In short, my 97 3.8 v6 , has went through 2 crank sensors and 2 coils packs in a about a months total time. I feel like something is causing these to go bad. I did some research and i see that the icm powers the crank sensor and coil packs. My car runs for about a week or so, small amounts of driving, and then either the crank sensor fails, coil pack or both. I took out my icm today and it had a bad crack near the posts like it had been cranked on a little to much but it is the original one that came on the car and it is old and brittle also. Also there was hardly a trace of any grease on the backside that mounts to the heat sink just flakes. I went out and bought a new one today and took my time and cleaned up the heatsink real good and use processor grease in a good uniform fashion on the backside. I have all new coil packs on it also. Am sure hoping this what was causing the crank sensor and coil packs to fail. Any thoughts......the car was skipping and as soon as i put on the new packs and icm , the car runs fine at this point.

 

The crank sensors and the coils may have been good all along. When the PCM sets a code, it could be due to a sensor or the wiring, or whatever other equipment the sensor connects to. In your case the CKP connect directly to the ICM, and the ICM talks to the ECM, so the ECM is not seeing the CKP directly. As for the coils, the ECM tells the ICM when to fire the coils, but has no direct input to the coils.

 

They were definitely bad because for the crank sensor car would not start and as soon as it was replaced it fired off and ran. On the coils , no spark at the top of the pack, replace a pack ---- spark appeared.......
Dont you think i was right for repacing the icm, old and cracked, no thermal grease......

 

yes, failing icm can stop working when heated, have you tried any of the bad coils on the new icm to confirm they are bad?

 

Since i have all new on it and the car is running good, i did not want to mess wih it....haha.......but when the car was skipping, i could change the pack that the code pointed to and it would fix the skipping. Also before i changed the pak no spark out the top of coil and then presto i had spark once the change happened. My big question is could the icm have caused these parts to go bad.

 

it could cause the parts to appear to go bad. if the icm over powered the coils i suppose it could overheat them over some time.