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Whilst I was fixing junk with garbage this morning, after moving on from my F 150 abs lamp issue, I received a call from a friend at another shop.
He was quite upset with a tech who was tasked with replacing the 3 pin connector for the VVT sensor, exhaust side, on a 2015 Toyota Rav 4.
The Toyota belongs to a regular customer of their shop and was found to have rodent damage to the position sensor harness during a previous visit. They drove it in today to have it fixed.
Unfortunately, the tech pinned the new connector wrong, plugged it in and now the car is a no start, no communication.
So I suspect the reference became shorted to ground.
Even with the connector now pinned in the correct order, the Rav 4 is still a no start, no com. Even with the connector disconnected.
I asked him to measure voltage on all three wires and he reported 0.04, 0.04 & 0.02.
I checked a diagram and all three go directly to the PCM. It's not clear from the diagram what the reference voltage is or if it's shared with other sensors.
He's convinced there is no other harness damage and that PCM must have been damaged during the connector repair.
I think the PCM should have survived this mishap.
What do you guys think? Could there tech have let the smoke out of this one?
I haven't seen it in person and likely won't, but I am curious.
Maybe a Capacitor discharge?? I would think it would survive reference voltage being shorted once. Maybe there’s more rodent damage on another reference voltage sensor near by that got disturbed, maybe try unplugging them all??
Thanks for the reply Cheryl.
The PCM was indeed damaged from the wiring mix up.
My friend just sent me text to let me know that with a new PCM communication has been restored and he's attempting to set up the module as I write this.
I really wouldn't have expected this happen. Very good lesson here!
