For the past ohhh year I've had a blinking CE light on my 01 Trooper when it has sat for a while. Sometimes that while was as short as overnight, sometimes it took several days. The annoyance was that the CE light would blink whenever I had any pressure on the throttle pedal at all. The light would turn off when coasting, braking or stopped. I could often drive for 30 minutes or so and restart the truck and the light would stay off. It also had a tendency to stutter when the light was blinking.
This truck is a drive-by-wire truck and as such it has a throttle position sensor on the pedal on the firewall and a throttle actuator on the throttle body under the hood. I figured that one of them was either dirty (hopefully) or bad (expensive to replace ).
My first step was to remove the throttle position sensor and clean it. This thing is a pretty simple device with a spring-loaded potentiometer and about 15" of aircraft cable that loops around to connect the pot to the pedal. I removed the unit and then removed the pot from it. Pay attention to how it mounts. It isn't hard to replace but the thing is spring loaded so you need to line things up, then rotate the pot and screw it down.
That didn't fix my problem.
So I attacked the throttle actuator. In this photo it is the thing on the front of the intake that the black intake tube attaches to:
I decided that I was going to remove and take it apart. Before I got that far I discovered a small panel on the passenger side of the actuator that was just begging to be removed. It is the one with the upside-down writing in this photo:
One the screws are removed very carefully pry the cover off. The two small holes at the top and bottom line up on very small pins on the actuator. Be careful to pull the cover straight off to save those pins.
Inside this is what you will find:
Wet a cloth with contact cleaner and very gently wipe each contact. A Q-Tip might work just be sure to check for loose cotton when you finish.
The inside of the cover looks like this:
This is where my cleaner-soaked cloth got dirty. It wasn't very dirty, but obviously it was dirty enough to tick off the computer. The o-ring on that cover isn't really attached either. Don't drop it or loose it in the process.
Once you have finished cleaned inside, replace the plate and reinstall the screws. Don't over-tighten them, they just press down on the plastic cover plate.
That's it. I hope that this helps someone else.
-Tad
P.S. This is the contact cleaner that I used:
This truck is a drive-by-wire truck and as such it has a throttle position sensor on the pedal on the firewall and a throttle actuator on the throttle body under the hood. I figured that one of them was either dirty (hopefully) or bad (expensive to replace ).
My first step was to remove the throttle position sensor and clean it. This thing is a pretty simple device with a spring-loaded potentiometer and about 15" of aircraft cable that loops around to connect the pot to the pedal. I removed the unit and then removed the pot from it. Pay attention to how it mounts. It isn't hard to replace but the thing is spring loaded so you need to line things up, then rotate the pot and screw it down.
That didn't fix my problem.
So I attacked the throttle actuator. In this photo it is the thing on the front of the intake that the black intake tube attaches to:
I decided that I was going to remove and take it apart. Before I got that far I discovered a small panel on the passenger side of the actuator that was just begging to be removed. It is the one with the upside-down writing in this photo:
One the screws are removed very carefully pry the cover off. The two small holes at the top and bottom line up on very small pins on the actuator. Be careful to pull the cover straight off to save those pins.
Inside this is what you will find:
Wet a cloth with contact cleaner and very gently wipe each contact. A Q-Tip might work just be sure to check for loose cotton when you finish.
The inside of the cover looks like this:
This is where my cleaner-soaked cloth got dirty. It wasn't very dirty, but obviously it was dirty enough to tick off the computer. The o-ring on that cover isn't really attached either. Don't drop it or loose it in the process.
Once you have finished cleaned inside, replace the plate and reinstall the screws. Don't over-tighten them, they just press down on the plastic cover plate.
That's it. I hope that this helps someone else.
-Tad
P.S. This is the contact cleaner that I used: