Definitlty a ford fan, my f-150 has not let me down this time, it's my ford taurus.

1997 Ford Taurus, 90,000 miles, 3.0
Check engine light came on Sunday.....
Advanced auto hooked up their reader and it reads..
p0340
cam position sensor
a-bank 1
circuit malfunction.

Ok guys, where would you start? The car appears to be running fine.
Will this condition mess anything up if running it an extended period of time.


Thanks a Bunch, Brian in NC

 

Go to www.flatratetech.com and do a forum search.

 

I assume it's a 3.0 liter 2V engine. If so, I'd strongly suspect the synchronizer shaft binding up and throwing the CMP signal for a loop intermittently.

 

Thanks alot for the response. Could you please elaborate a little on where I need to check for this? About a week ago I replaced the tension pulley and the other pulley. They were getting ruff and needed replacing. Could this have caused something?

Any help appreciated, I went to the suggested site and could not find anything.

Thanks Brian

 

On the driver's side of the engine, near/under the throttle body where the distributor would normally sit in the block is the synchronizer shaft. On top of this shaft sits a little round black sensor with a two wire connector - this is the cam position sensor.

What normally happens is the bearings in the shaft start to bind up and the CMP signal gets skewed, or the little half moon piece under the cam sensor breaks and wipes the cam sensor out. When the synchronizer shaft starts binding up, typically they start squeaking and chirping, almost sounds like a cracked flywheel at idle.

 

thanks for the information, ill take a look this afternoon.
Is this something that is easy to change out? Or is it better left to a mechanic. I most of the time work on my vehicles, just want to make sure there are no special setting or somthing along those lines....

thanks