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Hi Everyone,
My mom’s car started bucking on her and barely made it home Friday. The batter light came on a well as the CEL: P0016.
Battery and alternator tested fine. Engine off, the battery is 12.4 V, when the engine is on it is 13.5V. After running for a few minutes, the engine begins to “lope” and the battery voltage will quickly switch to 12.1 and 13.5V. I’ve check the drive belt and it’s tensioned to 150 ft. lbs. (I am using the little Krikit by Gates).
As for the code, I checked the crankshaft and camshaft sensors. Both references show 5.1V and when I turn over the engine by hand, I can see the switch between 0 and 5V (see below for reference video). The camshaft sensor appear to have some scrapping damage, so I went ahead and replaced that with a new one. The damage likely came from me not spacing it properly and it was right on the sprocket after redoing a head gasket. The new one was from the dealer with a paper spacer. I didn’t replace the crankshaft sensor (nor even take it out).
I noticed the hydraulic tensioner for the timing belt appeared to have some “crud” build-up; assuming it was leaking I replaced it with a new OEM tensioner (I reused my belt as it only had 1100 miles and appeared in good shape).
Started the engine up last night and everything worked great. I drove it about 10 miles up to the ski resort with no issues. As soon as I turned around, it began bucking and threw a P0016 code. I hear no odd noises (I’ve heard that the flexplate can crack causing the crankshaft sensor issue), and it idles smoothly at around 760 RPMs for a few minutes before going crazy. I got it home and I’m fresh out of ideas at the moment, any thoughts or tests to perform?
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Check the battery connections that they are clean and tight. A battery should be at 12.6v at rest… Low voltage can play hell with computer controlled engines and cause performance issues and ghost codes.
Have your battery load tested… May be somewhere in the charging system, but start there…
Here is a very good link for testing the electrical charging system… (it is a Microsoft Powerpoint presentation)
-Karl
Thanks Karl. While working on my fluorine experiment, I had time to think about this, and the electrical system was what I keep coming back to as well.
I had the battery tested at autozone, and it supposedly tested fine; I can check with a load on and I’ll see what reading I get. I had been thinking 12.2V, thanks for that correction. I’m wondering if there is a ground issue somewhere, I’ll have to check that. Thanks for the link. That’s a nice addition to the youtube videos Eric and others have done.
See if this is of any help to you….http://www.obd-codes.com/p0016
Thanks Wyse, I had five a search for the p0016, and only got links had come up, but that wasn’t one. Guess we all get to be am internet noob sometime.
Ugh, I did it again. I commented before I read the link. I’ve been going through that link and as
far as I can tell, nothing is wrong based on the recommended procedures. The only thing I haven’t done is to remove the crankshaft sensor and check the driveplate for damage. I thought the link was to the forum here where the issue came up.For the hell of it, I decided to dig out my camshaft alignment tools for this engine and “redo” the timing for the car just to guarantee to myself it was spot on.
What I found was not expected. After removing the belt, I attached the camshaft alignment tool. The issue was that the marks on the timing belt housing with the camshaft sprocket were no longer centered. When I first changed the belt everything was fine. There is not a lot of play allowed (i.e. less than 1 degree) of the camshaft with the tool locked in place. The camshaft was lined up with the first timing mark on both cams. I don’t recall what it was when I first did the timing belt 8K miles ago, and when I redid the timing belt because of a faulty water pump (1100 miles ago), I just made white marks and didn’t use the camshaft tools.
My question is, should I go with my timing marks that I made, or the camshaft alignment tool? It essentially equates to almost a whole tooth different :sick: . Clearly the engine doesn’t seem affected as mileage and performance were good both times I changed the belt. I’m leaning toward using the alignment tool as that’s what it was designed for.
I checked for TDC (as accurately as I could as I don’t have a dial gauge). I covered up the crank timing mark so I wouldn’t be biased and while rotating the engine where I felt TDC was, ended up perfectly with the timing mark (WOOT banana: ).
Also, I bought a 100Amp load tester from harbor freight (big bucks here :stick: ). The voltage at rest was 12.8 according to the tester, and 12.63 according to my multimeter. Probably well within the $20 margin of error for the load tester.
The key was that my CCA showed about 450amps on a 700 amp battery. I’d love that electrolysis to give me a full battery, but…that’s not going to happen. AZone said that the battery was good…opinions? Was that an AZone fail and it’s time to replace? What are peoples opinions on NAPA batteries? They are running $60 cheaper than Duralast or Interstate out here.
That’s why I’m playing with the timing belt…again (I’ll finish when I get home). Monday night after redoing everything, I did 8 miles with good performance and no issues before my the code returned and the car entered limp mode. If it were out of time, I would suspect the code would have appeared before I made it to the end of the driveway. There was no jumping of the belt when I tore it down last night.
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