I think if he removes it and cleans everything it will work like it should.

The transmission guy has had the car for a couple of days and has taken the car to a couple of his mechanic friends and has finally found one with a computer that could follow the activies of the system when it is trying to start. It has been hard to diagnose because there are no error codes.
I am told the the the belief is that the camshaft sensor is faulty. The camshaft sensor is not sending out a consistent signal. This is causing the tach to jump during cranking.

Can anyone tell me where the cam shaft sensor is located?

The cam sensor can cause a hard start condition, but I doubt it would cause the tacho to jump. I have the same tacho thing with my '99 S80 T6.

If the CPS is failing, typically it will throw a code, specific to the cam. I believe the cam sensor is on the transmission side of the motor, attached to the exhaust cam.

Yes it is mounted to the back of the head.

Thanks Guys,

At this point I don't know what to think. Tech, I did mention the grounding issue to the transmission guy and as I expected he is having a hard time believing it.
The claim is, that based on the the last diagnostic computer he took it to, the cam sensor signal is all over the place while the car is cranking and not starting. As soon as it sends the proper signal the car starts. I still think the issue has to be related to the act of removing and replacing the transmission. Considering the cam sensor is on the tranny side of the engine I asked him if he checked the wiring to look for damage. He claims he did.
He had one of his mechanics (I use the term Loosly) work on the car originally and I found a ground wire not connected and a few other things not mounted or mounted incorrectly. So I have not dought something could have been miss wired or damaged during the tranny work.
The clunk in the front end, after the tranny service, ended up being a front end part not tighteded back down.
I won't know until Tuesday if the camshaft sensor does the trick. I will post the results. Thanks again for the replies.

George

Hopefully he gets it sorted out quickly for you!

Well the problem is finally fixed and it was not the camshaft sensor. Actually kudos to you Tech, you had it right near the beginning of this process. Early on you had mentioned that the power wire could cause interference with the signal from the crank shaft sensor. At the time you told me that I did try to re-route the wire but evidently that wasn't good enough.

I had mentioned mostly of all of the things you had mentioned regarding the grounding and the possibility of interference from the power cable. After speaking to another mechanic friend of his the tranny guy started looking into these related issues. He and the mechanic friend found some information about a problem with certain alternator and regulator combinations that had an issue with the power wire causing problems with the signal from the crank shaft sensor. They also tried to re-route the power wire but did not have much luck. I mentioned that in the telecommunications industry they sometimes have to had shielding to dc wiring to prevent interference with signals.

The decision was made to run the power wire as far away from the crank shaft sensor as possible and to wrap the cable with aluminum foil as an experiment. As silly as that might sound, that worked.

It is the same cable that was on the car before the tranny was removed and replaced but for some reason it was now causing the car to be extremely hard to start. The aluminum wrapped cable has been covered with a heater hose that has been split along its length and clamped. It may be that the cable has developed some small cracks which is allowing the external magnetic field to increase which is now interfering with the crank sensor. I think when the weather warms up I will replace the make shift fix with a new cable to see if that is also works. For now I will enjoy a car that starts when I turn the key.

In the never ending story, however, now the "airbag service urgent" warning is lit. What next? I couldn't bring my self to call the tranny guy and tell him. I will deal with it tomorrow.

Thanks to Tech and anyone else that had input. Tech you were right on. I am grateful.

Glad all is good now!!!!
The codes might just need to be reset. They might have pulled a wrong fuse or something like that.

Weird, last night when I was contemplating this job on my car I was thinking of shielding the cable (With aluminum foill) rather than rerouting it. Did you shield the power cable, the sensor cable, or both?

Great minds think alike. That's encouraging that it worked for you.

Only the power cable was wrapped with foil and the heater hose. In the telecommunications industry they accomplish the same effect by taking a non insulated copper wire and srarting at one end, wrap it around the power wire with a .5 to 1 inch gap between wraps along its length. They would then use a shrink wrap to encase the wire. The exposed copper wire would be left long enough to have a crimped terminal added to the end so that it can be connected to ground. This will cause any generated magnetic field to be dispated to ground.

I am going to post another issue that is the result of the Tranny guy but before I do I will ask you guys if you have an answer. During this entire fiasco he managed to break the plastic bracket that the gas cap door hinges on. It is the piece that mounts to the fender. Does anyone know the best way to access it? Is it accessable from the trunk or from inside the fender well?

Thanks

If it is only the hinge then you have to basically yank the old one off and put a new one on. When you are ready to tackle the job let me know and I will walk you through it.

It is the part that mounts to the body. The metal spring is mounted securely to the door but one of the clips on the part mounted to the body is broken off.

I expect to have the part on Friday. I haven't seen what it looks like yet so when I do I might be able to figure it out. I will post when I have the part.

thanks

Your welcome it is cake to install it.

Tech,

I got a look at the fuel door hinge today and it is self explanatory. It obviously just snaps into place. Shouldn't be a problem.

I checked into the fuses to see if was causing the "Airbag service urgent" warning message and the fuses were all good. I put a code reader on the car and the warning message does not generate a code. Because it presented itself with the last service by the transmission guy working on the starting issue, I am assuming it is the result of a something done trying to fix the starting issue. If it is not a fuse, do you have any thoughts on what it could be?

George

The general scanner does not read SRS codes.

Start problem back again.
 

Just thought I would update. It has been almost a year since the starting and transmission issue and a couple of months ago the transmission started to slip again. I finally got the transmission guy to take a look at it and he ended up to pull out the transmission and replacing the valve body. Guess what!! the starting problem is back again. Sure enough it is doing the same thing it was doing the last time. Very hard starting or not at all. It is cranking and cranking, the tach is bouncing of and on and no start.

As I posted earlier, I had the same issue after the last tranny work. the issue was resolved by wrapping the power wire to the starter with foil and a heater hose. In all of the time since then (almost a year) it has been starting great. Now they drop the tranny and put it back and the hard starting returns. Here we go again.

If anyone has any new revelations I will be happy to hear them. In the mean time I will go back through this thread and start trying all of the same things again.

George.

I fixed this in my car recently. I rerouted the red power cable and covered it in aluminum tape. I think this thread boiled down to two things:

1. Bad ground between transmission and motor.
2. EMF issues from the red cable going to the starter.

thanks for the response
 

I agree, I am leaning toward the ground between the engine and tranny. I have pulled while I am recharging the battery and have covered it with foil and encased it in side of a heater hose. Yesterday was -5 degrees in the morning so I didn't spend a lot of time on it. I will be trying it tonight when I get home from work. I am thinking of stopping to pick up a ground strap that I can run from the engine to the transmission to remove grounding as an issue.

george

sounds good, Ill post a pic of my cable routing at some stage for reference too.

just to follow up
 

I just thought I would drop an update.

Since the last post I have recharged the battery and pulled the power cable that runs to the starter and re-wrapped it with foil and a heater hose. This did not help. I them replaced the crankshaft sensor and again no change. I finally did get it to start and it starts better now but it still takes 2 or 3 attempts to get it to start.
When I first got it to start the car shortly gave me several error codes. I got crankshaft sensor circuit, O2 sensor and random misfires. I cleared the codes but the misfire came back several times. I have been driving it to work and all of the codes have cleared and have not come back but the starting is till an issue.

The next step is the ground strap between the block and the tranny.