how many of you have had to repair your PFC

[vegeta4ss]

During a conversation with Shizuma yesterday he mentioned that the PFC for the ZZ engines and RB engines are extremely problematic to voltage regulator failure (aka boiling hot PFC syndrome) compared with the other PFC engine platforms.

That got me to wondering how many people other than me have this issue with their PFC on this forum?

I've got the parts to fix mine. I've had them for a year. I went to install them the other day and noticed that my pfc has had this operation done before by the previous owner. I now think that this is a band-aid to a bigger problem with the pfc.

It's not a hard fix but I wonder if i'm going to have to keep doing this?

There is an adjustable POT style screw right next to the regulator. I assume this controls the voltage cutout. If any of you care to take the time would you remove the top cover of your PFC and see what yours is set at? All you need is a phillips head to remove the cover and its right there.

Also if anyone knows anything regarding PFC's serial communication protocol, circuit board schematics, or homebrew pfc hacks from other car communities let me know. I'm working on a personal project and need some of this info to keep going.

[v3bahumut]

Never heard of this, or had a problem....but I'll post here in case I need the information in the future.

Beanie over at spyderchat (developed the copilot program) could probably talk your ear off on how the PFC works if you ask him really nice.

[2KGTrd]

That got me to wondering how many people other than me have this issue with their PFC on this forum?

The guy i bought my car from had an issue with his pfc.
Didn't explain it really well (language barrier), but what i got out of it was the unit crashed much like a computer and then failed to respond.
He ended up sending it back and got it replaced, not sure if it was warrantied.

[vegeta4ss]

The guy i bought my car from had an issue with his pfc.
Didn't explain it really well (language barrier), but what i got out of it was the unit crashed much like a computer and then failed to respond.
He ended up sending it back and got it replaced, not sure if it was warrantied.

The Apexi customer service experiences so far for me have sucked. Endless phone tag and emails disappear unanswered. Mine is so old there's no way its warrantied though. From what I can tell using my serial number my unit was #98 made in 2002 of the ZZ series units, so no surpise its having issues. My pfc is only one year newer than my entire celica.

I dont know what they mean by the unit crashed. But my car would run as dictated by my map until the unit got too hot and the voltage regulator quit properly controlling the ground for the unit. At that time the car would start to misfire (most likely as a result of the excess voltage that is normally not present) and after a few seconds the car would cut off. The PFC refused to crank the car again until the oem ecu was swapped in. I can only figure that the PFC hit some sort of overload failsafe and the unit protected itself by shutting down the engine. By swapping the oem ecu in I reset the pfc. I never got to try letting the PFC cool down without doing a swap though. That's one for the list before I fix my pfc again.

v3bahamut, I remember reading about CoPilot on here now that you mention it. Yes Beanie would be the exact person I need to talk to about that. I guess I need to make a spyderchat account.

[zzt231 gr]

During a conversation with Shizuma yesterday he mentioned that the PFC for the ZZ engines and RB engines are extremely problematic to voltage regulator failure (aka boiling hot PFC syndrome) compared with the other PFC engine platforms.

That got me to wondering how many people other than me have this issue with their PFC on this forum?

I've got the parts to fix mine. I've had them for a year. I went to install them the other day and noticed that my pfc has had this operation done before by the previous owner. I now think that this is a band-aid to a bigger problem with the pfc.

It's not a hard fix but I wonder if i'm going to have to keep doing this?

There is an adjustable POT style screw right next to the regulator. I assume this controls the voltage cutout. If any of you care to take the time would you remove the top cover of your PFC and see what yours is set at? All you need is a phillips head to remove the cover and its right there.

Also if anyone knows anything regarding PFC's serial communication protocol, circuit board schematics, or homebrew pfc hacks from other car communities let me know. I'm working on a personal project and need some of this info to keep going.
Mine works like a charm for over 4 years.

Can you upload some pics with the circuit board and the components you changed?

[Celicasaur]

Interesting.

When mine got fixed (well, ultimately I was given a new unit by apexi), after I got it mapped, it would run pig rich off the scale/misfire after around....30-40 minutes on the highway coming home from the tuner (and I was only driving sensibly with light throttle at around 75mph).

I eventually re-tuned the car from scratch via a good map that Redliner sent me...I never trusted the car to go back on the highway with it again, but it would be interesting to know if it's the unit that doesn't like a particular condition of the car when highway cruising, or if it's something to do with the map :shrugs:

Good luck in your quest, Vegas

[zzt231 gr]

^^Maybe it's the new map that has the prob...?

[Celicasaur]

Yeah possibly......but I was never able to verify that the old map was the problem, because I never drove it on the highway with the new 213whp map. Maybe in a couple months though, when I drive 200 miles back home in my 2.0 celica, I'll have no choice but to see how it does on the highway :ugh:

[zzt231 gr]

OT^^You better do this with somenone driving your car and you doing possible real time adjustments with the laptop for proper running.

[vegeta4ss]

ok so I finally got some pics of the part I am talking about. I made a photobucket album and put them there.

http://s209.photobucket.com/albums/bb29/vegeta4ss/pfc/

In the pictures you will see the voltage regulator I am talking about, the pics of a previous repair by the old owner, and the adjustable knob I mentioned in my first post.

I don't get much time to work on this. I have another issue with my car passing emissions and am stuck using the stock ecu until I sort that out. So updates will be slow to come.

I do have one more picture to add and that is of the replacement voltage regulator which I ordered from Newark. But you could get it from Digikey as well.

I'm hoping to install my replacement voltage regulator soon. I just need a new tip for my iron to do a good job on it. I just wonder why my pfc keeps eating these voltage regulators? This will be the pfc's third one (that I know of) when I do the installation. If that knob is not set too high then my pfc has some other issue.

[zzt231 gr]

Are you sure that it is a voltage regulator?It's code?And I wouldn't touch that potentiometer without a multimeter and some additional info,if I were you...

The fail could be from many reasons.Crappy soldering(which seems that it is),wrong potentiometer setting,faulty component that affects the regulator,improper regulator heat dissipation(I don't see the heat-conductive paste),etc.

[vegeta4ss]

Are you sure that it is a voltage regulator?It's code?And I wouldn't touch that potentiometer without a multimeter and some additional info,if I were you...

The fail could be from many reasons.Crappy soldering(which seems that it is),wrong potentiometer setting,faulty component that affects the regulator,improper regulator heat dissipation(I don't see the heat-conductive paste),etc.
yes it is a voltage regulator. I've had a circuit board production shop verify this and they told me paste would not be necessary with that type of component.

I don't plan to touch the potentiometer until someone else can tell me what another pfc is set at. I asked for that data in the first post of this thread so hopefully someone can take five minutes to help me out. All it takes is removing the cover from your pfc and taking a picture.

[zzt231 gr]

I don't plan to touch the potentiometer until someone else can tell me what another pfc is set at. I asked for that data in the first post of this thread so hopefully someone can take five minutes to help me out. All it takes is removing the cover from your pfc and taking a picture.
__________________You know,it wouldn't probably be there,if it was to be set at a value identical to every other PFC.It must be there to be able to regulate something,because of the different tolerance of every component...

[vegeta4ss]

long time since an update so here we go

here's the part sheet for the replacement voltage regulator
http://www.allegromicro.com/en/Products/Categories/Sanken/Regulators/si-3000c.pdf

the voltage regulator is fairly simple. There's an input, an output, a feedback loop which is controlled with the potentiometer, and a failsafe.

The output from my V0 pin on my busted voltage regulator is more than 5v and fluctuating which is leading me to believe that the component is bad.

As far as the potentiomer is concerned there is a chart on the last page which shows you the preferred output voltage and im going to use my meter to set it right on the nose, or as close as I can get. This is once the new part is in, i'm still on the busted one.

This voltage regulator does not come out easily. You must unbolt it from the chassis and then cut all five legs and remove them one at a time. You wont get this big fvcker out otherwise. I've tried every other method so cutting is my last option and it always works, lol.

Once i'm done here i'm going to post pics of the repair operation and how to verify if you actually have a bad component on your pfc's board or not. I don't see this issue elsewhere so it may be just me with the problem.

ps if anyone else has opened their pfc before do you have red/orange check marks on your chips? My board has this and it makes me think that it went to apexi once for repair and a tech verified each chip and checked them off. Unless all units come like that.

[Celicasaur]

Damn, is it still not working?? :(

[vegeta4ss]

Damn, is it still not working?? :(
yeah the celica only gets like 1% of my time these days and work takes the other 99%. hopefully that will change eventually because there are MANY projects lined up and the parts are just collecting dust.

The pfc has seen < 14 days use in the last 2 years. It's a low priority. I'm working on some EE stuff at work currently though and it's provided a good excuse to dig out the pfc.

by the way if any of you ever check pin voltages on an ecu while the car is running make sure to use the correct ground. That would be the ecu ground wire, not the chassis. I stupidly did this mistake yesterday and blew the AM2 fuse and the car wouldn't crank. I was lucky it was only a fuse and I could borrow one from the DRL spot. Could have been much worse. Even though it was a weird fuse. 7.5a. Not a common mini-bus fuse and therefore it was not in my assorted pack in the toolbox.

[T3HKMAN]

long time since an update so here we go

here's the part sheet for the replacement voltage regulator
http://www.allegromicro.com/en/Products/Categories/Sanken/Regulators/si-3000c.pdf

the voltage regulator is fairly simple. There's an input, an output, a feedback loop which is controlled with the potentiometer, and a failsafe.

The output from my V0 pin on my busted voltage regulator is more than 5v and fluctuating which is leading me to believe that the component is bad.

As far as the potentiomer is concerned there is a chart on the last page which shows you the preferred output voltage and im going to use my meter to set it right on the nose, or as close as I can get. This is once the new part is in, i'm still on the busted one.

This voltage regulator does not come out easily. You must unbolt it from the chassis and then cut all five legs and remove them one at a time. You wont get this big fvcker out otherwise. I've tried every other method so cutting is my last option and it always works, lol.

Once i'm done here i'm going to post pics of the repair operation and how to verify if you actually have a bad component on your pfc's board or not. I don't see this issue elsewhere so it may be just me with the problem.

ps if anyone else has opened their pfc before do you have red/orange check marks on your chips? My board has this and it makes me think that it went to apexi once for repair and a tech verified each chip and checked them off. Unless all units come like that.

I just got my new PFC from MWR I'll see about taking some pics for you. Haven't even installed it yet.

Here you go. No check marks on my board. http://www.flickr.com//photos/12842675@N02/sets/72157627142314618/show/

[vegeta4ss]

I just got my new PFC from MWR I'll see about taking some pics for you. Haven't even installed it yet.

Here you go. No check marks on my board. http://www.flickr.com//photos/12842675@N02/sets/72157627142314618/show/

Thanks for verifying that T3HKMAN

edit: yours has a NEC chip and you say you just bought it new? That chip is no longer produced and was replaced in the newer boards by an Atmel one if I remember correctly more than one year ago. Maybe all the current pfc's that are *new* are old stock then?