ISX CM870 randomly shuts down

I have a 2005 International, with the Cummins ISX15 and an Eaton 10 shooter that would cut out on me intermittently; stop engine light on along with all lights and accessories, and would resuscitate itself after a few seconds and merrily roll the milage back while doing so.
So when I bought this truck and upon opening the hood the first thing that caught my attention was a red wire laying across the top of the engine and spliced into the white power wire of the 4 prong connector that plugs into the ecm. I've been turning wrenches for a good many years so I know a WTF when I see one !! The owner had no knowledge of mechanics or trucking and had invested into a trucking business and was learning the hard way why that was a mistake. Anyways, I bought the truck drove it for a short while without incident until the nickel and dime gremlins felt I had worked long enough to start tapping into my financial happiness. So this intermittent cutout happened for probably 2-4 weeks and I tried inspecting and looking but my background was from cars and trucks and I hadn't yet been fully initiated into diesel mechanics the way I am now, painfully so !! I was gonna say pants around my ankles but this truck wanted to hit it every day so I just stopped wearing pants and underwear altogether and just drive the truck in a bath towel. So I pulled into a DC and backed into a parking spot to check in and as I stopped, a huge cloud of smoke came from under the hood and the truck shut off as well. I looked at my temp gauge as I thought maybe it overheated and the gauge/warning was being held hostage by the gremlins. Maybe..blown hose, low coolant, engine shutdown ? Nope, that red wire laying across the top of the engine had rubbed through, grounded out and melted the insulation from one end to the other. I always wondered why it didn't just blow the inline fuse unless the smaller gauge wire had less resistance than the fuse in there. Anyways I replaced that wire and solved the cutting out and odometer retrograde. The wire must have intermittently been touching ground just enough to wreak havoc and not enough to cause a hard failure until it rubbed through far enough. Later, I traced the white wire back to the battery box just behind the DS fuel tank and over the top of the DS air tank (twin forward facing torpedoes) and the 2 wire harness had rubbed through and disintegrated an inch of the white wire and most of the black from not being secured properly. I took the time to do a nice repair on these hoping I could restore the original wiring and get rid of my jerry-rigormortis and when I removed the red wire and tried to start it.....nothing. So I had to leave the red wire hooked up and just wrapped it in duct tape so whatever it touches it won't rub through the insulation. So I would check that power wire up close and personal from one end to the other. You could also try a continuity test to ground while you wiggle it. You have to be grounding the power wire to the ecm somewhere to make it go schizo like that or have internal ecm issues. And if you see a guy walkin around the truck stop in a bath towel, I'm not weird, just overly abused. Come say Hi. I've got some great stories, like the time in VA when the tranny fell out, pulled the shifter out of the top of the tranny when it slid back and off the perches goin down the highway at 60 mph and I was left trying to shift a limp #####.

 

Nice story!