That failure pic is bad!
Usually they swell at the top but electrolytics eventually go. I've dealt with old caps in radio equipment and single phase starter/run caps but never had to deal with damage to a multi-level board YET. This caught my attention because I have a 98.
Often, a different production run clears up marginal parts or introduces a problem. It's been decades, but I remember the HPackard computer board failure problems from a bad electrolyte.

 

do you mean it was changed, or was it eliminated ?

The only fault my ‘02 XKR had when I bought it was the cpu fan would squeal at startup when the weather was really cold. A new fan fixed that.

Z

 

JEPC shows that the fan part # changed from LJB2412BA to LJB2412BB at some point - so definitely not eliminated. It's muddled on this as it shows two different VIN breaks - A24196 and A38952 for the change.

These numbers correspond to the MY2002 intro and somewhere between MY2004 and MY2004.5 respectively

I was wondering if there is an environmental reason why the '97 ECM is prone to cap failure, but I guess the above rules the fan out - despite the apparent confusion around when it was superseded.

 

Here’s an interesting read for any ET types out there,
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague
while it doesn’t directly apply to 1996 manufacture, it does have some very interesting insights into modes of failure.

 

I purchased the LBJ2412BB for my replacement fan as SNG Barratt catalog directed since my serial number came after the A24196 mark by a few hundred numbers....

So far so good.