"BBY" engine running bad, could the Hall sensor be the culprit?

[gewstarr]

Hi guys!

 

Towards the end of last year, I experienced some difficulties after cleaning my EGR and also throttle body. I finally got things running, but since we've gotten ourselves another car this one has actually just been standing on our parking lot since then. Now, the last weeks I've been trying to get it to run, but it's really bad. I've had it reach operating temperature several times, idling for half an hour, but it just doesn't want to play well. Of course, it could be a vacuum clean, but I have this weird gut feeling that this isn't a vacuum leak, but something different. I have replaced the MAP sensor but this hasn't made any difference. The TB is thoroughly cleaned, so this couldn't cause it. I'm not completely sure about the EGR, I may have damaged it since I more or less drowned it in the sink indoors when I cleaned it. However, it clearly responds to 12v in at-home testing.

 

However, what has now made me curious is the so called "Hall sensor" that sits on top of the engine. It doesn't seem to matter if I have this plugged or unplugged, the engine roughness is exactly the same. I don't get any CEL or any other instrument indication, except when I pull the Hall plug it tells me that the wire is out. I've also swapped all spark plugs and checked all spark coils, no trouble there. So, right now I'm leaning towards the Hall sensor theory.

 

 

What do you guys say? Anyone with a BBY engine who could verify or deny the fact that the engine should behave the same way with it plugged or unplugged? I'm tempted to look for some cheap replacement part over eBay, but I thought I'd ask around here first. Oh, is there something else that I may have overlooked here? Any of the two Lambda sensors? Some say these won't show symptoms until the engine has reached operating temperature though, and my situation is just about the same even if I start the engine cold, so therefor I've more or less ruled them out, plus one of them was replaced 2011.

 

Finally, as a response to kind @Wino from that other (didn't want to resurrect it) thread.

 

Glad you fixed it in the end.

In my opinion, it's always good to explore new areas of your car that you haven't got involved with before, life is one long school-day.

  

What's the Toyota like to drive; I've never driven one?

 

In the beginning it got to be somewhat a nightmare. After two days I felt something was wrong; at high gears there was a rattling noise coming from somewhere. I drove to Toyota and the tech who tested the car around the block quickly pinpointed the issue; gearbox bearings was singing on it's last chorus. I was quoted what's equal to roughly £ 1100 to get the bearings replaced, if I ran much longer things could crash and then the entire box would need replacement, which would be even more expensive. I quickly returned to the car dealer, who at first acted like I was talking nonsense, Toyota only wanted money, and so on, and so on. However, I finally got them around, and they replaced the entire gearbox for a used one that had even less miles on it. So, ever since that I'm actually quite happy with the Toyota, except for some minor flaws. If I get the Fabia running again, I'm still not sure which car to keep and which to sell. Even if I like the Toyota, I got this nasty feeling about the dealership since I'm 98% convinced that they knew about the gearbox situation the entire time, and was trying to blow me.

 

Now, I hope anyone around could point me in the right direction here. MOT is soon due (31 of May) and I'm not sure how they (Sweden) will consider this rattling engine. Oh yeah, I know the engine is nasty on the top, but when the air filter housing is of the filler cap is more or less loose from one direction, which I think is simply BBY design. I'll clean it up later.

Edited 24 April, 2016 by gewstarr

[Breezy_Pete]

I can test mine after lunch in terms of cam sensor connected/disconnected.

[Breezy_Pete]

No difference to engine idle speed or sound when unplugged. Engine was fully warmed up bbecause I drove it a few miles before lunch.

I think the only operating difference with it unplugged is that the injectors will go to batch mode instead of sequential.

[Tech1e]

No difference to engine idle speed or sound when unplugged. Engine was fully warmed up bbecause I drove it a few miles before lunch.

I think the only operating difference with it unplugged is that the injectors will go to batch mode instead of sequential.

Yeah, without a cam phase sensor it looses cylinder recognition.

[gewstarr]

Thanks for quick responses, @Wino and @Tech1e. Bad news nonetheless, that means I could pretty much rule out the Hall sensor as well. Something else besides the shaking that I could add to the symptoms is that when you stand in neutral and gently press the pedal, usually, just before it's about to hit 2000 RPM, it blows up to around 2400 RPM without me suddenly being more aggressive on the foot or anything. Also, this just about always happens on the exact same spot, RPM-wise speaking. So, is there any common cause for this? It couldn't simply be some sort of horribly engine design, could it?

 

 

Gosh, I really need to find the answer here. Thing is, this actually started when the battery had run out completely after the car had been standing for >2 months. I then took the car inside and managed to resurrect it from it's deep drain. I guess having the battery out of the car for so long (a couple of days) would have put some sort of reset on the ECU. Later on, however, I think I may have accidentally have been jumping around channels in the "Basic Settings" (rather than Measuring Blocks) mode in VCDS, which I'm afraid may have caused some bad. Not sure what exactly could have gone wrong by doing this, though. Some say the car will run poor after EGR cleaning and so on, and that it will get better values after driving. Thing is, I haven't driven the car at all since I did the cleaning, since I've put the car "off" (economic reasons), making it illegal to use it at all.

 

However, I've been running the car hot plenty of times, standing on the parking lot for almost an hour just revving the car up and down, probably not exactly to our neighbors' great delight. Anyways, logical thinking, I assume that it's the engine running (RPM) that makes the difference when it comes to ECU finding the best fine-tune values for EGR; not actual driving with different gears etc, so me doing the procedure still on our parking lot would be more or less the same as being on the freeway doing so, correct? Anyways, even if the car was just reset and not fine-tuned I'm guessing it would still not run this poor, so it has to be something else weird going around under the bonnet here. Just not sure what exactly. Should I force a complete reset on the ECU, hopefully this would just clear engine related figures, i.e. not messing up Immobilizer rendering my car completely unusable. If any of you guys here have any other idea about what could be the cause of this, please speak your mind!

[bigjohn]

By the sound of it you are not running on all cylinders. If it's been stood i'd start with coil packs and plugs.

 

Worth doing a compression test on all cylinders as well