Misfire advice.

[barryrs]

Hi guys, don't suppose anyone could offer any advice following my post on pistonheads?

My poverty purchase looks like it has its first big bill incoming after a couple of years as I have a fault on bank one code P1340.

I replaced the seal around the solenoid last year but the oil appears to be leaking through it rather than around. I will have to do some testing to ascertain if it's just the solenoid at around £500 or the whole actuator at around £1500.

It's running really lumpy at idle but fine at higher revs.

This is going to result in scope creep as I have read that the exhaust manifold needs to come off which will result in many broken studs, so I may as well swap them out for new stainless ones.

Crappy timing what with all the sunshine!

So following some poking about yesterday I think my assumption may have been incorrect so could anyone offer some thoughts.

Upon inspection I'm not leaking oil through the coil but from above behind this coolant pipe.

Doing some research suggests there is a vent pipe from the AOS that connects into the crankcase here.

This is the variocam coil.

It seems logical to me that if my crankcase pressure is wrong it could mess with the variocam operation?

 

[deMort]

It depends on what year your car is as to what's possibly wrong .. the earlier Non variocam plus and you have a seperate chain between the camshafts which the solenoid operates on to move the position of the camshafts ..

Variocam plus has a solenoid which operates a unit on the end of the inlet camshaft ... very different systems .

Early cars have a single cam shaft sensor .. we have one at work atm with a deviation of 21 degrees .. in other words the inlet cam is way out of position .. the car below 1500 rpm runs like a sack .. above that its fine .

This is having a new vario cam fitted .. whether you do the solenoid or the entire unit is going to be close in cost .. ie you still have to get the cam cover off and that involves removing the exhaust manifold .. with the usual snapped bolts and drilling out with whichever of these you replace .

So first off .. what year car do you have ??


Crankcase pressure will have no bearing on this fault code .. that will give you lambda sensor fault codes .



Fault code info is below for what its worth ..

 

[barryrs]

Thanks deMort.

It's a 98 3.4 so not variocam plus.

I guess I might be putting 2 & 2 together and getting 5 as the oil leak might not actually be connected to the rough running. I assumed it was coil/solenoid related as it was running really rough at idle but fine at higher revs and flagged the code above last week; however, upon starting it yesterday it was running perfectly!

I have a pair of new stainless manifolds which were delivered last week in anticipation of having the cam cover removed which I am happy to tackle myself (my brother has 30 years experience as a mechanic if I need any help). If I was to sort out the manifolds so that they were easy to remove do you know what the ballpark figure would be for a specialist to replace the solenoid? It seems worthwhile replacing the lot if the cam cover has to come off.

Cheers :thumb: