So ive got a 10th ae.. yay! and i'm hooking it up ,but thats not what this is about. I pulled the ecu to send it off and under the carpet i found an ethernet type cable (rj45?) running off into the center dash area and toward the back, maybe swinging around toward the middle of the car... i didn't want to go ripping up anymore carpet though, cause the cars pretty clean and i don't want to mess it up :P It doesn't go to the ECU (Rtek) So what could someone do with something like that (programs available for laptop?)? Is it a stock diagnostic thinger? pretty neat job though.

Another "feature" added to the car is a switch under the steering, that i believe to be a fuel pump shut off, that when flipped, makes the car die like you pulled the connector. It's only had two owners that i know of, one of which i bought the car from, a high school kid. I don't think he did any of this stuff.

Ideas?

 

The fuel kill switch is a common mod done to prevent a flooded engine. If that's the case you may as well use that to kill the engine when you want to shut the car off. Also you may want to do a compression test on the engine to see if they installed it due to a tired low compression motor.

In regards to the Ethernet cable, you may want to find out what the deal is with that. If it was in there to connect to the computer (ECU) it may have a custom chip in there that can be programmed. If that's the case you want t to be very careful about what you put back in. If you go from a tuned ECU to a stocker it may spell trouble if your car is modded and needed the tune to run safely.

 

yeah, i'll check it out, but i know its not connected to the emissions control unit *ECU*
its located at the far passenger side foot corner, so i'm thinking it was some sort of data logging thingamajig.

 

The passenger foot area is where the Engine Control Unit is though.

 

oh i know, i had pulled the ecu and sent it off to get chipped, so i know it wasn't connected to that. the cable splits off, one way goes behind the dash area and the other back towards the rear ( maybe making a loop)

I'll have to get back out there and pull the carpet

what can be hooked up to it with a LAN/Ethernet cable besides a laptop?

 

that would make me wonder to. i no that u can get a clip to hook from the ecu to acomputer but its more direct i believe

 

It could be damn near anything. When wiring a car, someone can use whatever connector they want. So if they had some CAT-5 handy and an RJ45 end, they probably just used that. Maybe they used to have a computer installed for playing MP3s? For years, I had an Ethernet jack in my gas filler area just for that purpose. Could have been used for an old stereo setup, maybe mood lighting, perhaps a power connection for something, etc. The only wayt to find out is to follow the wires.

 

true that....

 

gotcha, thats pretty neat. I'll try and check it out and let ya'll know what i find.. probably is something simple.