car cutting out

[VIN7]

Yesterday, the car was running bad intermittently. As the boost would come on the car would shudder like the engine was cutting on and off, and eventually die. The ecm would reset and/or store a code 42. I have replaced the wires and plugs, took the coil pack and module to Autozone and they checked out ok. I checked the batt cable and it hasn't shorted anywhere. Only weird thing I noticed is at the track every other pass was clean, but on those runs (clean), direct scan reported that the batt flag was on (text mode) in first gear, the voltage was 13.1+ and 14+ when the volt booster kicked in. I didn't save any of the stuttering runs, but when I reviewed the ds run, during the stutter part a lot of the fields would go to zero and back to normal.

I run the trans+/extender so I don't think maf related. It just feels like the spark is getting blown out, even with new plugs gapped at 0.032.

Any ideas?

Mike

 

[VIN7]

Why is it that the longer I own this car the more "analytical" I have to be when diagnosing a problem

After thinking about what could be causing only the ecm to lose power or reset, I programmed a cell in the extender, set the scanmaster on that programmed number and started pulling wires to see which one reset that cell. Turns out that my shim wasn't shimming the DS cable and it had seated all the way onto the circuit board.

Here's a tip: Use a 6" zip tie clipped down to size to fit into the DS connector, seems to be a good depth. Went out for a test run, 4 WOT blasts to 23lbs and not a hiccup.

Mike