"SURPRISE!!!" mode is a hidden feature of every electric system.
Plan accordingly.
-Andrey
They are called software Easter Eggs, you get a surprise when they are found. Maybe if you listen closely to the on-off sequence of the motor you will recognize Igor's favorite song? Or Morse code spelling out "Fly F2B!" Ok Ok... enough silliness.
Having a background in consumer electronics, I can tell you this much, once something used in a mission critical environment is suspect, you replace it, and carve a swath around it like a cancer and replace nearest adjacent connectors & components along with it... unless you enjoy re-building after re-kitting your plane. It might seem a hard pill to swallow, but I would consider it buried into "the cost of doing business" as we like to say.
Reminds me of a story... My first real job (not counting kiddie jobs like paper routes) while still in High School was an apprentice bench tech at a TV repair shop... They were a G.E. factory service center.
G.E. used Solder Griplet Pools that were basically a rivet used to tie a top trace to the back of the board on double sided boards, and cold soldered at the factory... There were several on a given board. I had to deal with those in the television sets in the early 1980's... TV's would come in with all manner of intermittent problems (a techs worst nightmare, because you never knew if you really nailed it)... then we got the Tech Bulletin from GE saying to "reheat the solder griplet pools until the problem abated". I thought, this has to be a joke! Griplets were a horrid idea, I would hate to think people's lives ever relied on circuit boards using those. The tech was fraught with problems as even a layman could imagine with heat/cold cycles involved in an old CRT TV, which lead to cracked lead pools and unstable connections. I spent many an hour tracing and re-heating those things... at jobber flat rates, meaning we got $35 for the repair from G.E. whether it took me 1hour, or 4hours...yuck! Some came back again same problem after a few months, so I amended GE's repair option and I started using my own solder in the pools, removing whatever the factory solder was with a sucker, it was junk, and those seemed to "stay fixed" longer.
Back to your scare, all I can say is I'm truly sorry but don't trust it until you can. (no, I'm not doing my Yogi Berra impression, well, ok, maybe a little)
EricV