Cam sensor troubleshooting

[Roverdose]

So the diagram says 5v on PIN23, but that is not 100% accurate, it could be 12v as well. Since VW uses 12v and I saw 5v on the diagram, I then thought I could not connect it to PIN22. I would be so happy if that is the problem!

if you look at the bottom left of the wiring diagram it says some cars use 12v hall sensors and it will be no problem for the ecu.

Drew

[FrankCorrado]

You are correct.

[FrankCorrado]

Allan does not seem to want to tell me if the ECU could be damaged by sending 12v on PIN22.

Anyway, simply connecting to PIN23 should solve my problem. I hope I won't have too many problems removing the pin from the plug. Otherwise I'll cut and fit in a new one.

Interesting though I was able to run months without a problem. And I never thought I was using the wrong PIN. I in fact checked about 6-7 times that the wires where plugged in the correct pins, including PIN22.

[VR6Turbo]

You should be OK Frank. If the circuit hanging off pin 22 is blown, well, that's no sweat as you don't use a magentic cam sensor anyway

Oh and you need to wave a magnet in front of the cam sensor, not a bit of steel, my bad Do you have a spare impulse trigger wheel handy?

[FrankCorrado]

Yes a magnet, not steel, I thought so this w-e cuz the sensor is not the magnet, so I need a magnet to trigger. loll

No spare wheel, but I do have a couple of magnets hanging around.

[FrankCorrado]

Ok so testing the sensor with a magnet seems more complicated than I thought. My 2 magnets just don't pick up on the sensor. It's like waving plastic over plastic. Maybe it needs a more powerful magnet. But I checked resistance again, after I switched from PIN22 to PIN23 and all is fine. I will try start up the engine tomorrow night or Wed night.

[FrankCorrado]

Arf... thought I had it this time, but no, the engine really does not give its place without a hard fight.

Good news and bad news.

Good news, Rick, to answer your question from the old forum "how come your cam sensor is triggered at tooth #6 and Kev is at tooth #57 when you both have the same setup and both have the crank, pistons and cams all aligned?"

The answer: it's cuz I had plug the stupid sensor signal wire to PIN22, which is MAGNETIC sensor, but the OEM sensor is a HALL sensor and should be plugged to PIN23. Now I see tooth 58 (not 57 but hey, I am getting closer) in the diag. And pretty much the same 266-deg angle in the diag. I will run an osci to confirm all that.

The bad news. Well stupid mother thing of all the bad arses full of dirty mud or something, after I found out the tooth was 58 I input that in the Seq panel. Along with 266-deg, which, we have determined on the old forums, does not seem to do anything anyway. I also put your 53-deg injection angle, Kev. After cranking I noticed the signal was erratic, the 58th tooth was changing really fast in the Diag, sometimes I saw 118 and other numbers, while it was generating cam errors and a few synth errors and re-syncs. So I thought I might have some RFI. I then turned on the NOISE MASK between 55-60 (which means NOT listening OUTSIDE that window). Seemed to work, as engine started and ran fine.

After a little less than 10mins ride downtown, the engine jerked a little, I knew what it was, I swore super loud in the car and almost hit the window, cuz I knew it was certainly missing the cam again. After jerking 3 times, the engine started to slow down, I lift the foot off, it stalled. I could not restart, it was stalling within seconds, firing cam errors at large. I tried to narrow the noise mask, did not help. No, I was NOT using CL, it was turned off.

So I am back to square 1, but I now have the same numbers as Kev, which is at least a good thing.

Double checked the resistance of the signal wire: all fine!!

I really start to wonder if I cooked myself some pop-corn in that ECU when I was using the wrong pin and sending a continuous 9V with pulses of 12V to a pin expecting 2v. I wonder if it affected the PIN23 and its circuit. I will ask Allan.

I know, I've been blaming myself for the past few months on this, I deserved it, but I think now that's enough, it's time I put some light on that stupid problem of my ass.

[lumley32]

i cant see you have dammaged the ecu by feeding the wrong type of pulse into pin 23

Have you ever scoped a vr sensor? my race bike crank signal gets over 2v at cranking speed, and over 100v before 6000rpm! never measured at 15500rpm but im guessing it should be some thing like 200v+!!

sounds heat related if it comes in after a 10 minuet drive, cam sensor getting warm and breaking down?

[FrankCorrado]

PIN22 I used at first. I wonder if I did something on the ECU to PIN22. Who knows, maybe the circuit for cam sensors is the same for PIN22 and PIN23, I don't know.

Well you got points here. If it's heat related, I will know this w-e, as I will re-use my spare sensor and see if I can run and if yes how long.

I don't have anything other then a multimeter to test electrical stuff, so I can't do much at the moment.

I have found a much stronger magnet! I will try and see if this one can trigger the stupid sensor.

In the meantime Allan asked me to provide him the serial number of the ECU, which I did. I'll see what he can check with that.

Hey this was your first post, lumley32! Welcome aboard and tnx for posting your first one on this thread.

[FrankCorrado]

I think I got quite some RFI, I've seen the sensor angle change in the Diag panel. I'll try to use different plugs, I got some that are resistor plugs and some that don't have resistors in them. Maybe that makes a difference.