Technology
325: Not Charging, No Power Steering, Stalling, & No Codes... This Sounds Familiar
In this episode of the Automotive Diagnostic Podcast, host Sean Tipping revisits a diagnostic challenge involving a 2017 Chevrolet Malibu with a 1.5-liter turbo engine. The vehicle presents a unique c...
325: Not Charging, No Power Steering, Stalling, & No Codes... This Sounds Familiar
Technology •
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Interactive Transcript
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Welcome to the Automotive Diagnostic Podcast.
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We're going to explore ways to sharpen our diagnostic skills, find learning resources,
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and hear from experts in the automotive field.
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Hey, have you ever been faced with the challenge of sourcing, installing, and programming
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a used control module in a vehicle?
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I know a lot of us have.
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It seems to be happening more and more often today with the volume of control modules
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on vehicles, the cost of some new ones, or even the availability of new control modules
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in some cases used may be the only option.
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So what do you do here?
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I strongly recommend checking out SJ Auto Solutions in Tommy O'Leave.
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Tommy offers a cloning service for used control modules to make these things plug and play
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for the vehicle that you're working on.
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In a lot of cases, he is also able to source the control modules if you're unable to locate
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one for the vehicle that you're working on.
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But once you get connected with Tommy, he's going to offer fantastic support from start to
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finish to make sure that that control module is going to work in your application.
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He's also got tech support that he offers through his website, along with some free resources
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there as well on information about used control module programming.
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So make sure to check out SJ Auto Solutions.
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I can't recommend that enough.
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Hey, what's going on?
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Automotive world.
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Welcome to another episode of the Automotive Diagnostic Podcast.
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My name is Sean Tipping.
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I'll be your host once again for this week's episode.
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Thank you so much for joining me.
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I got just me on the show this week.
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We are going to have a guest on for next week's episode.
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But today, I want to talk about a car that I diagnosed this week.
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But it's also a throwback to July of 2020.
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I just started this podcast.
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It was episode number 28.
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I did a case study on a 2016 Chevrolet cruise with a 1.4 liter turbo that had some really
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weird issues.
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And it was an interesting fix.
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If you haven't been listening to the show for that long, maybe you haven't heard it.
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This is going to be all new information to you.
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If you have been listening for a long time, it's been a while.
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I actually had to pull up the episode and listen to it to hear all the details.
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But as it turns out, the symptoms that I had on the car this week were exactly the same
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like identical.
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A different car slightly, but same era and same problem.
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Although this one was a little bit of a different scenario.
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So I'll explain.
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So first off, if you want to check out the earlier episode, again, episode 28, I'll put the
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link in the show notes.
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This was pretty early on, but I walk through how I found the problem.
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And it was actually an ITN post that got me there.
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I was kind of lost and maybe I would have found it eventually, but it would have taken
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me a lot longer than it did because someone else had already gone through the work.
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But maybe I can be that for you now.
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So anyways, what it ended up being on that Chevy cruise was that the shop had just swapped
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the motor and they had the wrong crankshaft sensor in there.
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Now that sounds easy enough to diagnose.
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And we've seen problems like that on cars before where the wrong sensor gets put in.
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There's maybe two different crankshaft reluctors that could be used in one application.
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There's like a mid-year split and the engine will bolt in, but the pattern is different
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between the two engines.
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And so if you don't get that correct, well, the computer's not going to start the engine.
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I've seen that across different brands, even on a one recently, there was a Ford engine
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that was installed and they put the crankshaft reluctor in, but there was a switch between
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a VR two-wire sensor and a Hall of Effects sensor in that year range and they got the wrong
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one.
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So it was outputting a signal.
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If you scoped it, you saw a pattern, but it wasn't right.
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The computer wasn't expecting that.
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It was looking for something completely different.
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And so it wasn't going to start from that.
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Now there were some harness stuff that was messed up on that one too, but anyways, we see
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these kinds of problems missing tone wheels.
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That's another one where, you know, that sandwiched in between the crankshaft and the flex
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plate and oops, we forgot to put it on there.
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That's going to be an issue.
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Again, just wrong sensor, bad sensor.
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We get these things with engine swaps, but this one was a little bit stranger.
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So I'm going to walk you through the symptoms here.
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And I should probably set up the vehicle that I'm actually working on this week.
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It was a 2017 Chevrolet Malibu with a 1.5 liter turbo.
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Okay.
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So different engine, although, you know, the same family of cars, it's a 16 to a 17 and
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a 1.4 turbo to a 1.4 turbo to a 1.5 turbo.
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So a little bit of a difference there.
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It's not like the parts are interchangeable between the two engines, but again, it's
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kind of the same era and family of vehicles.
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So what I'm dealing with on this Malibu, and again, this is mere image of the cruise as
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well.
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So the symptoms could just be transferred over to one, but I'm going to list through what
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I was experiencing on this vehicle.
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And it took me a minute to remember the grouping of symptoms together was exactly the same
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as the thing I dealt with.
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As I was going through it, I'm like, something really seems familiar about this.
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I remember, you know, this exact grouping of symptoms happening on another car, and that's
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when I looked back at my notes and I was like, oh, that's right.
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I got a look for blank.
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Here's what it was doing.
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Here's why it's weird because this is a very strange combination of problems to have
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no codes present anywhere in the vehicle indicating that there is something wrong when
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there clearly is something wrong.
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So first thing, the engine will start and run.
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Now it's strange the way that it does it in this application.
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And this first one, actually, I don't recall on the Chevy cruise that I did.
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So maybe there is a slight difference here, but I'm going off of what I saw this week.
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Maybe I did not note this detail back in 2020, but when you went to start it, the engine
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would start.
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However, this is a push button vehicle.
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When you would release the push button, you could still hear the starter dragging against
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the flex plate, the teeth on the flex plate.
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Like it was still halfway engaged or like the drive pinion was still rotating along with
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the flex plate, which it should not be once I release that button.
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And now that I say that out loud, I wonder if the cruise was a blade style key.
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This was a push button again.
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Don't know that for sure, but I don't recall the starter dragging being the issue, but
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this one was.
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And then if you would hit the button again, the start button on the dash for this malbue,
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then it would stop, but the engine would continue to run.
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Okay, so then at that point, your engine's running and everything seemingly okay at first,
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except for there is no power steering, and this is electric steering, other things.
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And these take a little bit more work to notice that this is the case, but I'm giving you
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a listing of symptoms that you can find on a car.
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You can add these things up and you can say, I know exactly where to go.
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So the other things that occur on the vehicle, right, you have no power steering.
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The charging system does not work or at least it doesn't charge up to the level it's
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supposed to.
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I didn't sit there long enough to see if the battery would discharge completely, but
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it would sit at about 12 volts the entire time.
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So I don't know if the alternator was doing anything.
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I don't think it was, but it definitely wasn't charging where it needed to be.
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It was at 12 volts, which was supposed to be up over 14, but we have no warning lights.
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We have no codes.
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And on the cruise, I had mentioned if you unplugged the alternator in that application, it would
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start, it would fall field and it would charge so the alternator was capable.
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And funny enough on this Malibu, when I got to the shop, they had been worked on it for
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a while, was the alternator had already been replaced.
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So somebody had gone down that route.
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I think they didn't mention that to me, but somebody had put a brand new alternator in
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there probably trying to fix this charging issue.
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And when I looked at this, the cruise back in 2020, I thought that was my issue.
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I'm like, oh, okay, well, this is why the power steering doesn't work is because the
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system voltage is not where it needs to be.
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I'll turn out that is not the case.
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There are other electrical signs on the vehicle as well.
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The rear-deaf rust and if it's equipped with heated seats, those do not operate.
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You can press the button.
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Nothing happens.
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It does not allow you to operate those components.
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And there is an idle surge.
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So every 30 to 40 seconds, you would see the idle surge up, come back down.
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Finally on this Malibu, if you were to put the transmission into gear, then the engine
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would stall.
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But if you left it in park, it would run all day long with a little idle surge here
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in there, but that would be it.
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And again, scan it, no codes at all.
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You can do this every single time.
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And I tried to get a little history on the vehicle for this one.
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I had you guys done anything.
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They didn't mention the alternator, like I said.
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But they did say when the car had originally come in, what they ended up finding was a broken
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camshaft.
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Now again, this is a 1.5 liter.
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And we have seen this many times where the camshaft for the intake would break on the
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end.
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And so you would actually get a rotating camshaft enough to where the engine runs.
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Maybe you lose one cylinder, maybe you don't, depending on where the camshaft breaks.
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But it's not moving the part of the camshaft that has the camshaft sensor on it.
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So you get a camshaft sensor code.
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If you put a boroscope down in there, you can see that the camshaft's broken.
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And this is what they ended up finding on this 1.5.
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Does happen on these.
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They replaced the camshaft.
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But I have a feeling along the way they replaced another component that they didn't mention
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and I'll get to that because that was what fixed this one.
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But that was the history.
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Now I asked them, I was like, did this thing run properly before this happened?
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And they weren't sure.
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They assumed that it was, but the customer brought it into them in a non-running state.
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So they never saw it run beforehand.
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So anyways, who did what?
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Hard to say, but it's on me to figure it out.
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But luckily, I have this in my memory and I do have some stuff recorded in a podcast
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forum.
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This was before I did my like vehicle database notes that I do pretty religiously now.
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Like this event this week went into there with all the details so that if this ever pops
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up again, myself and my whole team have access to the combination of symptoms and we go
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right to it.
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And okay, it's podcast episode two so you can find it that way.
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So what I ended up finding on this one and I'm going to give you my thoughts on it and
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I'm going to give you a real practical way to identify that this is the problem.
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Like if you run into it, now you might be the one working on it and that makes it a little
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easier because you know exactly what you did or didn't do.
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But maybe you're doing mobile.
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Maybe you're taking care of this for someone else.
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You've stepped into the situation after repairs have been done like myself and you need to
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get to the solution quickly.
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I'll give you a very practical realistic way to determine that this is your issue very
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quickly with very little testing.
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But what the issue is the crankshaft sensor on these vehicles.
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Now these are both auto stop start vehicles.
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Right, they have the ability to shut off at a stop.
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When you put your foot on the brake, you lift your foot off the brake and then it should
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restart and then you can start driving.
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Now in the instance of the crews back in 2020, there was an option for that one for to
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either have auto stop start or not in the same like vehicle platform.
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It depend on the trim level and what it was ordered.
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The RPO code is KL9.
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If you're looking those up, you can tell if it's equipped or not, you can look at the
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dashboard too because there'll be a section of the tackometer that has auto stop at the
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bottom.
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If it's not equipped with that, you won't see that on the dash.
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But you can look for that KL9 RPO code as well.
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In the case of this Malibu this week, it did not appear to be an option.
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Now I could be wrong, but from what I found, especially looking up parts that the 17
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Malibu came only all 17 Malibu's with this one five came with the auto stop start.
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So you didn't have an option to not have this and that's the KL9 RPO code too, which
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makes it just a little bit more confusing.
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But the crankshaft sensor is different for the Chevy crews depending on if you have auto
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stop start or if you don't.
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There's two different part numbers.
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You can look this up on a 17 crews with a one four.
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Again, Malibu only lists one.
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But what happened in the Chevy crews was the shop had just changed out the motor.
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And when they changed the motor, they left the crankshaft sensor in the donor engine as
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it was delivered to them, right?
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They get an engine, it's got a crankshaft sensor bolted into the block.
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They throw that into the car and just plug it in and they go.
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And then they have this problem after they get everything back together.
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And that's where I went through and I found out and then I asked them, like, did you
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change the crankshaft sensor?
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They said, no.
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So I was like, well, let's put in the original one.
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We did that.
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All of the problems are gone.
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OK.
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So fast forward to now.
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I'm thinking the same thing that, OK, maybe there's an option for auto stop versus
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just not, again, turns out there isn't.
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And I was considering the work that they told me they did there.
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They said they did a cam shaft, not anything with a crankshaft.
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I used my phone and I reached down the backside of the motor and right underneath the starter.
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You can't see it from the top, but again, I just used the four or the like self-facing
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camera on my phone.
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I stuck it down in there with a light and I could see the crankshaft sensor.
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You can reach it and touch it if you just reach below the starter with your hand.
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But I could see it with my phone.
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I could see it as a brand new crankshaft sensor that's bolted up into that block.
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And so this is a eight-year-old vehicle.
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You can definitely tell if the sensor is brand new or if it's been in there for a while.
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This one's brand new.
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And so that immediately, once I connected all the dots of the symptoms that we're going
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on, I knew that, okay, this is, we're dealing with the same thing here.
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Now, again, I'm not sure where this particular crankshaft sensor came from or why it was changed,
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but odds are it's wrong.
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So I'll get to the practical way that you can prove this out.
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And maybe some other ways that you could go about looking at this that I didn't spend
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the time doing.
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But let me explain what's happening here.
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There is a difference between the crankshaft sensors.
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And it's the sensors only actually.
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I did some research on this.
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The tone wheel that is sandwiched between the flex plate and the back of the crank,
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it is not different.
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Right?
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If I go back to that Chevy cruise, the one four, the part number for the tone wheel is the same
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between the auto stop start version and the non auto stop start version.
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It is the sensor that is a different part.
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And that's why back on that Chevy cruise, we were able to just pop the original sensor back in
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and it worked.
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We didn't have to change the tone ring.
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At the time, I didn't quite understand it, but looking up the parts and repair link,
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they don't change anything about the tone wheel.
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Now, it's just a metal wheel with a magnetic strip on the outside,
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but it can be used for both versions, again, in that Chevy cruise.
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In this Malibu, again, they only have one version of this tone wheel.
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And they only have one version of the crankshaft sensor that you're supposed to buy for this one.
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But there is something different about the output of the crankshaft sensors,
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the non auto stop versus the auto stop start that outputs somewhat of a different signal
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as the engine is rotating.
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So as far as I can find, and I looked into this as much as I could, and GM doesn't give a whole
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lot of specifics. But the main difference between these sensors is that the stop start version
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can output not only the position and the speed of the crankshaft, but the direction of the crankshaft.
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And there's some sites that list some details about these types of sensors.
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It may not be the exact one used in this GM, but that they have a series of Hall effect elements
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within the tip of the sensor. And that way, it can tell the direction that the crankshaft rotated,
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particularly in an auto stop start event, right? Because the engine comes to a stop,
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and maybe it rotates back just a hair as it comes, you know, as coming to a complete stop.
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And the engine computer wants to know the exact position of that engine,
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so that when you release your brake pedal, it can get that thing started as soon as possible.
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It wants to make it, or the goal of the system is to be as seamless as possible to the driver.
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So a lot of people don't like it, obviously, but they tried their best to make it seamless.
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And in order to know the exact position of the crankshaft sensor, it's going to need to know if it
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rolled back just a hair as it's coming to a stop so that it can get the injectors and the coils
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firing as soon as possible, as opposed to a normal start, right, after the vehicle has been
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completely shut off, you might get a revolution or two out of that engine before it figures out,
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okay, here's the missing notch and okay, now we can start firing coils and injectors at this point.
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So you get a not an extended crank, but you get a longer crank after a full shutdown versus one
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of these auto stop starts, right? And so the sensor is the key piece of that in these GMs.
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It does not appear to be the tone wheel. The magnetic pieces of this tone wheel seem to be the same.
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And they do note that this is one of those tone wheels that you can't get near other metallic
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surfaces, that it could ruin the tone wheel, kind of like the ones on the Mo-PAR 3.6 liter camshafts,
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same thing. You can't set those on a metal bench or set them near each other, it'll screw up the
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tone wheel. Same, they get, they put the warning there on the parts listing in repair link from GM.
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So they've obviously had some issues with it and they make note like, hey, be careful with this thing,
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to careful where you set it or what you set it up against. So it's a magnetic strip on here,
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the sensor's registering, but again, it appears to be the same in both versions, again with
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Malbo, I only have one option. But when the wrong sensor was put into that cruise, it was enough
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to allow the engine to start and run. So again, the spacing the tone wheel is the same and the
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sensor's outputting something enough for the engine computer to say, okay, here's the position of
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the crank. I'm going to fire the injector, I'm going to fire the coil and the engine runs on
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this Malbo. You could sit there and let it run all day. Yeah, it has a surge, but it wasn't running
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poorly beyond that. It was running just fine. What would I believe is happening here is there's
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something about the output of the crankshaft sensor that is different between the auto stop star
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version and the version of sensor that is installed in both cases here that the engine computer
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does not fully recognize it as a successful start, even though it's running the engine. And that's
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running in the software, but it will continue to run the engine. Again, you put it into gear
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and it will stall at that point on this Malbo, but if you just let it sit there in park, it'll continue
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to run it. But I don't think the engine computer is sending out over the bus like a successful start.
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And I looked for some data pits and I could not find anything that indicated it one way or another.
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I went into the power mode settings of the BCM and it just reflected the state of the ignition switch
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and what it wanted the vehicle to be at. There wasn't any indication of a load shedding that I could
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find in the electrical management. Now I might be missing something and I didn't waste too much
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time here and I'll explain why, but there's got to be something that is broadcast from the
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engine control module to the rest of the modules, power steering and BCM definitely appear to be
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two of the important ones that puts it in a state like if the engine wasn't running, right?
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The electric power steering, not operational, the alternator, not charging correctly,
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the rear-defer us in the heated seats. Now those should work if your key is just on, but what about
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in some sort of cranking state or something like that? It is a very strange state that the vehicle is
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in and again, not sending any codes either. So this must be some default method that it sends out
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to the network for it to be in this state. And it's just weird that it gets here, but it'll
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continue to allow the engine to run anyways. Very strange. I don't have all the explanations for it,
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but I know this is how the symptoms present themselves exactly. So here's what I did.
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Instead of scoping the crank pattern, which might be interesting, I'm sure you're going to see
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a difference there. Honestly, that's more of an interesting and not critical for me to understand,
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because there's an easier way to determine this. Data Pids, maybe I could find something if I
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dug through it and looked at it really closely. Again, not super important because there's a more
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practical way to do this. Here's how you do this. If you have these symptoms, I'm going to run through
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it again. Start or dragging after you hit the start button and you've got to press the button again
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to get it to stop. The power steering is inoperative. The charging voltage is fixed at 12. Your rear
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D frost and your heated seats don't work and your idle surges up and down and it stalls when you
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put it into gear. You have all that. You have no codes in the system. Here's what you do.
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Shut the vehicle off, reach down to the crankshaft sensor and unplug it. Go back in, start the vehicle
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up. It will give you an extended crank. It will start. It will set a code for the crankshaft
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sensor, but it will run off of the camshafts, which a lot of vehicles nowadays can do. They can
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completely run without a crankshaft signal. Now, you'll get an extended crank. Maybe it won't be
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running that great. Maybe you can't go drive it around, but it'll start and it'll run off the
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camshafts. There's enough position information off of modern camshaft tone wheels so that the engine
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computer can figure out where the engine is and run the engine. Now again, you'll have a code,
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but here's the thing. Here's how this is getting you to the answer that this is what you're dealing with.
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All of that other stuff, all of those other symptoms are now gone. You've got a code for the
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crankshaft sensor, your check engine lights on, but your power steering works. Your charging
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system is operating correctly. You can use the heated seats. You can use the rear D for us. You
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can put the car into gear. The idle thing, I don't know, I guess I didn't pay attention to whether
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we're surging or not. You don't have a cranksensor. So it's not going to be perfect, but it eliminates
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all of that other stuff that you were dealing with. And why? Because you've taken the bad input
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away from the ECM. Now, you've removed the input completely. So it's going to have to go into
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a different default state, but there's a difference between no crankshaft signal at all and a pattern
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that must confuse it enough to not exactly know what state that it's in. But if you do that and you
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get rid of all those symptoms, you know you have to go after that crankshaft sensor. 100%. I don't
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care if you can see that it was changed or not. The next time I get this grouping of symptoms on one
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of these GM cars, I'm just going to unplug the sensor. Does the rest of that go away? Okay,
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you guys need to change the sensor. Or in this case, we yanked it out. We looked at it. Now,
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I did talk to him. He's like, yeah, we ordered that from, it was, I don't know, aftermarket or
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Riley's AutoZone, something like that. And he's like, they didn't have an option for, you know,
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an auto stop start. I was like, well, maybe ask around a couple other places. And from my research
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after the fact, he's correct. They only list one. But I told him maybe get a GM sensor or, you know,
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AC Delco or whoever makes the OE sensor for this, you might want to go that way. And I think
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that's what they did. And that resolved the problem. And in this case, I don't know that sensor that
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was in there. Did they just give him the wrong one? Is there variance in aftermarket parts? I know
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there is, right? We deal with failed or inaccurate aftermarket electrical components all of the time.
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So whether it was wrong or just bad or for something else, I have no idea. It doesn't matter in
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this case because again, that it exhibited the same symptoms as that cruise from five years ago.
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So final point on this, I mean, again, you got a real practical way to get to the solution
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fast on one of these. And this is the type of problem that can really throw somebody for a loop if
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you're not aware of this because it's a very strange situation. So you've got that. But the other
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thing that I'm always preaching about on the show and I encourage everybody to do because it's now
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easier than ever to do this is to document this stuff for yourself, right? Now could I have remembered
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that hey, I had this really weird Chevy cruise and it was this. Oh, let's look at the crank sensor.
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But like to have all of the details down to the specific things like an idle surge,
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documented five years later for me to listen to, that's huge. That is so incredibly powerful. So
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again, like always, I encourage you to record stuff like this. Things that you learn long
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the day on the job, the details, little stuff like there should be 2.5 volts on this circuit, not
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4.2 in this situation or a pulsing voltage comes from this module on this circuit and that's normal
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in this case, right? That sort of stuff. And the episodes on utilizing AI where you can just
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blab into it, you get it to output a really nice formatted version of all the details that you want
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and then put it in your storage location of choice, you know, a Google drive, an external hard drive,
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whatever you want, write it down in a notebook if you want to. It's just the tools now to record,
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capture what you're doing. It's so easy to do. And I don't know why you wouldn't be doing it. So
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this is just an example of that where I had dealt with the problem before. The experience is
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obviously key to that you're out there doing, you're learning, but then capturing that so that you
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can refer back to it later. This made this diagnosis like a snap. Like I moved through this one
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very, very quickly, but this is the type of diagnosis that you can charge really good money for
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because this shop, I don't know how much money they spent, you know, trying to resolve this problem
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that I think they actually built it in by replacing the sensor. I'm guessing they probably did it.
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The tech was, he was a little bit flustered when I showed him the sensor. I think they may have done it
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when they were attempting to fix the original camshaft sensor issue because a non-moving camshaft
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just on the end is kind of a weird problem. I'm guessing he didn't say that straight out, but I wasn't
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going to press him. It doesn't matter to me who replaced it. That's the fix. But again, to have all
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that information on hand, I blew right through that one and made a decent amount of money off it
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too. So that's all I got for today. I want to say thank you to everybody for listening.
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With that all the way, let's get out there, start fixing the world one car at a time.
Topics Covered
automotive diagnostic podcast
diagnostic skills
used control module
SJ Auto Solutions
Tommy O'Leave
Chevrolet Malibu
1.5 liter turbo
crankshaft sensor
engine diagnostics
automotive repair
power steering issues
charging system problems
camshaft replacement
vehicle troubleshooting
automotive technology