P0016 code

[bluerav4]

I recently moved from a diesel to petroleum Rav as I needed an auto. Car drives fine but a few weeks ago the engine and VSC light came on. I went to a local garage and the changed one of the sensors and it was fine till last week. It’s now showing the same code and the sensor was replaced a few days ago. Could there be another fault? The garage say they’ve fitted a new sensor and have shown me the older ones so not sure what’s going on. 

Thanks in advance 

[gjnorthall]

P0016 can be a difficult problem to pinpoint - it’s a fault associated with the variable valve timing system. In the first instance it would be interesting to know which sensor was changed. Often P0016 is an intermittent fault and may take some time to reappear after erasing the memory such that changing a sensor is a red herring. It would be interesting to see if the same pattern of behaviour is observed if the memory is erased now. What’s the mileage and service history - sometimes dirty oil affects the operation of the VVT system?

[bluerav4]

Thank you for your reply. I’m not mechanical minded so not sure of anything on that side. Car has a full history just coming up to 98K now. It was serviced around a month ago and the engine oil looks clean when I checked it yesterday. It doesn’t drive rough at all or Rickover rough in fact the total opposite it’s really smooth in terms of the drive and engine. I’ve not picke up on anything else out of the ordinary. It’s an automatic and the gears change smoothly too. I think it was the crankshaft sensor

 

[bluerav4]

[gjnorthall]

First of all - you paid the garage to resolve a fault code issue - they'e failed to do that so they should refund your money or fix the car. It looks like it's the camshaft sensor that's been changed, and the next obvious step would be to clear the fault code and reset the engine light. If all is well initially but the fault returns after a while, the it's unlikely that the original sensor was at fault and the true root cause hasn't been identified. 

Code P0016 is flagging up that the camshaft and crankshaft appear to be out of synchronisation. On a simple engine this can often be due to a timing chain stretching or a timing belt being miss-aligned when fitting. On a VVt engine, it's more complex and there are other faults that can flag up the fault code. I obviously don't know the detail in your case - but some garages aren't very good at fault diagnosis - they will read a fault code but won't then systematically do further testing to get to the root cause. They will plump for something from a list of potential issues that seems to fit the bill. Checking position sensors, for example, is easily done by looking at the sensor output on an oscilloscope. In your case, the fault causing P0016 isn't having significant effect - sometimes this code is associated with running and starting issues.

P0016 is a fault code where you can spend a fortune on hit and miss rectification. Owners have unnecessarily changed timing chains, sensors, VVt actuators, VVt oil control valves, ECU's etc etc. My advice, if you don't get joy with your garage, would be to contact a diagnostic specialist or your Toyota dealer. 

[bluerav4]

1 hour ago, gjnorthall said:

First of all - you paid the garage to resolve a fault code issue - they'e failed to do that so they should refund your money or fix the car. It looks like it's the camshaft sensor that's been changed, and the next obvious step would be to clear the fault code and reset the engine light. If all is well initially but the fault returns after a while, the it's unlikely that the original sensor was at fault and the true root cause hasn't been identified. 

Code P0016 is flagging up that the camshaft and crankshaft appear to be out of synchronisation. On a simple engine this can often be due to a timing chain stretching or a timing belt being miss-aligned when fitting. On a VVt engine, it's more complex and there are other faults that can flag up the fault code. I obviously don't know the detail in your case - but some garages aren't very good at fault diagnosis - they will read a fault code but won't then systematically do further testing to get to the root cause. They will plump for something from a list of potential issues that seems to fit the bill. Checking position sensors, for example, is easily done by looking at the sensor output on an oscilloscope. In your case, the fault causing P0016 isn't having significant effect - sometimes this code is associated with running and starting issues.

P0016 is a fault code where you can spend a fortune on hit and miss rectification. Owners have unnecessarily changed timing chains, sensors, VVt actuators, VVt oil control valves, ECU's etc etc. My advice, if you don't get joy with your garage, would be to contact a diagnostic specialist or your Toyota dealer. 

Thank you for your detailed response. I am thinking of now going to Toyota as they will be able to hopefully diagnose it. 

The garage did reset the engine light originally and as explained earlier it cane back on again. I have been back to them and they’re making excuses and it could be this or that. I’ll update again once I’ve been to Toyota