2018 Ford Escape SE 1.5L Ecoboost- Crank, No Start, No DTC

Howdy; 
I'm really struggling to figure this one out. I've probably glossed over something or need to recheck some steps but I'm too close to the problem to make sense of this anymore so feel free to tell me what I need to go back and check. I've owned the car since August and it has been running fine until this happened. I've got pictures of my scope wave forms on my phone that I'll be editing into this post over the next hour or so if anyone reads this before then. I have a 4ch scope hooked to 10:1 ChA: CKP(Pin2 SigRTN, Pin3 CKP), 10:1 ChB: Fuel INJ1 (Pin2 INJ1, Gnd), 10:1 ChC: COP1 (Pin1 COP1A, GND), 10:1 ChD: CMP11 Intake (Pin2 CMP11, Pin1 SIGRTN), also using ChD with regular meter probes 1:1 to look for weird voltage spikes.

2018 Ford Escape 1.5L Ecoboost GTDI with a Crank but No Start and no DTC issue. This car was running and driving fine one day and the next; it cranks but will not start. I have the 2018 Ford manuals and wiring diagrams. I have worked through the 2018 PC_ED no DTC diagnostic tree down to the fuel injection system where now I'm recording measurements that conflict with the PC_ED but I don't have confidence that the manual is accurate here because there seems to be a slight conflict in the PC_ED between the Pin Point test A10 (maybe it's for non GTDI?) and Pin Point test DI 7 which calls for testing to observe different results than what I see.

I have already replaced the PCM and main engine wiring harness because I found them filled engine oil. That was discovered during the earlier section of the pinpoint tests and is detailed lower down.

PP Test DI #7 in the 2018 PC_ED says to check each leg of the injector connector for a short to voltage with the ignition switch on. When I check this by just disconnecting one injector I can measure 6.4VDC on pin1 (INJRTN) and .333VDC on Pin2 (INJ). If I disconnect all the injectors the voltage on the RTN circuits jumps to 11.8VDC and .333 on the supply circuit. If I connect all the injectors and back probe inj1 there is .55VDC with a 30ms spike to nearly 5V (ac+dc reads .84V).

The PP Test says that there should be no voltage present and I should repair the short to voltage but gives no indication of where the voltage might be coming from. I have not been able to find shorts to ground on any of the circuits and no shorts from the supply circuits to the return circuits. Also I find that the voltage on the injector circuits arrives as soon as a door is opened or the key is turned on (with the windows rolled down to reach in) and goes away about 45sec after the door is closed and or the ignition is turned off. This information might be a distraction to the issue at hand but it indicates to me that this voltage is related to the “wake up” signal sent to the PCM from the BCM. The fact that the voltage fluctuates based on how many injectors are plugged in makes me think it’s not a normal signal and maybe it’s coming from one of my other engine sensors that was wet with oil. I have disconnected each engine sensor and observed the same results, then I disconnected the entire engine wiring harness (except for the batt junction box plug) and observed the same results. After that I installed the old PCM on the wiring harness while it was completely disconnected and observed the same results.

Ford says I should measure no voltage on the injector circuit but there is a little bit and it has a 30ms spike, what does this mean? There are 2 coolant pumps down near the bottom of the engine that run during KOEO but I can’t think of any other rotating items that could be creating this, I have disconnected those and the spike remains. 

Pic1 

I have used the wiring diagrams to try to find every 12+ signal going to the PCM and measure it with a scope. I think I found all of them but I cannot find any source with a 30ms spike in it. I also probed a sensor that has VREF and that is steady at 5VDC with no ripple or spike. The PCM seems to be generating it and the old one did too.

It occurred to me that it could be coming from my battery charger but when I completely disconnected it the spike is still there.

I installed the same PCM revision that was in the old one but I think there is a newer one available. I didn’t want to add a variable to my problem yet but maybe it’s time?

Other items I’ve checked and observed:

It does stumble a little bit during the first couple cranking intervals but then it just cranks.

I have investigated the engine for base engine issues; I've verified the mechanical timing with the timing tool set (including pining the crankshaft, checking the CKP position, and the holding tool for cams). I have measured cylinder compression at 145, 145, 135, 140 (all plugs pulled but I didn’t block open the throttle plate).

Battery test shows 84% life and is fully charged while testing.

Throttle body checks out according to PP test.

Engine cranking speed w/ plugs is about ~240rpm, w/o plugs it’s 315rpm according to scope data.

CKP/CMP Sync PID shows positive in FORSCAN while cranking.

I have 4 new Motorcraft spark plugs and they all spark nice and bright blue from each of their coils. I changed the spark plugs b/c the ones in the car showed a bright orange spark even though they passed the KV gap test. The new plugs show a bright blue spark from each of the coils.

Fuel pressure, Low and High, the low pressure fuel system was verified at 95psi with a mechanical gauge, the high pressure fuel system is showing 1900psi in FORSCAN but I don’t have a gauge or way to verify that. The bleed down test results are a bit confusing to me; the low pressure side bleeds down during engine cranking as I expect it would, the high pressure side bleeds down a little and then stops bleeding down. With the LP fuel pump fuse pulled; HP Fuel pressure reads ~1900 (if I unplug the HP sensor the PCM reads about 4k psi) after 5+ cranking intervals it still shows over 1500psi, after a few more cranks it falls to about ~1400psi but I've never seen it lower after many cranks. If it goes into Dechoke while cranking does that mean it's not delivering anymore fuel and HP psi would stay steady?

Code History; there were no history codes. Unless there's some hidden memory somewhere that no one really talks about. I am using the paid/licensed version of FORSCAN so I should have access to every area of the diagnostic system and I don’t see any codes other than the ones that pop up when I disconnect a sensor and it shows “engine fault” or CEL on the driver info screen and then clears when I clear the codes.

When I got to PP Test DI:5 I pulled the PCM and Harness connectors and they were literally dripping with oil. I checked every sensor I could easily disconnect and many had oil in their connectors. Cleaned all the sensors I could reach and replaced both cam solenoids and one cam sensor (just because they weren't Ford). Because of the oil intrusion, the PCM and Engine Wiring Harness were replaced and reprogrammed using FORSCAN (made sure both harness grounds are making good continuity). PCM passes the on demand self-test, seems to communicate with other modules with no faults, shows matching module data to the old PCM and other modules, and the engine cranks and gives spark with all 3 keys that I have. I also found and checked the PID for START_ENABLED and that shows Enabled with each of my keys while cranking.

Checked the fuel condition, I didn’t observe any specific issue with it (filled with midgrade last fillup) but it was dark and a small amount of water settled out of a sample overnight so I siphoned the tank as low as I could get it and then I used the fuel pump to pump the tank out until it was pushing air out of the hose. Then I put 5gal of premium in and bleed the LP fuel line until it there was no air and reconnected it. 

Other general information about the situation and questions I have:

I'm not sure if the FORSCAN reprogram does the parameter reset or not or but other than still not starting it seems to behave normally and I think that mostly has to do with PATS, am I wrong?

I don't think I can do the Neutral Profile Correction until the engine is running. Where do I go from here? What am I missing?Any thoughts or pointers would be greatly appreciated.The HP fuel sensor behavior seems odd to me, could that be another thing to poke at? What is normal behavior for the HP side when the LP isn't supplying fuel? How low should it read and how quickly should it drop?

Are there any important sensors that might be internally affected if oil was pumped into them?

Take a look at the FORSCAN graphs of the cranking events if that gives any further understanding of what the engine is doing, or if there's another parameter I should be monitoring let me know. The graph with 2 cranking events shows me blipping the throttle during the second event just to see that it works. There is also an older graph that shows the camshaft sensors being monitored as well.

System at rest


KOEO .5vdc offset on inj1 w/ 30ms ripple


When I turn the key off the ripple goes away but the offset remains for about 45sec which seems to be when the PCM shuts down as VREF goes away too. 


This is proving the battery charger isn’t contributing to it.  

This is just the CKP and INJ1 to see if I was setting things up correctly.  I really struggled getting the trigger to trigger on what I wanted to see. I’m still not getting enough of everything so any tips are appreciated. ​​​​​  


I can see there is a “missing tooth” that shows 360deg but why is the injector firing every cycle instead of every other?

Here I’ve added COP1 on ChC and CMP11 intake cam on ChD.  

Here it is again at 40ms interval.  
 

Here it is at 20ms.


Here’s the fuel sample (right) I pumped out compared to what I had in my lawnmower can (left) 



FORSCAN screen capture of cranking event.  

Parameters Monitored in Forscan.  

2 cranking events with a throttle blip.

Some clearer scope captures of all 4 ch at different time bases. 

Ok, that's all I have for now. I did search this forum for other ecoboost no start issues and I found 1 where the guy had a bad CKP trigger wheel. Could be my issue but I'd like to try ruling that out via scope first b/c pulling the crank damper is not a fun task on this engine. Any suggestions on how to go about this?

In my posted waveforms above, can anyone confirm that the timing is correct during a cranking cycle? The signals don't mean much to me because I've never worked with this engine before and the sensors are in odd physical positions related to the rotational position of the crank.

I've read in the manual that the active camshaft control is disabled until the engine is running and temp is up. but I know it needs the CMP signal to start, it just doesn't try to adjust cam timing until the other parameters are met. 

I found the signals from the PCM to the Fuel Pump module (FPM & FPC) are PWMs but it does not match in any noticable way to the 30ms ripple on the fuel injector lines.

FPM 

FPC I had to trigger on the PWM to get a good capture.
 

@noah, @tyler, This place seems pretty quiet for the last week or so, is everyone on holidays? If you have some time, you guys seem to be the most active and helpful around here, do either of you have any advice on what to do next or what to go back and check again? Any input would be helpful, thanks for any time you can put into this.

Sorry for the late reply! I've been shifting some stuff around personally and professionally, poor excuse, I know. Let me take some time to digest what you have going on here, I don't want you to feel like you're being ignored, that's not the case! Thanks for your patience 🙏 
Did you discover the source of the oil intrusion into the engine harness? I have seen some GM products push oil and coolant into the harness but haven't run into it yet on one of these.
Was there any engine mechanical work performed on this before or since you have owned it? Not everyone just has the timing tools hanging around, so since you mentioned you used them to verify mechanical timing makes me think maybe you were in here before? Not being accusatory, just trying to put pieces together.

Ford Oasis system shows it being at a dealer back in March or April, I think, but there was not a lot of detail about what the issues were other than a transmission cable recall and a CEL that didn't have a listed resolution. My 3 day pass has expired so I can't go check anymore. I bought the car in August and had been driving daily it since, until this happened. I've put over 500 miles on it since I bought it. It was occasionally throwing a Cyl 3 missfire and I think that's related to the well known head gasket issue but I'm not convinced the engine is bad yet because I have seemingly good compression numbers and it was running fine the day before this happened. I borrowed the timing tools b/c of this issue, I had to know if the timing was correct to eleminate a base engine issue early in the diagnostic tree and I didn't have the scope hooked up yet (I'm more comfortable with mechanical things than electrical). The car did have two aftermarket cam solenoids and one cam sensor that were definitely changed more recently but I have no idea when. They just had alot less dirt on them than the rest of the engine. The car has a little over 100K on the clock. I swapped the aftermarket sensors for oem ones because they were cheap and easy and I've experienced trouble in the past with aftermarket timing sensors. For some things I like oem. As for the oil in the harness and PCM I do not have a definitive source. Since the VCTs were changed, I kind of figured it was one of those but I found the most oil in the turbo bypass valve/blow off valve connector. I found oil in many connectors on the engine, it was in CMP1 and 2, MAP, Evap Purge Valve, both VCTs, TCBY, and one of the auxiliary coolant pumps (intercooler one I think). Those sensors are spread across both PCM connectors and they don't all have a common splice that I could find in the harness so the oil might have been coming from different areas. Somone on FB mentioned that he has experience with oil in these harnesses and his seen that it's related to the TCBY valve and a bad check valve in the vacuum pump. He said that usually they don't cause problems but he's never seen one as wet as mine was. I've left my PCM connector side down on a paper towel since I swapped it and it's still leaving oil stains on that.

 

 

Here are some additional screenshots of the 30ms ripple in the injector signals.

 
 

I'm looking through service information to find the best way to test the injector circuits considering the activity you are seeing on the injectors KOEO. I'm not clear exactly to what circuit you have the scope connected, or the height of this voltage "spike". This may be a circuit integredy test carried out by the PCM, but as of now I am unsure. Since you are scoping the injectors, are you seeing the computer applying voltage and ground to the injectors during cranking? SI says voltage will be boosted up to 65v to open the injector and regulated down to maintain injector flow for the appropriate on time. I am not seeing this on your captures, but as I said, I'm not clear where you are connected, or what is the voltage range of your captures. Maybe it's just because I only use a phone to view the forum, not a PC that I am having a hard time seeing the scales of your captures.
When you measured low side fuel pressure with a gauge, was it close to the FLP. Pid? Also, you said "low side pressure bleeds down as expected during cranking". What do you mean by this? I would not expect fuel pressure to bleed down during cranking. Excuse me if I am misinterpreting your statement.
Will the engine fire on alternative fuel?
That was quite a bit of oil in the PCM! This was discovered during the no start diagnosis, correct?

"I'm not clear exactly to what circuit you have the scope connected, or the height of this voltage "spike"."  - For each injector the wiring diagram identifies circuits labeled INJ# and INJ#RTN. Presently, I have my scope connected (via backprobe) to the INJ1 circuit and the ground strap is connected to Gnd. When I was working through the diagnostic tests, I was using my VOM, not the scope, and I took the following measurments as directed by PP Test DI #7. In that test, it says to check each leg of the injector connector for a short to voltage with the ignition switch on but engine off (KOEO). When I checked this by just disconnecting injector 1; I measured 6.4VDC on pin1 (INJRTN) and .333VDC on Pin2 (INJ) with my VOM. If I disconnect all the injectors, the voltage on the RTN circuits jumps to 11.8VDC and stays .333 on the supply circuit. The PPTest says that there should be no voltage present on either circuit and I should repair the short to voltage but it gives no indication of where the voltage might be coming from. It also doesn't describe any "conditions" for this test like "take the measurement by backprobing the connectors" or "disconnect each injector to take the measurement" or "disconnect all injectors to make the measurement" It only prescribes measuring from each of the inj circuits to Gnd and making sure there's no voltage present in the KOEO condition. I hooked up the scope here at the request of someone else that was offering help to capture the injector waveform against the CKP, CMP, and COP1. When I hooked up the scope, that is when I discoverd the 30ms ripple in addition to the dc voltage. The peak of the ripple is about 3.5vdc measured from INJ1 to INJ1RTN and there is about a .3vdc constant offset in the KOEO condition (maybe the .333 I measured originally with my VOM).

"This may be a circuit integredy test carried out by the PCM, but as of now I am unsure." - Good point, it will be good to know the answer to this question incase I'm chasing something that's normal, but I haven't previously seen anything in the service manual or the PCED that describes this. I do know that the PCM can perform an injector test via the scan tool but that hasn't been called out by the PPTests yet. The PCM does pass it's self test with no codes.

"Since you are scoping the injectors, are you seeing the computer applying voltage and ground to the injectors during cranking?" - I can see a spike of over 60vdc when cranking but it happens twice in 720deg, not once. If it's supposed to be a PWM, it doesn't last very long. I don't have a good capture of that wave form because I haven't been able to correctly set up the filtering on that channel yet. I've tried a couple things but I've struggled with trigger timing and filtering options here.

"but as I said, I'm not clear where you are connected, or what is the voltage range of your captures." - I have the scope setup as follows:
10:1 ChA: CKP(Pin2 SigRTN, Pin3 CKP) 5v/div,
10:1 ChB: Fuel INJ1 (Pin2 INJ1, Gnd) 20v/div,
10:1 ChC: COP1 (Pin1 COP1A, GND) 2v/div,
10:1 ChD: CMP11 Intake (Pin2 CMP11, Pin1 SIGRTN) 5v/div, also using ChD with regular meter probes 1:1 to look for weird voltages.
In some of my captures I have adjusted the time base to capture more or less and in the later posted captures I've adjusted channel B to 1v/div to zoom in on the 30ms voltage ripple. I did try my best to make sure the scales were included in each capture so they'd be visible to anyone looking but let me know if I can clear anything else up.

"When you measured low side fuel pressure with a gauge, was it close to the FLP. Pid?" - Yes, the requested and measured low side pressure was close to what I measured.

"Also, you said "low side pressure bleeds down as expected during cranking". What do you mean by this? I would not expect fuel pressure to bleed down during cranking. Excuse me if I am misinterpreting your statement." - The bleed down was part of the PPTest A11, the FP is disabled and you crank the engine. The PPT describes that the fuel pressure should fall while cranking the engine. The confusing part for me was the HP side, that pressure didn't seem to drop very much during cranking with the fuse pulled. It would drop a bit and then stop. At the time I didn't check to correlate the stop in the drop of fuel pressure with the "Dechoke" PID going positive but that could have been why, observing the HP side of the fuel system wasn't part of the PPT. 

"Will the engine fire on alternative fuel?" - I have tried spraying what I thought was a decent amout of starting fluid into the MAP sensor hole right on top of the manifold and it won't fire. Maybe I didn't spray enough but I definitaly didn't get anything from this. When I look into the map sensor hole, I can see the top of the intercooler so I'm pretty sure there's direct access to the intake ports here and not a subchamber in the intake like with the PVC hose connected nearby.

"That was quite a bit of oil in the PCM! This was discovered during the no start diagnosis, correct?" - Yes, the first time the PPTs ask you to pull the connectors to check for damaged pins on a DI engine is Test DI#5. I was very supprised by that and I thought for sure I'd figured it out but oh well here I am, I'm not giving up yet.

This is the part that's confusing me: "10:1 ChA: CKP(Pin2 SigRTN, Pin3 CKP) 5v/div"
For each channel you are saying you are probed into 2 circuits. Ch A is going to have to be on pin 2, or pin 3. I don't understand how you are connecting the scope the way you are describing it.
Every time I have ever used my scope, the ground lead goes to battery negative and each channel probes one circuit. Forgive me for not following you on this point.

"When I look into the map sensor hole, I can see the top of the intercooler "
Spray it in the throttle body. If you remove the map, you should be looking into the intake manifold. The intercooler is in front of the radiator, so I'm not sure where you're looking here.

Is there a scan tool injector balance test that can be tun KOEO?

Ahh I see the confusion, I'll clarify and add a picture. I'm taking my measurements with the typical 10:1 attenuated oscilloscope voltage probes that have a little short ground lead coming out of the proble handle. So, I connected that lead to the engine block or to the SIGRTN line depending on what signal type it was. My understanding of most of the SIGRTN lines is that it is basically ground but taken back through the PCM and then out to the chassis ground and it's mostly applicable to the signals that use VREF. Is that incorrect? I used that on the two signals that are measured from the +5vdc VREF b/c I though that the SIGRTN was what the PCM would be measuring the signal against. The CKP and CMP signals use VREF so I thought it was more accurate to use the SIGRTN for those measurements. The COP1 signal is the gate command for the transistor inside the coil pack so I figured that would be referenced to real chassis ground so I used that in that instance. For INJ1 I'm not sure how the PCM uses the INJ1RTN path but I read somewhere that it may have transistors on both the signal and return. I didn't know if I would get an accurate measurement using that RTN so I chose to use the engine block for my GND for that signal.

As for the map sensor and intercooler, this engine uses an air to water intercooling system so there is a heat exchanger in the intake manifold and one down infront of the radiator with water hoses connecting the two. The airflow path goes through the throttle body and then it drops down low on the intake side of the engine and then up through the intercooler and into the cylinder head.

I haven't found or heard of any function test with the injectors that is availiable while cranking but that doesn't mean much since I'm kind of new to the ecoboost platform.

I've highlighted my probe grounds in green in the picture below for INJ1 and COP1.


This one is how I tied into the CKP signals

Ok, this update is significant if I hooked up and measured correctly. I finally tapped into the exh cam sensor, hooked it to chC, and took a measurement of both CMP signals the CKP and INJ1. If I back probe the exh cam correctly I’ve got a big problem there. It appears to be ~215deg (crankshaft) ahead or 145deg behind out of phase. I am measuring the signal on pin 2 to SIGRTN on pin 1.
 

How is that possible if all the timing belt tools fit the cam phasers correctly when the crankshaft is pinned and the CKP alignment tool fit properly too. I wish I had taken pictures when I had all those installed. I was going to but there not in my phone. I’ve got to go borrow the timing tool set tomorrow and set everything up again. 

And if those still fit properly, what could have failed? The phaser internally? How does that happen? And how do I have pretty reasonable compression in each cylinder? I think I’ve got a buddy with a borescope, I’ll check if I can borrow that too. I haven’t heard anything that sounds like interference during any of my cranks. This is too weird to make sense right now. 

I will attach a known good 1.5l cam and crank waveform. This is not my own capture, it is a screen shot from Diag.net
 [attahment=17199]Screenshot_20251205_074218_Chrome.png[/attachment]
The cam and crank correlation appears to be significantly off compared to this one. 
The balancer is not keyed on this engine if I am remembering correctly. So it is possible for the balancer (and the crank sensor reluctor) to become misaligned even if the engine is in proper mechanical time, but your cam sensors never align as the ones in the examples. 
At least now you know WHY it's not starting, the question now is what happened?
 

Ok it's settled, 10min with the borescope watching the valves and it's pretty obivious that the exhaust valves aren't moving when they should and there's waaaayyy to much overlap with the intake to be normal. I checked all the cylinders and there's no evidence of contact so I got lucky there. I can only assume that the exhaust phaser has failed in some way. I wish I had pictures of the cam tools in place on the engine when I did it before I went down this rabbit hole so I could prove that I had checked that first. No matter now, I've got to install them again to do this and I'll be able to confirm that the phaser is still correct but the cam is not. The only way to find this problem was with the labscope on both cam sensors, I should have done that way earlier. I just assumed that if the tools fit that they would be good and I didn't need to check the exh timing since there were other things that didn't make sense. When I get this fixed I'll double check the injector circuits with the scope and if they behave the same way I'll just assume that the PCED is wrong at DI:7.  I found a interesting description in a raptor forum that describes how Ford sets up the phasers in their default/locked position, the exhaust cam default is locked at the fully advanced position and the intake default is locked at the fully retarded position. This should be their position when the engine shuts off and starts up. I wonder if the phaser is just stuck or if the spring inside is broken or if it's failed in some othe way. I'll be sure to document it and add it here when I'm done. This is going to take me a few days so I'll check back in with an update when I get it fixed. Thanks for the support. For anyone interested in the nerdy parts of the ecoboost cam phasers this thread is pretty interesting.

Way to stick with it. I'm sure it's not what you wanted find, but now you have answers. In hindsight, a relative compression test with and ignition sync on cylinder 1 coil would have let you know if spark was happing near tdc to confirm timing, but you were rightly convinced with mechanical timing having had the tools installed.
You could see if the camshafts will turn with the gears locked in the tool. That would prove if they are capable of locking up.
I can only imagine your disappointment when the harness and PCM didn't fix it. If I had seen that I probably would have gone the route as you.
I am curious to see what regular good compression is on this engine when you get it back together considering there is no black and white spec that I can seem to find.
At this point, I'm willing to bet that the injector circuits are behaving as designed.
Please keep us posted with your progress!

For what it's worth, I grabbed my amp clamp as I was untangling all my mess and plugged it in to ChA to get the relative compression graph, I clamped around the starter cable. ChB is the signal for COP1 and I left the cam signals up there just for reference, ChD is intake and ChC is exhaust. Firing order is 1-2-4-3, ChA measurement shows 172A which I think is calculated as an RMS value in the scope right now, I didn't go setup any of the measurement or math functions for the current probe. The peaks don't look too far off from what I thought they might be, 250A peak on cyl 2 seems about what I might expect for a little 4 cylinder. I couldn't find any reference to good compression numbers either other than Ford produces a big chart that lists measured values and gives upper and lower allowable limits. I did find online that an engine with 10:1 compression ration should have ~160psi but it was not a hard target and every reference I found danced around it and said it's more important to have uniformity across all cylinders which I've always known but a target would be nice. I'll be sure to check it again when the cam is fixed and post it up for reference.
 

 

Quick update, in the pics below, you can see that the cam tools install and align perfectly but the exhaust cam is about 90deg from where it's supposed to be. Based on some other assemble videos and pictures I've found online the balance weight in the middle of the cam should be roughly pointed toward the bottom like the intake is and the Cyl1 lobes should be pointed approximatly towards the inner row of cam cap bolts. That will allign both the "windows" in the cam pickup rings straight up inline with the cylinder bores. You can see the intake one but I can't get a picture of the exhaust one on my phone, I'll try later with the inspection camera I borrowed. I put a wrench on the hexagonal shape just next to the 2nd valve and I can't make the shaft move at all. It seems to be locked in this incorrect position. Never could have found this without scoping both cam signals, the Ford diagnostic path never mentions this. Infact, I had CKP_CMP Sync when the engine was turning over so clearly the PCM does not look to see if the signal is with in some specification. Only that it's there maybe or maybe not at all for the exhaust.

 
 
 
 
 
 

I have just a minor update but it was kind of fun so I figured I'd post it since it's lab scope related. I really didn't want to pull the HP fuel pump, vacuum pump, each of their mounting covers and intake tubing stuff out just to get my timing bar inplace on the back of the engine. So since I had the scope out and the cam sensors are right there on top I decided to use the scope to get the timing set instead. I grabbed an old cell phone charger with a microUSB plug and cut the end off, plugged it in and I had a nice flat 5.5vdc for my VREF voltage. Then I took my old wiring harness and plugged in the the cam sensors and probed up the PCM connector to connect the VREF to CMP11 and CMP12 and connected the scope to the signal wires. Since the plugs and injectors are out the engine spins over by hand pretty easy so I put my speed wrench on the crank nut and captured what my new timing wave forms will look like. I didn't guess exactly correctly the first time I set it so I loosened the bolt, bumped the cam, checked, made it worse, bumped the cam the other way, made it better and I think I got it darn nearly as exact as I could have with the tool. Someone who's done this before could have knocked it out in 20min or less. I wasted way too much time thinking and planning but I'm convinced it was still way less time and effort than removing all that stuff from the back end of the cams and then having to reseat and reseal everything. And it expanded my knowledge base a bit more and maybe it will give me another option down the road on a different problem.
Spinning it by hand gives me enough signal to match them up. I got close with my initial guess but not close enough.

Closer but not yet when I zoomed in


 This is much better Ill check it one more time with the starter motor just before I put the valves cover back on.

That's pretty clever! I wouldn't have thought to do it like that. What did you decide to do, reset the timing or change the timing components?