BUICK VERANO RUNNING ROUGH VVT PROBLEMS P0010 P0011 DIAGNOSIS

[Music] hey guys what's up it's Eric with advanced level automotive welcome back to another video welcome back to another case study right behind me I have a 2014 Buick Verano it's got the 4 cylinder 2.4 liter Ecotec engine in it customer complaint is that the vehicle will stall while he's sitting in traffic and when he tries to accelerate the vehicle just feels like it's chugging along so anyway his vehicles here let's go ahead and get started alright guys so we're inside the vehicle I'm gonna go ahead and start it up so you can see the check engine light is illuminated wait till all the other lights go off you'll see we have the check engine light on and right now the engine seems to be auditing fine so far there aren't any issues let's go ahead and get this canceled up here I've got the maxi says we're gonna go ahead and scan for codes in the engine control module this is a 2.4 liter let's go into trouble codes and we have two different codes p 0 0 1 0 which is a intake camshaft position actuator solenoid valve control circuit and then we have another p 0 0 1 1 this is for the intake camshaft position system performance now these two codes are related to the intake side so it's real important to note here that we don't seem to have any coach for the exhaust side really for the intake side now the reason I bring that up is because generally the first thing I like to check when I get these types of codes is the oil level the reason behind that is because whenever the engine oil level gets low the variable valve timing system cannot operate properly but usually when we have a problem with low engine oil level we also set codes for the exhaust side now even though I don't see codes for the exhaust side I still think it's really important for us to just check the engine oil level and also the oil condition so let's do a quick check under the hood check the engine oil level and see what the world looks like alright guys so we were under the hood I went ahead and I pulled the dipstick out I've already wiped it clean with the rag I'm gonna go ahead and stick it back into the dipstick tube and we're gonna get a oil reading pull it back out here then we'll just lay it up here see if we can get a good view of it now looking at that it definitely looks like the oil level is full and also the oil doesn't look like it's in real bad condition I mean it's probably due for an oil change but it's not severely black or anything like that so the oil level looks okay to me let's go ahead and put this back in and go back inside the vehicle get back to the scan tool alright guys so we are back inside the vehicle like I said I just wanted to check the engine oil as a rule of thumb I really didn't think that we were gonna have a problem as far as low engine oil level and again the reason behind that is because I didn't see any codes for the exhaust side we only saw a coach for the intake side so now that we've eliminated that as a possibility we can move forward with diagnosing this vehicle so okay so looking at these two codes now the next thing that we want to do is we want to determine what these codes actually mean so of course we can take a look at the description and if you read this top one it's being pretty specific about what it's talking about it saying that the actuator solenoid valve control circuits so this code right here is what we would consider an electrical code or a circuit code and what I mean by that is that the way this code gets set usually is because the computer is monitoring the voltage at the control circuit and it's not seeing the voltage it should be seeing when it wants to see it now as opposed to this code right here now this code is a little more generic if you read it it says intake camshaft position system performance this code was set as a byproduct of this code so what that means is that more than likely there's a problem with either the solenoid or the circuit to the solenoid and because that solenoid is not able to function the intake timing is not able to advance or the way the computer wants it to so that's what this code means what we can also do is with this code we can go ahead and hit the search function and this thing will actually search the internet for a code description now we can choose a website I'll just choose this one here and it'll give us more information about this specific code so if you look here it tells us what recommends a scan or danner video but scroll down let's see if we can find some information all right so here's a code description you'll see it says that the camshaft position actuator is attached to each camshaft and is hydraulically operated in order to change the angle of the camshaft relative to the crankshaft position now it says that the camshaft actuator solenoid is controlled by the control module and the control module sends a pulse width modulated signal of 12 volts to the camshaft actual inter solenoid now this solenoid controls the amount of engine oil flow to the camshaft actuator and the camshaft actuator can change the cam shaft angle a maximum of 25 degrees so this system is pretty straight forward I mean if you want we could pull up a wiring diagram and I could probably explain it in a little more detail and I'll show you how we can test it all right guys so a real quick check that we can do while we still have the scan tool connected we can go to inactive test and I believe there should be an active test for the camshaft actuator solenoid if I'm not mistaken ready a camshaft position actuator system and the one we're dealing with is going to be the intake says here make sure it's in park set the parking brake lock the drive wheels hit okay all right so now that we have this test pulled up we can go ahead and start increasing the percentage and what that's going to do is it's going to activate the solenoid and we're going to see if it matches the camshaft position so if we look we've set this to 10 now looking at the intake camshaft position you can see we're pretty much matching our command we can go ahead and increase it again we move it up to 20 and you can see that we're matching our command and this thing just timed us out the test only lets you run it for 30 seconds but in that time we were able to see that everything was functioning properly it looks like the problem that we're dealing with has to be an intermittent problem because right now the vehicle seems to be idling fine and when we use the actuator test to command the scylla note open we can see that the command was actually matching the position so anyways that was just a quick check but I wanted to show you guys let's go ahead and move over to the wiring diagram all right guys so we've got the wiring diagram pulled up over here if you look right over here you'll see the camshaft position actuator solenoid valve now this is a pretty simple circuit if you look we have two wires connected to the solenoid and if you pay attention both of these wires actually go back to the engine computer so if you follow this box down you'll see here on the side it says engine control module and if you follow this one up here it says engine control module as well so looking at this wiring diagram it's pretty simple to determine circuit design because if you look at this diagram GM was actually kind enough to draw what was happening inside of the engine computer so if you look down here you'll see that this is actually a constant ground inside of the engine computer now this ground is always a ground even when the ignition is off and even when the solenoid is energized this ground is just always a ground now if you follow this other wire which is the granblue wire you'll see that internal to the computer we have a switch now the way this is going to work is whenever the engine computer wants to command the solenoid to come on it's going to close the switch which is going to provide a power source through this grey and blue wire which is going to go through the coil winding of the solenoid and it's going to come out on this violet and brown wire which is going to ground inside the computer now what's real important is if you look up here you'll see they drew some square waves what they're trying to tell you is that this signal or this power source is actually a pulse width modulated signal and what I mean by that is this switch is going to close and open multiple times very rapidly at a certain frequency now the reason they do this is because it's a way of being able to control the solenoid more precisely so using the pulse width modulated signal at a certain frequency they can hold the solenoid at a specific position which allows them to have more control over how much oil flow is going to go to the camshaft actuator now testing the circuit is pretty straightforward of course we're gonna want to go ahead and put a lead here on the gray and blue wire at the solenoid and what we want to make sure is that whenever we're commanding the cylinder to come on we're getting a pulse width modulated signal here on the same token what we want to do is put our meter on this violet and brown wire at the solenoid and we want to make sure that it's providing a good ground so that's probably what we're going to do next we're gonna go ahead and hook up the lab scope on two different channels we're gonna drive the vehicle we're gonna wait till this thing acts up and then we're gonna see if we're missing our pulse width modulated signal or we're gonna see if we're missing our ground and if we see that we have both things here then we know more than likely we have a problem inside of this Illinois so let's go ahead and do that alright guys so before I go back to the vehicle to do any testing I really just want to bring up a real quick point and this topic can be left open for discussion because I would really like to get your guy's opinion or knowledge on this matter now if you remember the code that we got was a p 0 0 1 0 and the description on the code was for intake camshaft position actuator solenoid valve control circuit now generally with control circuit codes the reason they get set is because the computer is monitoring the control circuit for a voltage and it wants to see that there is a voltage there whenever there's supposed to be a voltage now if that voltage is missing then the computer knows that there's something wrong with the circuit and it sets the code now when I look through this code description it doesn't really give me specifics on how this code is set really the only thing it tells us is that the ECM detects that the commanded state of the driver and the actual state of the control circuit do not match for greater than five seconds now if we go back to the wiring diagram again we've already determined that this is a power side switch circuit now the reason I'm bringing this up is because unlike the more typical ground side switch circuit let's say for example the evap purge solenoid I've got the diagram for the e bat perch solenoid pulled up right here now this evap purge solenoid is a ground side switch circuit so if you look you'll see that there's a fuse right here a 10 amp fuse so whenever the ignition switch is turned on power comes from this fuse goes through this wire reaches a solenoid go through the coil winding of the solenoid comes out on this wire and goes back to the engine computer now of course the engine computer has the ground internal to it but this ground has an open switch so at this point in its normal state this coil is not energized now the way this works is that whenever the engine computer wants to turn on this solenoid it's going to close the switch to ground and that's going to allow the current flow to happen now with this design if we get a control circuit fault code the reason that code gets set is because whenever the switch is open there should always be 12 volts here as long as the ignition is on and the reason for that is because this is a fused power source this has power on as long as the ignition is on power should be going through the circuit going through the coil winding of the solenoid and reaching the engine computer at this pin now we could say the engine computer has an internal voltmeter and it's always looking for that power because it wants to know that that power is there and ready for it for when the computer wants to ground the circuit and energize this coil so let's say we have a problem in the circuit or let's just say if we unplug this solenoid if we unplug the solenoid this 12 volts is not going to reach the engine computer and it's automatically going to set a fault code for a control circuit the same could be said if we had an opening the wire or if we had some type of short to ground anything that's causing this power not to reach this engine computer we'll set the code because the monitor is inside the computer watching for that 12 whoops now the reason I bring this up is because I know how this works on the ground side switch but if we move back over to the camshaft actuator solenoid remember this is a power side switch circuit if we look at the computer at this wire right here this is a constant ground and this up here is only a power whenever the computer closes the switch and sends a power to the solenoid now here's where my question comes in where is the monitor for the circuit because I don't think you'll find it here on the ground side because this is always going to be a ground even when you send power through the solenoid here and the solenoid is energized this is always going to be a ground now the other thing is that the monitor could be inside on this side of the computer the only problem with that is that what is the computer looking for is it looking to see whether or not the pulse width modulated signal that it's generating is getting out of the computer because that certainly doesn't tell us anything about what's happening on this part of the circuit because we could unplug the solenoid the computer could be sending out a power through here and if it's only monitoring itself here then technically that should not set a code I hope what I'm saying is making sense and maybe I'm thinking a little too deep into this but honestly I'm just curious as to why the computer was set of p00 10 which is a control circuit code now the only thing I can think of and this is just my opinion because I have no factual proof to back this up because I can't find any information on this but my opinion is that more than likely it's not looking at voltage it must be looking at amperage so maybe there is a monitor in the computer here but it's not monitoring voltage it's monitoring the amperage anyways guys I just want to throw that in there I'll leave that up for discussion hopefully you guys have some good input or maybe you guys have some factual information that you can share with the rest of us if you do go ahead and put it in the comment section I'd really appreciate it so with that being said let's go ahead and move back to the vehicle alright guys so moving back to the vehicle we're under the hood I've already gone ahead and removed the plastic cover so that we can get a good look at the solenoids now if you look here you'll see the two camshaft actuator solenoids now the one to the front which is closest to the intake manifold is the intake camshaft solenoid and the one on the which is closest to the exhaust manifold is for the exhaust side now to be honest with you under normal circumstances I would have already just replaced these solenoids because I know they're a common failure item but for the sake of the video we're gonna go ahead and do some testing using my lab scope I've already got my lead hooked up right here now we're gonna do is we're going to identify the two wires again if you look here we have the two wires this is the gray and blue wire which according to the wiring diagram this wire is our power feed that comes from the computer and if you remember this is a pulse width modulated power feed and then on the other side we have this violet and brown wire and this violet and brown wire is going to be the ground side so what we could do real quick it's just back probe this ground side right here I'm gonna go ahead and slide my back probe in there and real quick what I'm gonna do is I'm just going to use the power probe I do have it connected to the battery and all I'm gonna do is I'm going to touch it and I'm gonna see if we have a good ground so touch it you can see we're showing a good ground so that shows us at the ground that the computer is good now we're going to go ahead and move over to the power switch side back probe this here and right now we really shouldn't be showing anything on this may be a ground because it goes back to the computer so we touch it I'm showing 0 volts for me to go ahead and cycle the key on it's gonna go inside the vehicle real quick and hit the on button go back onto the hood I'm gonna go ahead and reconnect the leads from my lab scope here and if we look at the lab scope alright so looking at the lab scope you'll see that we have point zero two volts now this I actually believe is a bias signal because let me show you what happens when we unplug this connector I'm gonna go ahead and unplug this Illinois and just keep an eye on that voltage I'm gonna unplug it it's unplugged you can see how it jumped up to one point six two volts again looking at the solenoid its disconnected and I have my lead back probe to the power switching side and looking at the lab scope we show a bias voltage of one point six three volts I'm gonna go ahead and plug it back in and watch what happens so when we plug this thing back in you see it drop back down to point zero two now that may not tell us a whole lot but it does give us an indication of how the computer is monitoring the circuit because with that bias voltage if there isn't open in the circuit let's say if the solenoid had an open internally then this bias voltage would not have a path to ground and the computer would be saying one point six volts I think that end of itself would be enough to set a check engine light again I'm not really sure I just wanted to add that but let's go ahead and start the vehicle up and see if we can get our pulse width modulated signal alright so we are inside the vehicle I'm gonna go ahead and start it up real quick let's go back onto the hood the engine is running and you can see we have our pulse width modulated signal I'm just on a one second time base so you really can't see a whole lot of detail but what we do know is that we do have computer control to the solenoid now we could also try to get a little more detail zoom in if I can set a trigger for this all right now I don't know if there's a whole lot this signal can tell us maybe other than the fact that the signal is actually reaching the solenoid but it would be interesting to see if a signal like this would show signs of a voltage spike from a magnetic field collapse now if you're familiar with auto air control systems the use of pulse width modulated signal a lot of times you'll see a voltage spike at the end of the square wave and that's indicating a magnetic field clap which is also a good way to determine whether or not we have current flow now we could also switch over to the exhaust side and prepare it I think is what I'll go ahead and do take a look at the lab scope we pretty much see the same thing move the zero line up a little bit yeah so we're pretty much seeing the same thing I don't see any voltage spikes from any magnetic field collapses so I don't think that's going to help us as far as diagnosing the problem I think probably what we need to do next is we're going to go ahead move back over to the intake side okay we are going to connect two channels one channel on the power switching side and the other channel on the ground we are going to monitor both of them drive the vehicle and we're going to wait until the solenoid acts up whatever it does we're going to see what's happening on the lab scope so let's go ahead and do that alright guys I've got both legs connected and I've got them running inside the vehicle let's go ahead and take you for a drive all right so we're inside the vehicle getting ready to go for a test drive we've got the lab scope hooked up we've got two channels our first channel is the control side which is our power switching side and the second channel is our ground you can see up here it's actually point zero three volts so let's go ahead and take it for a test drive all right so we're on the road so far the vehicle seems to be driving okay I'm just gonna keep driving until it starts to act up hopefully we'll capture something on the lab scope all right guys so I just got back from about a 15 minute test drive and of course the vehicle did not act up on me I still the lab scope looked up over here the signals still look normal I haven't seen any glitches or any dropouts I haven't seen any problems with either the power switching side or the ground side now I was really hoping to get this thing to act up so that we can prove though we don't have a problem with the integrity of the circuit when that cylinder starts to act up unfortunately I'm just not going to be able to show you that quite frankly because the customer really didn't leave me with any gas this thing's already below the e so at this point I really just can't I can't drive it any further so I think there are probably a few other checks that we can do we can probably go under the hood and we can probably do a resistance measurement across the two terminals at the solenoid which i think is probably what i'm gonna do next so let's go ahead and go back under the hood alright guys so moving back under the hood so you can see I've got my lab scope set up as an ohmmeter and I've already gone ahead and calibrated the leads so I've got these two right here so you'll see that when I touch them together my meter goes down to zero so now I'm gonna go ahead and I'm going to touch the two pins on the intake solenoid now unfortunately I was not able to find an actual specification I checked on all data I checked on Mitchell I could not find a resistance specification for the solenoid so I think what I'm going to go ahead and do is probably just compare the two so let's go ahead and start with the intake side so go ahead and take my leads and I'm going to touch both pins just like that we're going to take a look at the reading on the ohmmeter let's give it a second let it auto adjust well it kind of seems to be jumping around let me double check my connection here yeah I'm on there take a look at that it's jumping up to the mega ohms scale and jumping back down so it's really not giving us a consistent reading well it looks like it's holding it there pretty steady now somewhere around 15 14 ohms but then it starts to lose connection kind of regaining connection and I'm not moving my leaves I'm on there pretty steady but it just seems to it just seems to keep bouncing around I really can't get a steady number on this one let's go ahead and compare it to the other side I'm gonna go ahead and touch my leads we're now going to be looking at the exhaust solenoid and you get a good connection here right there take a look at the reading looks like we're reading about 13 ohms of resistance and immediately what I notice about this reading is that it's staying pretty steady it's not jumping around like the other one was yeah so around 13 ohms of resistance again we'll go back to the intake side take a look at this one we're now connected on the intake side again and once again and you can see our reading is all over the place so this definitely looks like a bad solenoid I think that's enough evidence to call this solenoid bad let's go ahead and replace it all right guys we've got the new solenoid right here now what's really important is that you're gonna want to put something original equipment this is an AC Delco product so this is going to be the original equipment but before I install this I'm going to go ahead and do a resistance measurement on this new one I've got my lead right here you'll see that when I touch my leeks together we show zero ohms of resistance I'm gonna go ahead and touch these two pins and see what reading we get I'm touching both pens now if you look at the meter we're reading about 10.8 ohms of resistance this is on the brand new solenoid so just for future reference that's what the resistance is on a brand new solenoid so if anybody's wondering what the specification should be and you can't find one it's around ten point eight ohms alright guys so I'm gonna quickly replace this thing kind of blow it out with air make sure you remove all the dirt and debris down in the valve cover because you don't want it getting inside now let's go ahead and remove ten millimeter bolt and then we'll pry it out now these things can be pretty stuck in there and this one came out pretty easy and of course you're gonna get some oil all right now one of the things we want to look for with these solenoids is you want to make sure that we don't have any large pieces of debris or oil stuck in the screen also you want to take a look at these screens make sure that they hadn't come apart I've seen some of these where pieces of the screen actually get trapped inside but really that was more problematic on the earlier design they use a different type of mesh this is the newer type of mesh where it's a lot stronger so just looking at this solenoid doesn't look like it's clogged doesn't look like the screen is damaged it's probably just a failure with the internal coil winding of the solenoid so we'll go ahead and scrap this one install the new one all right so with the new one you want to make sure you lubricate the o-ring with just a little bit of oil we'll pop it into place pretty simple to do make sure you thread it by hand first alright guys so the torque spec for this thing is 89 inch pounds which is just snug now we'll go ahead and plug this thing back in and we now have our new solenoid installed alright guys so we're back inside the vehicle we've got the new solenoid installed got the scan tool over here we're going to quickly clear the trouble codes clear DTC's yes go back in there double check no fault codes detected you'll see our check engine light is gone we'll try and take it for a quick drive and we'll give the customer a call and have them come pick up the vehicle anyways guys before I in today's video I just want to take a minute to address a few things I know that it probably seems like I'm overthinking such a simple problem and like I said I know these solenoids have a high failure rate I've replaced more than my fair share of these things and I'm pretty sure some of you guys but I also think it's really important that we understand circuit design so that we can come up with new and different ways to test these systems all I'm trying to do is provide you guys with some useful information and maybe some helpful diagnostic methods that you can use or apply to any vehicle so hopefully you guys enjoyed the video if you did find it useful or informational please make sure you give it a thumbs up if you enjoy the channel please subscribe to the channel if you enjoy these case studies please make sure to check out my channel for all the other case studies I have if you have any questions you can always comment down below once again thank you guys for watching and I hope to see you the next one [Music]

Channel: ADVANCED LEVEL AUTO

Views: 32,056

Rating: 4.9590645 out of 5

Keywords: 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, gm, ecotec, chevrolet, chevy, malibu, chevy cruze, impala, gmc, 2.4, gmc acadia, gmc terrain, 4 cylinder, timing chain, timing off, timing valve solenoid, exhaust timing, vvt, vvti, how vvt works, oil pressure, variable valve timing, misfire, engine shaking, engine dies, no start, p0010 p0011 p0012 p0013 p0014 p0015 p0020 p0021 p0022 p0023 p0024 p0025 p0028 p1349, automotive training courses, electrical problems, case study, auto tech scool, wiring

Id: Duzch8gpT7c

Length: 28min 8sec (1688 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 08 2019