[Power Hungry]

Josh,

I must have made a mistake or missed something somewhere. I was under the impression we were having you send the unit back so we could test and/or replace it. Maybe it was in my head.

I don't think there's anything we can do further from this end until we get the unit back. I'll need to test the unit here and make sure it does work correctly and if it does then we need to determine what the communications issue is with your truck.

Unfortunately, I've had one other customer with an early truck that the programmer simply would not communicate with during a programming session. It would start reading and then fail at random points. Fortunately, it didn't fail while programming which would have disabled the PCM. In any event, he ended up having to go with a chip because of the programming issue.

I'm still not sure what exactly the problem is but we've seen similar issues on older 7.3L trucks that use very similar hardware. My guess is that as the PCM ages, the communications chip, clock crystal, or some other component(s) start to drift and cause a timing or voltage issue which results in a PCM that can't be programmed through the OBDII port.