ok so i have alot of vtc rattle going on. its driving me insane a few questions... whats the fix? is it worth fixing? is it bad for the engine to be run with vtc solenoids disconnected? cheers, John
no rattle at idle, only rattles for a second on acceleration and deceleration. mostly on deceleration.
If you pull the plugs on both VTC Soleniods at idle. The car WILL STALL. Maybe they dont work anyway. Think you should check
Hmmmmm Not sure about that Graham, I disconnected my VTC solenoids while the car was running with no ill effects except for a loss of some torque in the rev range. Just my observations anyway...
My fix... I had VTC rattle in my old NA. The fix was to get new intake CAM gears. As was explained to me, the centre of these gears can wear, which will cause the rattle on deceleration. Someone probably has a better explanation than that, but for now, that will do. The new gears (well 2nd hand gears) fixed the rattle. Driving the zed with the solenoids disconnected will do no harm, but you will be down on power as you will have no VTC. To check if your VTC is working, you can engage the VTC solenoids with Datascan while the car is at idle. If the car stalls, the VTC is working. You can drive around with the noisy rattle, and the VTC will still work. But the rattle will eventually get worse where it will be just embarrassing to drive. And who knows, may acutally cause damage if it gets bad enough.
Details To replace the 2 intake CAM gears essentially involves taking the timing belt off. So not as long as a 100K service as you're not replacing bits as such (except for the CAM gears), but you still have to do all the bullshit removal of stuff to get to the belt. Of course, if you are due a 100K service, now is the perfect time to do it and replace the CAM gears while you are at it.
The VTC is released at idle, and then engaged as the throttle opens, and then released at the VTC release point in the ECU map. If unplugging them causes stalling, something is wrong with your vehicle - ie the throttle position sensor is not correctly registering as closed throttle.
The engine was rebuilt by Eric and only dropped in about 5 months ago. So nowhere near due for a service. Sounds like it's a job that's a little too intense for an amature like me =P does the plenum have to be removed to get to it? (I need to replace an injector or six in the near future)
