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2003 Nissan Altima 180k, Daily in town driver for my parents with very little highway time as of late. I did the alternator about 1500 miles ago but other than that someone else has done all the work to this car.
Problem description:
My dad will drive a mile to go pick up my mom, shut the car off, wait a bit and then it fails to start up. Every time, if they wait 5 to 10 minutes, the car will start up and they drive it home. They also report that it has stalled out on them during in town driving.I get there and I’m unable to duplicate the issue. There is a check engine light with this code
23MAR15 Current Fault Log
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P0340: Camshaft Position Sensor “A” Circuit (Bank 1 or Single Sensor)A ways back 08SEP14 I pulled these codes from the same vehicle, and they never came back.
[i]Current Fault Log
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P0442: Evaporative Emission Control System Leak Detected (small leak)Pending Fault Log
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P0456: Evaporative Emission Control System Leak Detected (very small leak)[/i]This time II clear the camshaft position sensor code and it doesn’t come back on.
I thought about the fuel filter, but the Nissan has one built into the pump that I’m not psyched about replacing due to cost. I thought it might be bad gas. I Seafoamed the oil, gas and vacuum lines. I couldn’t make it die or fail to start. I don’t find vacuum leaks. I have good spark and I can’t make it die!, I don’t have a pressure tester so I don’t know if its hitting the 53psi on the fuel rail.
It ran fine for two weeks and now the same failure to start. Waited for five minutes and no issues. There is an engine light as well I’m told.
Could this be the cam shaft position sensor? Ignition? Air? Fuel pressure? I’m going to go over there and pull some logs with torque but I’d love to see what you all think.
Eric, you are a god among men. You spend your time helping others asking for very little in return. Thanks for that.
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Replies
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Does your car have an egr valve? It could have a carbon build up in the egr tube, this can cause a car to act like it overheated and has to cool off before it will start. There are vids online showing how to decarbonize using a spray bottle of water. The evap leak codes are likely from the gas cap. The rubber O ring on it can still look good but shrinks over time allowing gas to evaporate around it and throws a code. The cam sensor shouldn’t cause this, but the crank sensor would. If you know you need one, best to get it out of the way anyhow.
I hate intermittents for the same reason you are having trouble. The car will not act up in front of you. I wouldn’t put any parts in it. You will likely be wasting money unless lucky by chance enough to get the right part on accident.
The bad news is this:
1. you need to get some more tools.2. you need to have said tools with you when this thing isn’t starting. Testing at any other time will simply make everything test out good, waste your time and make your blood pressure go up. Tests for this are only valid when the fault is actively occurring.
Can you trade cars with your parents so you can get this to act up? You would need to carry your test gear with you to be able to jump on it the moment it won’t start. You don’t need a whole lot of tools though.
Obviously you need fuel, spark and compression to run the engine. By the fact it will run and drive most of the time we can see compression is not an issue. Now we need to look at the rest of the picture. You will need a fuel pressure gauge to check for proper fuel pressure. You need a noid light to check for injector pulse (cheap set from Performance Tool is in pretty much every parts store for less than $25), and you need a spark tester. Spark tester is also cheap. Not really looking to be able to test for spark strength here, as it runs well all the rest of the time. Just the bulb style that will pulse when it sparks. Another cheap tool.
When it won’t start you already know you have a very short window to find out why. You need to be able to see if you have spark command, injection pulse and fuel pressure. Knowing what you are losing at the point of failure is going to help you determine what is the next step.
Don’t worry about that filter. The OEM’s went to that when they went into returnless fuel systems. If the filter was actually plugged up enough to choke a motor it would not only act up all the time but would stress the pump so hard it would wreck it in short order. The returnless systems only pump enough to keep up pressure instead of run all the time in a loop, so they wear dramatically slower. Must better life than the old ones.
If you cannot test it at the point of failure when it will not start, you would likely need to go the more frustrating route of waiting for it to get worse, to be reliably unreliable so you know you will have a bigger window of time for testing when the culprit will test bad. Can you get freeze frame failure records or pending codes? Is the theft light coming on when the fault is occurring? Does this have an aftermarket alarm or remote start on it?
I would replace the cam and crank sensor at the same time. When you do one you do
the other. Use only Genuine Nissan parts as the after market will not work right.
I take it this is the 2.5? The cam sensor is not bad to change but the crank sensor
is a pita.Thanks for all the input. I pulled the code and the p0340 is back. That sensor is super easy to swap so I’m picking that up might hold off on putting it in until it fails again. I drove the car all day today and didn’t get it to happen once but hopefully we will see it soon.
My Bluetooth reader is staying in there in hopes I catch something. Any pid’s I can look at or log? . Any way that you know of to pull the cam sensor and test it for failure if I swap it out? I’m fine swapping out the parts but would really like to know root cause.
I’ll keep you all posted after I try to kill this car some more.
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