I need some help ...
Back in May, I had an S27 F08 error code pop up on my tractor. A quick google search led to a discussion on this forum that it was a wiring harness error. I popped the hood, did a cursory check to see if there were any wires/harnesses loose, found nothing. Shut the hood, and the error went away.
Fast forward 3 months, and the error is back. It flashes the error, along with the red exclamation point blinking every second.
up the underside of the hood to the headlights. The chafe tape had gotten pushed back, and it had rubbed against a hydraulic line. The insulation on the red and black wires was rubbed off (zoom in on the attached picture).
All I could do to fix it (there is not enough cable to cut and reattach the connector), was to get a couple of wraps of electrical tape around the wires.
This is where this story gets interesting/confusing.
Convinced I had found the problem, I turned the tractor back on, and the error codes came back on after the usual 30 seconds or so.
At this point, I thought, "maybe the error codes just need cleared". I have no idea if this is true and that error codes must be cleared. I had also read that on some tractors you can clear error codes by cycling the key on/off a couple of times quickly. Again, I have no idea if that is true or not. But, I did it, and the error codes went away, and I couldn't get them to show back up.
[Side note - when I first started the tractor, the headlights were on, and the bad wires were leading to the head lights. So, I convinced myself that was probably the culprit, and may explain why the error code came on in May, and then went away. That is, I may have bumped the lights on in May, which triggered the error due to the bad wires. Then, opening and closing the hood jiggled the wires enough that any short due to contact was moved enough to make it go away. Then, the problem slowly got worse, and bumping the lights on caused the error code to reappear.]
Pleased with myself, and my logic for explaining the problem and the fix, I went to bed. When I got into work this morning, I decided to look up in the shop manual during a break to see if there was any additional information. I looked up the error code and found, S27 F08 with a 1 Hz blinking exclamation point is NOT a wiring harness error. It's an "EGR Position Control Fault".
!?!?!?!?!!? (All of my self-congratulatory problem solving and logic just went out the window).
The manual says that the first step in correcting this error is to make sure there is unimpeded airflow to the engine. When I popped open the hood to start investigating last night, I found some mouse turds around the battery. Now I'm wondering if a mouse got up into the air intake/filter area. Despite being garage kept, I've had this happen on a car a year ago too. (I pulled over 1 cup of nuts out of the air filter container on my Honda when doing a routine air filter exchange).
I won't be able to investigate until I get home tonight, but I'd love to better understand how the errors disappeared in the first place by fixing the wires, and cycling the key, and then why they didn't come back on, as it appears that I actually solved a problem I didn't even know existed, and which was different than what the error code indicated.
I'm very confused right now.
ps. After inspecting all of the wiring last night I'm not very impressed with how the wires are connected to most of the harnesses. There is a large length of exposed wire at virtually every connection, with little to no chafe guard or shrink wrap to protect against the elements. I've ordered some chafe tape to correct the one known problem and am considering adding shrink wrap to all of the connections to minimize the chance of dirt/water working into the back side of the connectors. Thoughts?
