I guess age will catch up at some point but the good news is that these ECU’s are very well designed. Take a look at the image below, it’s the one in my car now. It’s from an 11 year old Ford. It’s in exceptionally good physical condition, no sign of any corrosion or thermal issues. The photo doesn’t really do it justice. It looks like it was manufactured yesterday and all the Ford ones that I have opened have been the same. It has even been ruggedized with a silicone conformal coating as typically used on military equipment. And its spent its life located in the relatively benign cabin space environment so the good news is the components will not have been exposed to the mechanical stresses of thermal cycling that they would have seen if they had been located in the hot engine bay. Hopefully it will last a little longer yet.
However that said these ECU’s are not bullet proof either. I understand from the Ford forums that this family of ECU’s (used in the duratecs and V6’s I think) can be prone to failure should the coil pack fail, resulting in damage to the output transistors and the loss of spark on two cylinders.
Best carry a spare
