Thursday night doing about 70 MPH I the middle of no where of course, car started to loose speed and throttle response. Pulled over to the side to check it out and noticed a burning smell so turned the car off. When I got out noticed smoke coming from the back of the engine lid. Did not have a flashlight to see in the engine but no flames. Tried to start it to get it somewhere to look at it, It would start by pumping the gas but that's the best it would do could not get it moving.

Towed it home yesterday morning and the FI Wiring harness was melted.

Questions are.

Do I just replace the FI harness, Cost of about $400.00
Concerns are
* Do not know what caused it and I am not a electrical person
* At the cost of $400.00 don't want it to burn up another
* Did the computer get damaged

Patch the melted wires to see if it happens again.

Switch to carbs, If so what kind for a stock 2.0

Thanks

Hi Irv,

The real cause of the problem needs to be determined before you just go replacing damaged parts. At least the other related parts should be checked to take them out of possibility. The FI harnesses only have low voltage going thru them, although there are places within the harness where an internal short (12v shorted to ground) things might start popping/melting. Internal shorts are a major concern for original harnesses on these cars and that condition starts with brittle wires.

Do you have a spare ECU to swap in?

Photos...show us the carnage. Maybe the problem was external to the FI harness and the harness was only a victim, not the culprit.

Swapping to carbs will be more expensive and time consuming than necessary to solve the issue.

I will add photo's tomorrow.

+12 volts for the ECU cames from the relay board driver's side of engine compartment and those wires run in the FI harness along the rear of the engine. There is a lot of heat in that area and this can damage the insulation of the wires over time. !2 volts shorting to ground will cause the smoke to come out. You will need to remove the harness and see if you can determine why it smoked.
I had to replace a couple of wires in mine due to heat damage to the insulation. Very hard and brittle. I replaced those with some teflon coated wire. Good for a much higher temp. If too many of the wires in the harness are damaged, probably best to get one of Jeff's or a good used one.
Tom

'good used one' is a bit of a misnomer for a wiring harness.

I agree with Jeff. You need to figure out what happened and why. It's certainly possible that you could fry your new $400 harness if something else is horribly wrong.

Irv - Jeff is being way too modest here - once you diagnose & repair the cause of the electrical problem which fried the EFI harness, then buy one of Jeff's restored harnesses from his website at his post sig.! Then you'll have a proper EFI 2.0 without the cost of a full carb conversion!

No charge for the plug Jeff!

Irv - do figure out the cause first, so you don't fry one of Jeff's rebuilt/restored harnesses & send more $$'s down the drain.

Cheers!
Tom
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Yep got other items from Jeff new harness will be one of his. The issue will be finding the root cause.