DON'T LET THE FOUR CHAINS SCARE YOU: A TIMING CHAIN ISSUE ON A RARE ENGINE PRESENTED CONTRADICTORY INFORMATION THAT MADE DIAGNOSIS A CHALLENGE

摘要

It was a beautiful spring day at Opus IVS. The sun was shining, the birds were singing, nothing could go wrong. Or so I thought... A client with a 2008 Audi A8 called in for support. The vehicle ran horribly and the client had questions about timing codes. Among the myriad of codes in the vehicle was one that stuck out: P0014 "Bank 1 exhaust camshaft retard, SPECIFICATION NOT REACHED (Figure 1)." Before I get into the diagnostics of this code, let me tell you a bit about this engine. In short, it's not fun. This is a V-10 that Audi designed to put into the Lamborghini Gallardo. In 2006, Audi decided to install this engine in the A8 - in a space barely large enough for a V-6. As this engine was designed for an exotic sports car, there was little knowledge of these vehicles operating at higher mileage. Known-good data is few and far between. In my experience, these engines were typically replaced before any timing diagnostics had to be performed. With that being said, let's get to the code diagnostics.