Car running poorly after check engine light cleared

[AlexK]

My CEL came on. The car was running strange. It had decreased throttle response and the clutch felt different. I checked the code and it was for the camshaft position sensor bank B. I took the car to the dealership (it's still under warranty) and they said that it needed a spacer to fix the problem but couldn't accurately measure the space where the spacer needed to go because it was in an awkward spot. They told me they were going to take a guess at what size spacer to put and that I should come back if the light comes back on. They do the work and the car seems fine...

Three weeks later the light comes back on with the same code. The car was acting similar (decreased throttle response and so on). I recently purchased an OBD-II reader and wanted to try it out by turning off the CEL. So I plugged it in and cleared the code. I went out for a test drive after to see if clearing the code fixed how the car was responding. To my surprise, the car felt worse! Even more decreased throttle response. And the clutch point felt different, further forward. The car even sounded different. It felt like there was an elephant sitting on the hood, holding the car back. I quickly ended my test drive and brought it back home.

I took it to the dealer the next day and because I had cleared the code they did not want to do anything. They claimed that the car was running normally. I insisted that it was not and that they had to try to do something before I would pick it up. They called me back and told me that they cleaned the MAF sensor and the car was running better. I picked it up and drove home and it was back to normal.

I have my doubts about how cleaning the MAF sensor could fix this problem. What do you guys think? How would clearing the CEL cause all of these problems??

[cdrazic93]

Any CEL to do with camshaft positon on a 2013, you should always check for AVCS failure, pretty sure its a TSB for the MY13s. Bring that up with the master tech.

[cdrazic93]

Im assuming position B is passenger side, which (in 4 cases documented around here somewhere) the slightly improperly designed rocker arms were causing problems with the camshafts causing head failure. I highly doubt it was that though, very uncommon occurance.

[Turdinator]

In my personal experience clearing a CEL reset all the ECU learning so it felt like I had freshly flashed the ECU. So it had the typical dead pedal etc. You may find after a week or two of driving that things improve. Or you may have a more serious problem as mentioned above.

[steve99]

Originally Posted by AlexK

My CEL came on. The car was running strange. It had decreased throttle response and the clutch felt different. I checked the code and it was for the camshaft position sensor bank B. I took the car to the dealership (it's still under warranty) and they said that it needed a spacer to fix the problem but couldn't accurately measure the space where the spacer needed to go because it was in an awkward spot. They told me they were going to take a guess at what size spacer to put and that I should come back if the light comes back on. They do the work and the car seems fine...

Three weeks later the light comes back on with the same code. The car was acting similar (decreased throttle response and so on). I recently purchased an OBD-II reader and wanted to try it out by turning off the CEL. So I plugged it in and cleared the code. I went out for a test drive after to see if clearing the code fixed how the car was responding. To my surprise, the car felt worse! Even more decreased throttle response. And the clutch point felt different, further forward. The car even sounded different. It felt like there was an elephant sitting on the hood, holding the car back. I quickly ended my test drive and brought it back home.

I took it to the dealer the next day and because I had cleared the code they did not want to do anything. They claimed that the car was running normally. I insisted that it was not and that they had to try to do something before I would pick it up. They called me back and told me that they cleaned the MAF sensor and the car was running better. I picked it up and drove home and it was back to normal.

I have my doubts about how cleaning the MAF sensor could fix this problem. What do you guys think? How would clearing the CEL cause all of these problems??

Golden rule ,never clear the dtc\cel if the car is under warante and you want the dealer to fix it.

The first thing the dealer will do is read codes, if you have cleared it they see nothing.

So unless their is something blinding obvious like a rod poking out of the block they will say " no codes found vehicle drives normal".

as above poster said clearing cel\dtc resets ecu and it will drive a little different for a few drive cycles ie dead accelerator pedal. it also cleares all learned parameters and counters like knock fueling and missfire counts etc makes it difficult for dealer techs.

Some dtc\cel will put the ecu in low power limp home mode where rpm limited to about 4500 rpm

read link below on flashing reset learning.