I'll check on this. Thanks for your advise

 

Yeah, I was trying to find out the culprit of the problem. Maybe what was wrong was going to burn, but it didn't

 

I just bought another AEM EMS. But I won't install it untill I'm sure of what's going on here

 

I can tell you that the problem isn't the AEM. The AEM would have no way to induce current into the ground strips on the circuit board. If you install the new AEM you will most likely burn it up as well. I'm fairly certain the problem is external to the ecu and installer incompetence that is hurting the boards.

 

For what it's worth my buddies AEM EMS fried on him last month, it was in a 2003 evo. What happened with his is he installed a mech. oil pressure gauge, he ran a copper line down to the filter housing. Well little did he know the copper line was too close to the alternator and ended up grounding against it. It popped the alternator fuse on the battery terminal, not only did it do that but it completely clipped the main relay on the firewall. The relay had to be pulled then put back in.
Well after all this happened the car would not start. I could not get my laptop to communicate with the EMS. We took the ems out and it smelt burnt. We sent it off to AEM and sure enough it fried the board. They replaced the board for $175.
It is kinda scary that there is no circuit protection in the EMS. So I would seriously start looking for shorts in your wiring as it may be the cause in your headaches.

I had an EMS fry on me as well on my 92 talon. My ignitor pack harness came unplugged during a pass at the track, happened in 2nd gear. When it happened of course the car lost all power and just died due to no spark.
Got back to the pits and plugged the harness back in and fired the car up, but it was only running on 2 cylinders. Thinking I fried the ignitor pack or coil pack I replaced both to no avail. Got the car home and tossed the stock ecu back in the car for testing and it fired right up on all 4 cylinders. Sent the EMS off to AEM and it ended up frying 2 coil drivers on the main board. It just amazes me how easy it is to fry one of these things from stupid crap like this.

 

That's the main problem. I usually do all the installs in my car but this time I was very busy at work, so I ended up sending it to a shop that is known to work very well with Evo's. I'm just learning the hard way

 

Thanks for the tips bud. After reading all the recommendations, I'm just going to pull apart everything in the engine bay so that I can redo the install checking everything by myself

 

I think i know what the problem is.

Is your Evo 9 RH drive or LH drive?
If its RH drive remember you are using the AEM which is ment for the USDM (LH drive) and the wiring is slightly different. I think there are some pins that you will have to relocate to make the AEM work properly. You need to get the ecu pin out for both RH and LH drive compare and see the differences and make the necessary changes.

Thats why your stock ecu works ok. Please post the differences if any... i would really like to know my self as i am awaiting my AEM.

 

Thanks for the tip, but my car is LH drive, just like the USDM's. I think the problem is not in the AEM, but in the car wiring. A friend of mine installed a headlight lightbulb in the ground track that burned the last time, so that I could see when the overcurrent was happening. Well it happened after I passed some speedbumps or when the car moved a lot, so I guess there has to be a wire loose somewhere. Next week I'm going to look hard into this

 

UPDATE

I found the wires going to the rear O2 sensor to be spliced and tangled. I think the problem was there as the lightbulb that was installed to see when the short was happening hasn't turned on since the wires were fixed.

Thanks for the tips guys

 

Somebody got lazy and didn't make sure to unwind the O2 sensor before screwing it up so as to not put pressure on the wires by tangling them. Well glad you figured it out. Now do I get a cookie for blaming the wiring and not the ECU? That would be a tough find, but good troubleshooting!

 

Haha, you actually do deseve it. Thanks man