

I KNOW how I feel about data without numbers..... I strongly dislike it, it has been a terrible bur to me through the last half dozen years! I have files upon files of notes on the results, video's of the oscilloscope testing areas I have identified that hold answers, files on feedback offered by anyone willing to give it.... but have not gone beyond that. With no effort what so ever I could double my investment into this effort in an attempt to Prove the results...... and still this debate would rage on by those that know little to nothing about what we are really doing, exactly like FBB stated. I instead choose to continue on my path as THIS is not my main focus, this is only the base platform for a far larger and more defined effort.

By all means, DO NOT consider this effort, I would not blame you in the least. Find something new that has not yet been researched or answered on these cars. Spend the time to analyze, research, prototype, test and Fix that problem. Investing the time to pick apart a system that is already in place.... that is wasting time that can be spent Fixing something else. By all means, ignore this effort and develop another for a different set of problems.

 

Back to the original topic for a moment..... ease of (and tips for) the installation of the kit.

I do not know what specific step-by-step instructions are included with the kit these days, so sorry if this "tip" is redundant.

If you are trying to remove pins from connectors while they are still on the car (attached to the wire harness), you are increasing the difficulty tremendously. Instead, first un-clip the connector, pull back its boot / loom sleeving, and snip the wires off at the terminal crimp back ends as close to the metal as possible to leave as much intact wire (on the harness end) as possible --- however, do not do this if the connector backshell is such that you cannot access close enough to the terminal (i.e., do not snip away / waste too much wire length). This will leave you with a loose connector that still contains its pins / sockets, but is not attached to the harness. This you can now take to your workbench, or kitchen table, where you can then remove the pins with greater access / control and far less hassle .

Of course, there is no way to avoid having to crimp most of the new pins / sockets onto the wires while the harness is on the car (although, some smaller sub-harnesses can be completely removed from the car and taken to the workbench) and then having to insert the pins into the connector housings (again, on the car), but inserting the pins is far, far easier and idiot-proof than removing them .

 

DO NOT SOLDER.... period! I did and paid the price to correct that mistake. The "may" statement about muratic acid can be changed to WILL... been there, own that shirt.

Your stay with the 355 will be incredibly rewarding, that is my wish and genuine hope.... and the reasons for my efforts. All of my efforts came about because requests from Roger, Steve and Chuck to "get rid of this damn thing for me".... I just couldn't live with that failure to satisfy those friends.... so we changed course and did what we are. All still own their cars and they have proven problem free for years now.

 

You imply that the 02 sensor fails in a digital way. Dead or alive. I do not understand the failure mode but it appears to me that 02 sensors loose efficiency and one popular failure mode is to fail slowly like an old man moving slower and slower with age. If you have wiring also in similar condition you throw an 02 sensor code. If other parts of the system are working 100% the 02 sensor can do its function longer. This is my only explanation of it in the field. When ferrari wiring is good the sensors act more like toyota sensors. They are lasting.

operational environment is certainly a factor but it is hotter than blazes under my V8 stock corvette racecar motor too. The racecar is pushed to extreme limits i might add. They are still as bullit proof as stock GM. Ferrari does not seem to engineer for operational environment. The poster with corroded wires is not alone. If you have an old 355 I bet you dinner you cut off a pin and your wires are corroded too. We can engineer for operational environment SRI has done that. It is called the gold connector kit and the 550 SRI fuel injection harness and the SRI silicone coolant hoses.

Those parts are part of the vehicle control system. All of has to work. Bosch ECU linked via CANBus to system ECU's to wiring to I/O sensors. It is more important than ever to get this stuff to work because you can't wire around them without throwing more OBD2 codes for serial communication link failures. If you have these failures you don't pass smog and can't register your car.

I think we really agree on principal. They illustrate that if we play checkers we have our heads handed to us on a platter if the game is really chess played on the same board. That bridge would still be there today if the wind did not blow on it. Call it what you want it was not a failure of 1940 engineering or math. It was not understanding all the parameters of the operational window as you call it. It is windy in Washington. What SRI seems to do is build for real world operational window or operational environment. What we with boots on the ground are seeing is less sensor failures, less MIL codes, and better car running on many parameters. Many are still replacing parts and those same cars come back again and again for more of the same parts with no lasting resolution like the toyota with an 02 sensor that makes it 150k miles. My 2nd 550 I mentioned earlier has $30k in records 4 mechanics over 5 years culminating in a final $50k estimate to put the car right using the same repair methodology as the first $30k. The owner finally gave up and I own the car now. I have it working very well for almost zero dollars spent. I'll have it working perfectly after I buy my second gold kit. Anyway interesting discussion thanks for your time.

 

Also an engineer here, Embry Riddle, Aerospace, and I'll say this about the SRI gold kit. You can stand by your requirement for data and not dive into it. I dove into it and problems that my car had, some of which were apparent (intermittent rough idle) and others that were not (F1 system being noticeably better after kit) have been fixed and the car overall improved.

Think of it this way, at some point PC motherboards left tin plated connectors on solder pads for gold plated pins with higher clamping force because the speeds of the bus and components demanded it for full performance. There is allot of data running through that harness and not all of it is getting where it belongs consistently. That works fine on a Honda but not on this car. And I say that being the last person to buy into the magic car maintained by men with secrets BS that so many buy into.

 

I assumed this would be a smart idea for those inclined to solder as a follow up to the crimp. Can you explain why you found soldering to be problematic? Was it just the added time with little additional payoff or is there more to it?

 

Dave, I asked for benefits and data, not an unreasonable request, you did not provide any...

and, I'm interested in this product.....