Question about a car part!

by crapola 4 Replies latest jw friends

  • crapola
    crapola

    To all you mechanics out there I have a question. What is a cam shaft postion synchroniser? Whatever it is it went out on my mom's car and is going to cost about $400.00 to repair it. This is after paying over $400.00 for a new starter.

  • thetrueone
    thetrueone

    Some cars have them, its job is to adjust the cam shaft's rotational position which controls the up and down lift of the valves as

    they open and close inside the combustion chamber. Most of them have a connecting sensor which receives signals from

    a computer control module, relative to the engine's RPM.

    This video shows basically what they look like, of course there's variations from one car manufacture to another.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXOJXnYIZQk

  • thetrueone
    thetrueone

    Some cars have them, its job is to adjust the cam shaft's rotational position which controls the up and down lift of the valves as

    they open and close inside the combustion chamber. Most of them have a connecting sensor which receives signals from

    a computer control module, relative to the engine's RPM.

    This video shows basically what they look like, of course there's variations from one car manufacture to another.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXOJXnYIZQk

  • crapola
    crapola

    Thanks for the video. The sound was exactly like the sound in my mom's car. Like a cricket that would'nt shut up!

  • Highlander
    Highlander

    That is a very 'old school' component. Older engines used a distributor. When manufacturers started using direct ignition such as coil packs or individual ignition coils to create the necessary high voltage spark, they were still using engine blocks that were designed for a distributor. Instead of designing an entirely new engine block to meet the needs of the direct ignition system what they did was cleverly engineer a cam position sensor(also referred to as a synchronizer) that could be installed in the exact same location that was originally intended for the ignition distributor.

    You can see from the video that the cam position sensor is gear driven by the cam shaft.(just like a distributor) The sychronizer is used as a reference so that the engine control module(ECM) knows the exact position of the camshaft and subsequent position of the valves. With that information, the ECM knows which spark plugs needs to be 'fired' and when.

    Modern day engines use multiple cam sensors(usually when the engine has more than one camshaft) that are no longer mechanically driven by the cam. Instead they are mounted near the end of the cam shaft and are usually magnetic based sensors that detect both speed and position of the camshaft.

    The cam shaft position synchronizer as seen in the above videos are not used for adjusting cam shaft position. That job is done by Variable Valve Timing(VVT) systems. Each manufacturer has their own name for it. Toyota calls is VVTI, BMW calls it VANOS.

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