Check Engine Light after Camshaft seal replacement

[joesocal]

I had a previous post about an oil leak that turned out to be a blown out front cam seal. I replaced the seal and was careful not to move the cams or crankshaft, but when finished the check engine light came on within 10 miles. I had it checked, but the shop did not give me the specific code. He did say his scanner said "camshaft sensor bank 1"

I jacked up the car and cranked the hub to line up to the timing marks/tdc. From here I marked the position of the sprockets with white out and even used white out on the timing belt and sprockets to that I could match them all up when finished. I used an impact on the sprocket bolts and nothing moved, check the timing marks again and made sure everything was aligned.


From here I unbolted the timing belt tensioner to give me enough space to move take the belt off.


I removed the sprocket and replaced the seal. The seal itself was completely blown out, so I didn't have to pull it or do anything to create movement in the cam.


From here I put the sprocket back on, lined it up with my markings (Again the cams did not move) and then put the belt back on lining it up with my white out markings and the timing markings were still lined up.


Put everything back together and the car was running great. Same condition as before. Drove it about 10 miles and everything was still fine. Drove it 10 more today and then then CEL came on. Had it reset and it went back on within one trip. Still sounds and runs imo just as good as before. Not sure where to go from here.

[coflynn]

Directly above the rear sprocket is your camshaft position solenoid (seems to go by different names in different references). Did you accidentally bump that connector off or dislodge it?

The actual position sensor is on the other side, so seems less likely you accidentally disturbed it. Without knowing the exact code perhaps they misread/simplified it...

[chrism]

The cams may be in perfect relation to each other, but if the crank is off by one tooth the error code will be be that of a cam out of time - it won't say crankshaft out of time.

[joesocal]

Coflynn:
I will be picking up a code reader today, so should have an exact code in a bit. I will check the solenoid, but I don't think I did much around there.

Chrism: I tend to agree that the timing is the likely culprit, but wouldn't it be running poorly? I don't hear any misses or anything.

[chrism]

I had mine one tooth off and it ran perfectly fine. But it did throw a cam timing fault code. The interesting thing was that the CEL didn't light up immediately upon the first start up. It appeared upon the second startup. So I cleared the code, and again, no CEL at initial start up, but it appeared at the second start up.

[JRL]

One tooth off it will run fine, but WILL throw that code
Somehow you managed to knock it off a tooth

[joesocal]

One tooth off it will run fine, but WILL throw that code
Somehow you managed to knock it off a tooth

Reading up on timing belts being off a tooth and it makes sense to me that this is the problem.

So the solution? Is it as simple as lining it up in tdc best as possible and removing the belt and shifting the crank into back into alignment by site?

And I thank you all for your comments. Extremely helpful.

[draser]

Actually you can remove the caps in the back of the camshafts - the slots need be perfectly horizontal, that'll tell you the camshafts are in sync. Then make sure the crank is lined to the mark and you should be good to go.

[joesocal]

Ok so I am pulling off the engine mount and other obstructions to get to the rear side of the cams in just a few minures. I will make sure they are horizontal and line up the crank. From there if the sprocket I had to remove is slightly askew, I will line it up the the timing mark. The sproket I had to remove did not have the VVT.

Quick question: Will the VVT move anything or need any special consideration when I put everything back in order? I've been researching, but it's a little unclear. My book when doing the t-belt had no mention of moving or resetting the VVT, but some threads say it needed to be done. I did the t-belt about 5.000 miles ago and didn't touch it, and the timing didnt seem to be an issue.

[chrism]

If you get marks where they belong, the VVT will take care of itself. I never could get the reasoning behind all the "rotate forward -rotate backward" stuff.