Holden Cruze 2015 – F18D4 1.8L petrol – P0016 crankshaft position intake can not plausible

Round 2. This week for the fault code P0016 this time on a F18D4 Holden Cruze, the vehicle came in with lack of power and struggled to idle,

P0016 – intake cam shaft out of sync P0101 – air flow meter performance

with low manifold vacuum sitting at 17 InHg normal we see these engines with 20-21 InHg so that being that the fault codes relate to intake cam and low vacuum,

The fault code could be cleared when engine off and ignition on, but when key on engine on the fault could would clear but came straight back on, this gave the knowledge that when engine at idle the counters for crank to cam sync was out, and not anything else to do with variable cam oil solenoids, as they are not active at idle.

The first port of call was to see what the engine ecu is seeing a scope trace and a previous recorded trace on a known good engine was checked

Good vs bad Holden Cruze F18D4 – crank to cam scope waveform

The above picture shows the intake cam is very retarded in the second picture compared to the first, the engine will be pulled apart to work out the issue, our suspicion is the the cam phaser is stuck and will not move back into the lock position

We will update with the conclusion when vehicle finished