After my fun Saturday afternoon bombing around some twisties was interrupted by limp mode, I had my car towed to my mechanic. He called me this morning with (relatively) good news! I’m less antsy now.
I have to say, I’m damn proud of how I’ve set up this car. I picked all the mods myself, and the way it accelerates, turns, shifts and stops is just great. Until I upgraded the brakes, I hadn’t really truly bombed around some back roads, and well, this car has very high limits. Probably too high for some doofus like me to be throwing around on back roads.
I love this car, but I don’t love riding in tow trucks with my non-functioning car on the back of them.
Turns out, all of the myriad electrical faults, which included the mass air sensor, turbo diverter valve, both VANOS solenoids, both cam sensors, and the oil pressure switch, all run through a junction box behind the glove compartment.
My mechanic traced the lack of signals to this junction box area, and checked all the wiring, relays and connectors going into and out of the junction box. On the plus side, they’re all intact. On the minus side, that means the junction box itself is bad, and needs to be replaced.
He ordered a new box, and it should arrive tomorrow. All told this should cost somewhere in the range of $600-800.
Honestly, I’m still relieved that’s all it’s costing me. I had a feeling with the sheer number of codes, it wasn’t going to be every single one of the damn sensors and instead it was some kind of wiring issue. But still, that long list of codes had me bugging out a little bit, especially because if there was a whole wiring harness required, hoo boy, that could be expensive.
I’ll report back tomorrow once the new junction box is installed and my car is (hopefully!) back to running properly.