Sharing a bad experience with my 370Z

algibbs77

I wouldn't be so quick to say that these issues are or aren't EMI related. Electric and magnetic fields are very complex. It usually isn't as easy as just saying that some particular unit is shielded by the body or some other means.

The car's body should do a good job shielding from electric fields but magnetic fields are a different issue. Thin sheet metal won't completely shield magnetic fields. Even though the ECU may be shielded the shielding doesn't prevent fields from being coupled onto wires entering or exiting the ECU.

Additionally, fields don't always fall off at at rate of 1/R^2. I work on some extremely high power equipment that was expected to produce fields that rolled off at a rate of 1/R^2 when in reality the measured results showed that the roll off was actually 1/R. The actual roll of of a field may be anywhere between 1/R to 1/R^4 depending on the source, location and the make up of the field.

With all that said I would tend to agree that it isn't likely that the problem is related to power lines but I would be looking closely at inter-compatibility issues with other electronics in the car. Either way it should be interesting to see how all of this plays out.

Sorry for being such an engineer.....