Name that part - What went wrong?

[73Charger]

OK - went out to the car last week, and opened the hood and found goopy looking stuff dripping... what was it? where did it come from?

I removed this part and ah hah!  anyone else ever seen this?  i'm sure its not supposed to look like this.

[TylerCharger69]

looks to me like either that unit got too hot, or it got too hot in the general area and melted all of the rubber stuff that seals it up

[Chryco Psycho]

is seals the circuit board in the back of the box & yes I haev seen it happen before

[73Charger]

Nasty huh, yeah it got too hot alright. this car sits in a portable garage (not nearly airtight) and I guess goo much heat built up inside since I've never heard of this kind of thing happening just out in the sun. It was mounted on the firewall and I saw the goop dripping down the firewall. No wonder my car never started up well  Luckilly I wasnt using it anymore - I installed a Mallory CD box that has worked great but now I'm concerned about frying its circuits too, so I'm leaving the window open in the garage during the hot season to make sure its more ventilated.
Here is a pic with what it was  ... So was that rubber? its kind of like silly putty now  its green. 
I guess we should be aware of heat.  ANything else in my engine that could fall to heat or that I should examine for damage since it already got too hot?

[Plumcrazy]

I've seen that many times, they were still working fine.

It's probably from normal underhood engine heat when the car's running.

[cuda66273]

The potting material needs 350* to melt, it's not your garage it's a failed ECU dead short to ground.

Not real common but I've seen similar.

[Nacho-RT74]

very tipical down here !!! i have seen them worst, also still working. I have one with circuit board completelly naked. I had to replace because water made it doesn't work when I washed the car.

PROBLEM IS THE BAD CHARGING AVERAGE LOAD. As tipical Mopar fail.

As some of you know, one of the mandatory upgrades from points to ECU is change the electronic regulator... that's the reason you need the electronic rgulator, get a good average charge load to ECU make its work, reason what was designed, BUT as far the alternator isn't able to charge at iddle, the you will still have a bad average load. That's something I think Mopar never thought.

As I have stated on eraliers charging topics, if you don't have a good charging average load, then high charging peaks for long time periods, will heat and melt everything, form Bulkhead to anything, starting for loose and weaks terminals

I got laters 70 Mopar alt with higher output alt than the stock 74 one and upgrade the wiring with parallel wires and get GREAT AVERAGE LOAD with almost fixed ammeter needle. In fact I think the cluster ammeter bulb heats more than the ammeter itself.

My cousing still have the Original from factory ECU module on its 73 dart sedan. ECU back stuff is actually completely melted, That was for a while he had the stock low output Motorola alt used down here to some Mopars. Changed to GM charging system and every fail just stopped. We don't really need to run to GM stuff. You can get the same from MaMopar upgrading wiring and also Mopar alt.

[73Charger]

Cool replies - I'm learning so much... Interesting this happened when it wasn't hooked up?  It was still screwed to the firewall but I had unplugged the connector and taped that up, and taped up the connector on the front of it with black electrical tape - all which was still good. so weird how it cooked when not really attached to anything, unless it happened over the years, and it just started leaking out again. hmmm

[Ghoste]

Maybe it breaks down over time and becomes susceptable to lower temperature? 

[Nacho-RT74]

ok that's new to me...

[TylerCharger69]

Well...IMO.....just sitting in the hot sun is NOT going to cause that....My theory is something went wrong in the ignition system somewhere and the ECU was taking on more voltage than was supposed to, thus  getting really hot  and causing that stuff to melt.   Just my theory and opinion

[Steve P.]

Seen it a bunch.. Meltdowners nightmare............   

[TylerCharger69]

I have the orange box....I hope that doesn't happen to mine

[73Charger]

Maybe it wasn't in the stock location?  It was mounted high on the firewall by the passenger side.  The ignition I think was pretty stock. The car  was always hard to start, at one point I changed the other little box on the firewall to a new one - chrome, but it didn't help.  Later I added the mallory cd ign box and that has been perfect.  The coil looks stock, it has a new ballast resistor and the cap and rotor were replaced before I bought it. I added an electric choke early on too - since before that I had to open the hood to close the choke every time I wanted to start it.

  Though when my car sits for a while (like a month) it takes a lot of cranking before it kicks over.  I've tried pumping the gas like crazy, holding it half way and all the way and nothing helps.  I think the gas just dries up in the carb and it takes that long just to get the floats to the proper level again?  Before the mallroy, I'd shoot carb cleaner to kick it over, now its only a problem after a long sit. I've also replaced the fuel pump but that didnt help either.  Is this possible?  Is there a check valve or something to keep fuel from rolling back into the pump? or is this just evaporation?

[dodge freak]

Might be evaporation -on my Holley the gas drys up after winter storage so I just take a small funnel and put it in the vent hole in the primary and have a small bottle of gas and fill the bowl up and pour a little more gas down in to the manifold. It starts up in 5-10 seconds after sitting for 4 months inside.

[73Charger]

yeah - I used to have a holley on my nova and what I liked was the little screw on the side that you could pull out to check the float levels.
Since this ede doesnt have anything like that, would the vent hole be the cylinders in the two barels? it would be nice to save all that cranking. I wouldnt think that is too good on the starter.

[dodge freak]

No I don't think so but I never really look at a eddy carb that good so I can't help you much. It won't hurt to pour just a little gas down those 2 holes but I think it just run for 1 or 2 seconds, still might help get the gas in the carb sooner. Guess you could keep doing that until it won't conk out.