Variocam troubleshooting
 

Hi All, New poster here

Subject: 99 Boxster base 103k mile

Car was running great then check light came on a couple times an then went out.
Then came on and stayed on throwing lots of codes all referring to passenger side cyls 1,2& 3. with a rough idle. P300 301 302 303(misfire detected). Also P1313, 1314, 1315, 1319, (misfires emission relevant cyls 1 2 3). Visual inspection of coil packs revealed no cracks. Installed new plugs and swapped coil packs side to side. Reset codes and after running smoothly cold threw the same codes with a rough idle after warming up. So coil
packs ok.
The other codes are P1340 ( position of cam in relation to crank 1 thru 3 cyls) and P1531 (camshaft adjustment cyl 1-3), and P1530 (camshaft adjustment cyl 1-3) which I think must be variocam actuator issues.
I recall seeing a resistance check for the variocam actuator solenoid and using a AA battery to actuate the solenoid and listening for clicks, but cannot find those values in researching the forum posts.
Any thoughts? Help would be much appreciated.

You will need a Durametric or equivalent to see what if you can actuate the 1-3 cam actuator. It's possible to have just the solenoid bad, or it's the whole cam actuator assembly going bad. If you don't have a Durametric, the "throw parts at it" approach will cost a lot of money.

Thanks for the reply yelcab1, I do not have a Durametric. I am in San Mateo which is very close to you. Any chance you know of someone in the vicinity that has a Durametric that I could rent/pay to troubleshoot it for me?

I have a Durametric professional version. Contact me at 650 766 8033

Follow up: It turns out the variocam actuator was at fault. The inboard chain ramp (some kind of plastic) failed and broke off falling into the oil gallery. This caused the chain around the cams to slip by one half of a link and leaving the passenger side intake cam advanced 27 degrees from the others. I replaced the variocam actuator with a new one, but probably could have got away with just putting new chain ramps on the old actuator.

Yes It is very simple to clean & test the actuator after installing the new improved ramps & new oil. Did mine 60,K miles ago.

The main reason I installed a new actuator was that there was some wear on the metal piece of the variocam actuator that holds the chain ramp from the short amount of time it was run after the plastic ramp broke off. it was A LOT of work to replace the actuator with the engine still in the car and I wanted to reduce the chance of having to do it again if the worn holder let the new ramps break off again. It was hard spending $1300 on a part for a car that's only worth about $5k but I finally decided that was better than sending the car to the dump.