Project 'orange roadkill' (bent valves rebuild & more)

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Thanks Chevoo! Yes it is so nice not to have my shop scattered full of Aveo parts lol I should have the new control arms on it this weekend, then the rest of the work is minor cosmetic stuff, to make it look more 'fancy'.

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Posted a thread on the front suspension/control arm swap work over here: http://www.aveoforum.com/forum/f85/c...oadkill-16903/

This car drives so much nicer now!

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Update: The other day had a P0128 throw the light on, about ~160 miles on this valve job. Turned out the Beck Arnley thermo housing and thermostat (labeled 189f) was a bit too cold than the ECM likes. My Ultraguage confirmed the light as it was only getting up to 168F, and never went above 170. So I threw a napa 195F thermostat in and she is running great and no more P0128. I may have just got a bad thermostat since it seemed to run normal temps the first week of driving on it. But some thermostats don't seem to heat up to the number printed on them, or so I found.

For anyone keeping notes on this job, I wound up putting a new cat on it as the original had some damage from the valve chunk. I threw caution to the wind and just put the original back on, then got a P0420 when it ran the catalyst monitor. So since the smog test it's been running great. I was going to try rabbit's trick to plug the damage to the honeycomb, but I was worried it might cause problems down the road so I just opted for a new cat since this one had 240K miles on it.

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Update: After a couple of weeks of daily driver duty, car runs great but popped a few codes this week. First was P0340 (cam pos. sensor) then a few hours later saw P0172 (rich fuel trim) then right on cue; P2188 (rich idle trim).


According to service info for P0172/2188, P0340 must not be set in order to diagnose a rich condition. So I ordered the cam sensor. So if this turns out to be my case I will update. TB and other items have been cleaned, new PCV, etc., so my rich condition may be a bad cam sensor. All my injectors have ~14 ohms, so I tend to doubt one died in two weeks of driving. Will update.

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After my timing belt my cam sensor also died. Remove the air box and top belt cover you can sneak out of there. it's still a bitch working on that side of the engine.

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Do you recall if you were seeing the rich trim codes (P0172/2188 in my case) in addition to the P0340 sensor code?

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I only had the P0340 code. The sensor was working intermittently. Right now my cat has died and I am getting the P0420 code. My gas millage has gone down to 26/27 from 31/34 highway. That really sucks. So I am wondering if my injectors are faulty and running rich or I have lost compression (I run that biatch hard) or I have a tooth off on my cams (from when I changed the timing belt).

So I was not getting the rich trim codes. I wonder if replaced your injectors or not. Maybe they are getting old?

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No same injectors for me. I did clean them in an ultrasound cleaner while they were out, after I did the 'injector coil test' as outlined in the GM bulletin and I got 14 ohms for all four, so they should be fine. If yours is running rich you should see one of the fuel trim codes P0171,172,2188, etc. as the ECM compensates. This car happens to have a new cat on it, due to the same P0420 code. Mine had a dime sized hole in the element. You can do the injector coil test with a digital volt meter, the spec is 11-14 ohms, and all four need to be within a few ohms.

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Update: The plot thickened last week when the car began to show drivability issues, with a hunting/surging idle at startup, and it even died on me for the first time when I put it in gear while cold once. I came to find out the vacuum line to the MAP had a split in it and was causing a vacuum leak. So fixed that, cleared the codes, and took it for a spin, and a whole host of codes came right back, and it ran just as poor, almost no acceleration for a block or 2, rich trim codes every few seconds, the ultraguage was 'blowing up' lol

- So Saturday my cam sensor came, and I wasted no time getting that puppy in, reset the codes and ran a few more errands I needed to do. With the new cam pos. sensor, it's a different car and it runs great once again. - So what I concluded, was a flakey cam position sensor may result in a slew of rich trim codes, both short and long term, idle and cruise. One thing to note, after I had cleared the initial P0340 that gave suspicion to the cam sensor, it never came back, JUST the rich trim codes - acting like injector/clogged intake symptoms.

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Update: A week on the new parts and no codes, drives great an added bonus is better MPG. Sometimes new parts are worth it for fuel savings. Just put a new O2 sensor in it, trying to up the numbers more.