dieselowner

Recently on a road trip the intake manifold gasket on our Tahoe blew, if anyone has done the replacement on this they know how much things have to be removed above and around the intake manifold in order to do the replacement. In the process of doing the work, the distributor needed to be removed. Long story short, I didn't mark the distributor so that I could easily replace and drive after the gasket was fixed, so after the main work was done on the Tahoe I still had to time it. The first go around, I had the thing 180 degrees off, and after flipping it the tahoe started up no problem, sounded great, and drove just fine. About a week and a half to two weeks later a code showed up, Crankshaft/Camshaft corralation. I figured since I had to disconnect the wiring harness thats all it was, wrong. The connections were tight and clean. After screwing around with it for a couple hours I had cleared the code and it still hadn't come back, but there again, two weeks later it has showed up. Even with the code the vehicle runs and sounds just fine... but those are some expensive parts I'd like not to go south. I had re-timed the vehicle again the second time, tried to get a timing light to work but failed there. Does anyone have any suggestions? Has this happened to anyone else and would I be best to take to the dealer?

in2pro

if I read your post correctly it sounds to me that you have it all right and I suspect something might be pinched or shorting, I'd check the entire length of the cam and crank cabling to insure nothing is put in a bind and not being pulled too tight in any places.....
My thinking is it was working before the work and the 2 sensors involved have very little to them, thou its possible one may have been damaged during the repair I suspect wiring first....

MDTAHOE

The distributor is not used to set ignition timing, it is used to set the fuel injector timing. You must use a scan tool that shows data to do this. You need to be able to see Cam Retard. The spec is 0+ or - 2. The code does not always come up right away. To know what is causing your problem you must know what your current spec is. There is no way around this. Even if you had marked the distributor (as we do in a shop) it would still have been off slightly and you would need to set it. The truck would still SEEM to run fine and idle fine even if it was a couple teeth off and at + or - 30 degrees.

Rodehard

I'm in the middle of the same thing MDTAHOE is. After a 180' dist turn, everything is back together, got fire, but no fuel. If the timing is off, I have no scan tool at home, and I need a "fix" so I can get it to one.
During the manifold gasket repair, I seperated the upper and lower intake plenums to clean the oil/a.f. milkshake out, and cleaned the spider injectors with carb cleaner. Could that have killed the injectors?

in2pro

cleaning it I don't think is going to harm anything, I'd make sure the electrical connection to the injectors is fully seated....

dieselowner

I was trying to find the Cam retard in the scan tool I have. I have a Mentor scan tool, which is a fairly good scan tool, and wasn't able to find it. Is there a specific scan tool that I need? If I were to just bite the bullet and take the Tahoe up to Chevy what kind of labor are we talking about here? I thought the distributor was to set spark plug timing not fuel injection timing?

MDTAHOE

1995 and older it is used to set timing. Any snap-on scanner will have it. Maybe yours calls it something else. List all the data yours shows. It will cost you more to buy a scanner than to take it to someone. Also you do not have to go to the dealer any shop properly equipped should be able to do it.