[ixadzxi]

Hey everyone, I'm hoping someone can help me out with this before I end up in the looney bin.
This is how the story starts.
Last summer (2020) I took the car (03 TF 135) for a nice drive in the country side it was a lovely summers day, I had been driving for a couple of hours everything seemed good.
As I came to a junction the car cut out it did restart but was not a happy bunny misfiring coughing spluttering I manged to crawl the car back home was only mile or 2 away.
Day 2 put the car on my code reader there was only 2 errors 1 for the precat lambda sensor and the other P0340 camshaft error, Had a look at the lambda sensor and could see the wires had melted (Good job I've got one in the shed) I ordered a new camshaft sensor from Ebay, turned up the next day fitted it lambda sensor error was gone but P0340 was still there it was at this time I noticed the car was not getting up to temperature unless the revs was up and this point the heating was so hot it was burning, After some investigating I was confident the head gasket had blowing so the car was parked up till this month (Feb 2021) when I had the money for a mobile mechanic to sort the head gasket.
He arrived and within a hour the head was off, The gasket had blew between the coolant hole and the firing ring any how head gasket all fixed. So I hocked up the car to the code reader once again and still P0340 was there, I thought I would bite the bullet and get a brand new one from DMGRs once I order that I thought now would be a good time to inspect the wiring loom, visually it looked ok so I got my multi meter out and checked for Voltage and I've got 12/13v , So today my new DMGRs camshaft sensor arrives plugged it in erase the old P0340 code start it up and boom the codes back. I'm at a lost now guys.

 

[Chris T]

I would start by checking cleaning the connections at the ECU end.

Remove and inspect/clean the crankshaft sensor, these sensors can gum up with metallic bits skewing the timing in relation to cam shaft with the ECU calling out the wrong sensor as faulty.

Other things to consider, is the cars timing slightly out (perhaps a tooth out on the timing belt)?

 

[Julian Foulger]

'Voltage and I've got 12/13v'

Have you checked from the camshaft sensor back to the source for ALL wires, not just the + live wire? The reason why I ask is that if the cabling re the lambda sensor melted, are you sure that other wires have not melted in the vicinity regarding the cam sensor? The sequence of error codes and events have happened to others in past years so this is not unique.

 

[PatM]

I had to comment- the precat lamda on my 160 did exactly what yours did- wiring melted- but it took me good 6 months to find it as the bad running was only when the engine got hot. eventually, it would cut out in traffic and that forced me to get serious. it had melted INSIDE the heat-sleeve .
This was after me posting on here and many suggests, all best-intentioned. i even had Russel out with T4 but this was so intermittent.

 

[ArntyR]

HI ixadzxi.
I've suffered persistent P0340 recently and cleaned the oily cam sensor to no avail.

I'm guessing you've checked the continuity of the 3 parts of the sensor lead as I did. There was continuity but those multi-meter probes are sharp.

Still no joy so I scraped the link wire cable end prongs with a small screwdriver and lots of rusty stuff came off. I washed it out with WD40 and sprayed that liberally into the female part too.

I replaced the sensor with new thinking it's mostly an 11-year old cheap weak magnet being heated, cooled and covered in oil with a rusty end-connection.

And...it stopped throwing up the P0340 code

I suspect the sensor but I'm glad I cleaned out the wiring. (One thought was to replace that 'link wire' for new - but it's really expensive...)