Quote:
Originally Posted by TopHydraulics
Sorry to hear about your trouble, and congrats on getting the first portion fixed! With the help of this forum, chafed wires on the 370Z convertible top wiring will soon be more easily recognized and fixed without spending a fortune on it... 
The dealer has obviously hooked up the computer to the car, and found the intermittent reading that way. Question is, is it really the sensor that is bad?
Let's make sure first that the wires from the controller to the sensor are intact, that the sensor is firmly clipped into the cylinder, and that the cylinder is extending all the way (meaning, the storage cover is opening all the way).
qubickz, could you please confirm the above?
Klaus
Top Hydraulics, Inc |
Thanks for showing interest in assisting me with this nutty issue. Alright, to answer your questions:
Wires from controller to sensor: I can only assume the connection is solid. When looking at the harness, it appears to be all one harness and no major interruptions in the wiring.
Sensor is firmly clipped into the cylinder: It does appear to be firmly clipped. It's within the grooves and does not appear to have been moved or loose. I can provide closer photos, but it looks solid.
Cylinder is extending all the way (meaning, the storage cover is opening all the way): This is tricky... It appears that this is the case, but, I have also been having an issue where the storage cover and the rear window (when it lifts/retracts) will smack each other, as if it's not opening fully... Here's the issue though. On the driver hydraulic side, I believe it only senses if the top is closed.. The passenger side hydraulic senses both open and closed (it has two sensors on the cylnder).
Here's a few observations:
When opening/closing the top (when it does work) the storage cover and the actual top smack each other, with about an inch of room where if you manually open the cover up more, it won't smack.
When temperatures are 80 degrees or more, the operation of the top fails a lot less. The hotter it gets (90 degrees+) I have almost zero errors coming from the top.
When operating the top, sometimes it fails operation. When I manually start to adjust where the top / storage cover is at, and resume operation, sometimes I can get it to complete the cycle.
When the OBD2 was hooked up while at the Nissan dealership, with the car parked, in about 65 degree temperature, the sensor on the driver side reads "ON or OFF" -- basically saying "hey i'm open, hey i'm closed"... This particular sensor was the only one that continued to change status. In a 60 second period, the sensor reporting was showing ON / OFF changing intermittently.
I hope this better explains the problem... I have been having the issue with the storage lid and the convertible top slightly smacking one another for the last 18 months.
The major issue here is this hall sensor as part of the cylinder is not "replaceable"... There are no clips on the harness, meaning that it's all part of one big system. The only way for me to really verify whether it's the sensor would be to clip, replace (from maybe a wrecked ZR) and solder. Any suggestions would be great to test... I've tapped into the wiring harness and tested with a volt meter as these hall sensors push out a 5v signal when the magnetic field changes... It didn't appear that the driver side was getting that 5v even when doing manual operation on occasion.