My mom has a 2015 Equinox with the loathsome 2.4 I4 direct injection. When she showed up with it, it was throwing a P0172 rich O2 code and a P0014 over advanced exhaust cam. Apparently the car ran like poo from MI to CO and experienced intermittent run-on. It did it to me once on the drive to Advance Auto where I got some fresh 5W30. Also of note, that morning's cold start with old oil (that either barely or not at all touched the dipstick) gave a bit of a rattle up top, sounded like a VVT cam gear. After the oil change there has been no run on and zero noise from the engine anywhere. It otherwise ran perfectly both before and after the oil change. I found that the O2 sensor harness on the sensor side was laying on the CV axle and was chafed pretty badly as you may imagine. Seems odd to me it'd read rich if that were the cause though. As for the cams, I removed, inspected, cleaned, ohmed, and reinstalled both actuators for the cam phasers. They both ohmed out at 13.2 ohms and had a little bit of contaminants on the screens. I hosed them down with carb cleaner and dropped them back in. Both were dated early 2019, so they were replaced just before my mom got the car in Sept 2019. I've read that the high pressure fuel pump can develop an internal leak and flood the crank with fuel thus watering down the oil and causing cam phaser issues. This however was not the least bit overfull on oil. I decided to check and see if the low pressure side would bleed down and it looks pretty normal. I turned the key on and by the time I got back under the hood it was at 60 and falling. It seemed to park around 57, so I came back 10 minutes later and it was 52. 10 minutes later it was just a tick below 50. I left it on overnight, but feel that isn't really indicative of anything. My mom is a MI/AZ snowbird and she left the car here until kiddo #3 pops out in 10 days. I don't want to send her back with an underlying issue that's going to cost her big bucks, but I do have a few weeks to sort this out. Is there anything upstream of that low pressure schrader valve that could piss fuel into the crankcase? I imagine the odds of a leak at 2000psi are a bit higher than around 60. I should point out that she was at least 1500 miles past the change oil light coming on, so this in and of itself could be the cause. I also have to wonder if whoever did change her oil in the past skipped the PITA cartridge filter. I was too cheap to buy the special socket so I powered through it was regular stuff that barely fit in there.
Anyone Know Anything about the 2.4 Ecotec Direct Injection?
- Thread starter Supercharged111
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Don't over think it. Crappy oil, no filter change, and being that far overdue is most likely the cause. Make sure to always change the oil every 5k miles, no matter what. Solves a lot of issues, or rather, prevents them from even becoming issues in the first place.
I 95% agree with Streetbu with this exception -- 3000 mile LOF intervals. I remember sitting through direct injection training years ago and the instructor referenced Ecotecs specifically. Early on GM was having problems with coking up intake valves and random misfire codes on startup. Initially the fix involved solvent and a popsicle stick. The longer term fix was a PCM reflash. You know what the reflash changed? Nothing but the oil change reminder mileage.
Ignore the manual, change at 3k unless it's a freeway flyer. It keeps the cam phasers happy and reduces blow-by.Try some of the direct injection cleaner spray to clean things up.
On the O2 sensor, they default to rich if there's a problem. Fix the wiring.
Ignore the manual, change at 3k unless it's a freeway flyer. It keeps the cam phasers happy and reduces blow-by.Try some of the direct injection cleaner spray to clean things up.
On the O2 sensor, they default to rich if there's a problem. Fix the wiring.
I hope you're right.
Same code her car had. Lucky me the chewed up wiring is on the sensor so can just pop one in and be done.
Same code her car had. Lucky me the chewed up wiring is on the sensor so can just pop one in and be done.
Direct injection is over 100 years old tech. The reason it was not adopted back then was it tended to coke up intake valves. Even modern electronics have a hard time preventing this issue. VVT engines are very sensitive to oil changes and gunk build up. Basically newer the engine, the less room for error it has.
Sadly I think most modern stuff is evolving faster than it can be bug proofed.
I liken it a bit to the early 70s when everyone went nuts over emissions and neutered everything on wheels. Eventually the power came back once technology caught up. This go around we suffer in other ways.
I went for a spin with the cheap scanner hooked up and saw some negative LTFTs in excess of -20% so now I have to hook up EFILive and verify whether or not I should give a shjt about what I saw. I intend to base this off of commanded vs observed fuel pressure to rule out the high pressure pump.
I have a couple older 2.2 Ecotecs. Buy the tool for the filter and use 3/8" extensions. You will be glad you did. And be sure to change the big green "O" ring too- or it will leak.
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