Occasionally I get to do something satisfying. This particular job was such a thing.
Foreign friends oh this is gonna be fun i have a story for you story time this is a fun one that came into the shop this week but it’s illustrative of things that you maybe should need to know as a promaster owner so i’m going to speak in technical jargon that will confuse you don’t be ashamed i’m confused by it too and i’m sure you could speak in jargon that
Would confuse me as well but here’s the story so customer came in and they had a persistent code p0016 and p0017 which come back as camshaft it would be the rear bank exhaust and intake cam slow response so we spent a good amount of time verifying that problem meaning i measured the values coming off the cam sensor and we determined that yes it is true that cam
Is is those two cams are we’re running um about 10 degrees out from where they should be and the the result of this the drivability result is low power because the cams can advance to where they need to be and and uh it was struggling it was low power and rough running a couple other symptoms you would have they actually this is important to know they thought it
Was a transmission because there are many conditions where when your engine is screwy you’ll feel it or perceive it or blame it on the transmission and that’s not your fault it’s just the way the world works so for instance if you have an engine that’s missing you might feel like your transmission is slipping that sort of thing if your engine is putting out low
Power the computer may downshift to try and keep the speed up because it wants to keep you at the speed of your foot is telling it you want to go um yeah sometimes the bell rings okay so here’s where it gets exciting and it gets very exciting for me because i enjoy this kind of stuff so the way uh the way forward for this uh poor customer is that you either need
They either need a timing chain which may have stretched or um the guide that tensions the timing chain is not working and that’s allowing the chain to be slack and that’s aligned to cam to be in the wrong place or it would be on the other side of the cam meaning that the cam phaser which is the device that controls its timing and the solenoid that controls the
Phaser are not working correctly but what’s weird is uh panastar engines don’t really suffer from this problem very much and they also it would be very strange if both of those cams went bad all at once so you would suspect that the chain has stretched or skipped a tooth or the tensioner is bad and it’s affecting the timing that’s what you would suspect one of
The things you would do to address those two codes if you were to look those two codes up the first thing it mentions is about oil and oil quality because the cam timing is controlled by oil oil and oil pressure and if you were to put the wrong oil in or if you were to um or if there was some other oiling problem uh you that’s how that’s where it might show up and
Also the engine has the computer has built into it a procedure for cleaning those cam phasers i assume what it i don’t exactly know how the cleaning process works i assume it slides it through its entire range and controls it to be where it should be it measures that range and it does that a few times to try and remove debris that might be in the oiling path and
Thus affecting the cam timing so we of course did those cam cleaning routines four or five times no effect and then i suggested that they well let’s try changing the oil and see um the history would be that 1500 miles prior it had been to a quickie oil change place um whose name i i may or may not mention and uh uh and so on here’s where it gets fun about an hour
After they left i looked at the extractor that we used to collect the old oil and i and i noticed something about it and i go over and i look at it closely i remember i had emptied it before we did this and after we did this there were three gallons of oil in the extractor now three gallons is a lot of oil where did that come from well obviously it all came from
This engine why three gallons because three gallons is basically twice the capacity of the engine the engine holds about five and a half liters um and four liters to a gallon you do the math so approximately three gallons would show up like that and then i start putting the puzzle back together thank you you want to see van porn i got the van porn see that stuff
In this filter that i’ve smashed and cut open tiny little bits of metal but that’s or that’s reflection don’t worry about that this is what’s important see this that is burnt dark dino oil what used to be called coking well we call coking in a turbocharger what that is is the residue of non-synthetic oil well oil that can’t tolerate high enough temperatures it
Breaks down it breaks down it does what bacon does in your frying pan turns into charred deliciousness here’s what’s also very important this has not been touched since we did this job okay this is our extractor our cheesy harbor freight extractor and that line where my fingers pointing is where we started and this line is where we ended there are three gallons
Of oil if you look at the graduated cylinder in there three gallons what’s that sound like that sounds like double the 5.5 quart capacity or 5.5 liters of the crankcase when you normally change the oil the reason we know it’s dyno and the reason we know we’re we’re not surprised by that amount of oil is because this went to a jiffy lube and clearly what the
Pimply face teenager at jiffy lube did was not take the old oil out and put fresh oil in on top of it so he’s got double the correct capacity he’s got three gallons and change in the crank case so what does that do well it does let’s ask the man on the street what happens if you put double the amount of oil in your crankcase horrible can you be more specific it
Turns it into foam the oil pump can’t pump foam it starves the upper end why does it why does it turn it into foam uh because it will hit the crank the crank is whipping and the top surface of the oil it will actually hit the bottom of the crank and the journals on the crank will go through the oil and froth it and then it will turn the whole thing into foam and
Try to pump that foam and it will do terrible terrible damage to your engine right this is why you don’t overfill a crank is not always better except with omelettes this works with omelets works beautifully with omelets and so in an effort to know because it is fun to know and it’s fun to know the cause and the effect and everything there is to know what i figure
Happened is as i mentioned in that video the pimply faced teenager at the cookie oil change place did not drain the crankcase but added another five and a half or six liters or quarts of oil on top of it overfill the crankcase the crankcase the crank whips up the oil it tries to pump foam and that lack of oil pressure is what damaged the cam phasers most likely
What’s interesting and exciting and that is the conclusion of this story aside just from the sleuthiness of it is that quickie oil change places have a mechanism to deal with customers vehicles that they break they do it all the time they damage things and they blow up people’s engines and so forth they um so that customer probably has an action that they can take
Against that place and they’ll probably pay for the repair the repair in this case may be as little as 1500 bucks it may be as little as 3 500 bucks depending on how much damage there was also not mentioned is i looked up the um in the factory service literature about how the oil flows and indeed the path that the oil takes from the oil pump is different for both
Banks and it explains why one bank would be oil starved and the other one wouldn’t because the other bank is working fine so in a sense it has a happy ending this story because the customer is going to get satisfaction they’re going to get their problem fixed or their money back or otherwise not be you know out thousands of dollars and the mystery is solved and
The knowledge that you should be taking away is there’s it’s okay to use instant oil change places everybody does it but just keep your eye on those little salty little freaks you never know what craziness they’ll do also they were using what we’re pretty certain is i call it dyno oil meaning dinosaur meaning mineral oil mint you know mineral based actual oil it
Comes out of the ground and is then refined the stuff that we prefer and the stuff that almost every place will use is a synthetic which is made from natural gas and dyno walls and such and such but i don’t want to don’t know all this course about oil and why synthetic is better but it am better okay well we’ve learned a lot i have learned a lot i was actually got
Very heartfelt and excited about that story because this apparently is what i live for little automotive puzzles that can be solved and known and filling in the gaps in our knowledge promasters only fabulous beautiful sundry sultry barberton ohio you can see all the details in the thing if you need something about promasters but you call me you crazy little freaks you i don’t know
Transcribed from video
Pentastar 3.6 P0016 and P0017 codes. A fabulous mystery unfolds. Solved! Ram Promaster By ProMasters Only