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I fixed my blinking CE Light

29K views 12 replies 10 participants last post by  bsmart10 
#1 ·
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:
 
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#5 ·
Tad, can you remember what the code was that you fixed for? I have a P1220 - which I thought was TPS Sensor 2, and I cleaned the printed-circuit board as you did without any success - thanks for the great photos & description. The interesting thing is that P1220 for Nissan is "Fuel Pressure Sensor" which so happens to be what fixed 01S_canuck's problem in this thread - http://forum.planetisuzoo.com/viewtopic ... ight=p1220. It's all very confusing - Alldata does not list a P1220 code for Isuzu, the WS-manual seems to indicate that P0121 is TPS S2, the scanner displays P1220 - for GM it's TPS S2 and for Nissan it's the Fuel-Pressure Sensor. Seems that you just have to go after each sensor!! Vince.
 
#9 ·
nice pictures / write up great job!!!
 
#10 ·
I had the blinking CEL problem on my 2001 Trooper and tried everything above without success. Now I found if I start the car in the morning and let it idle until the rpm goes down to about 1250 I can start driving and the CEL will not come on. I tried this for about 3 weeks every day and it worked each time. Than I tested by not waiting for the rpm drop and starting driving immediately. Result :Blinking CEL. So I don't konw what causes it but I know how to avoid it.

Uhralt
 
#11 ·
A quick update. I changed the spark plugs on my 2001 Trooper(Densos, which were less than a year old) and now I have no more blinking CE light. My car has been consuming about two quarts of oil per 1000 miles lately. I think that burning so much oil fouls the spark plugs over time causing random misfire. Next time when the problem re-occurs I will just change the spark plugs and see what happens.

Does anybody have a similar experience?

Uhralt
 
#12 ·
I had a similar problem with blinking CEL a few years back. It occurred a few times for a week or so and had an associated stumble, and unsteady idle. The CEL issue just went away, but the stumble and idle issue remained for quite some time. I don't recall when both problems really disappeared, but I did nothing but change plugs as well. I went from NGK that were several years old, back to the original type Champion plugs that came in the engine. This engine uses the plug firing to sense ping and adjust timing as necessary.
 
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