Toyota intermittent P1349

[Andre]

I’ve got an intermittent P1349 on my Yaris which is for the VVT-i system. It comes and goes, sometimes it won’t appear for several months, and then comes on for a week or few days and goes away by itself. The engine runs perfectly with no loss of power even with the check engine light on.

I noticed it would come on more when I was using a cheaper oil, since switching to a semi-synthetic Shell oil I feel like it doesn’t come on as much (but this might be coincidence or something in my mind).

So far, I’ve removed the oil control valve, cleaned it with appropriate solvent and tested it. Giving it 12v causes the valve to engage and it returns as expected when power is taken away. It looked clean and operates freely. I also removed the mesh oil filter (this isn’t the main engine oil filter, it filters the oil before it goes to the VVT-i system) to see if there was any sludge build up because I had seen this on other Toyota engines online. There was no sludge and the mesh was perfectly clean so I just sprayed some compressed air through it and put it back in.

I’ve read that a jumped/stretched timing chain can cause this but I don’t think its that because normally there would be other codes along with this one if the timing was off, usually a misfire code and mine doesn’t have any other codes. Also there is no loss of performance so I don’t think it could be that.

Where would be the next step in diagnosing this error code?

Edit: This is the 2NZ-FE engine. Its a 1.3L version of the 1NZ-FE. Same one in the Toyota Echo, Yaris, Vitz, Platz, Scion xB etc. but this code is applicable to all the Toyota/Lexus engines with VVT-i and they all use the same oil control valve.

Topic

[Andrew Harris]

These are some of things that could be wrong.
Dirty or low engine oil
Valve timing
Oil control valve
Variable Valve Timing controller assembly
Engine Control Module (ECM)
I looked for TSB pertaining to a yaris but could not find any. What Year is this vehicle?

[Andre]

I have attached the TSB.

I replicated the test that would be done using the diagnostic tools by supplying 12v to the oil control valve manually.

I guess it looks like I have to replace the camshaft gear. Seems like a big job, do you have any advice?

Attachments:

• M.I.L._ON_DTC_P1349_-_VVTi_ACTUATOR_T-EG009-03.pdf

[Author]

Replies