A week after this and the code is still there intermittently. One time during start up the car seemed to be vibrating from side to side at idle, I goosed the throttle and when it settled back to idle the vibrating was gone. A day later I took her to the shop.

. . .

What are the chances I have a blown ringland? Seemingly aggressive oil burn aside, "very dirty" oil after 2 weeks can't be anything but blowby, right?

yes

especially with the vibration.


ADDED: To many unknowns to now anything for sure. This is common when trouble shooting via Ethernet with things and people you don't know.

What is excessively dirty oil? Could it mean glitter?

Did you actually change your oil? For all we know you changed your coolant thinking it was the lubricant.

All I'm saying is that all to often things don't turn out as we on-line would expect, and often that is because we have to make so many assumptions . . .

So I believe oil consumption is "always" a improperly routed PVC system, or valve seals, or blow-by?

A leak would loose oil but isn't really consumption, and it has additional symptoms.

 

Thanks for the reply.

Where I am at now:. The shop didn't want to do the leakdown test for some reason so they threw a new cam sensor on and changed the oil and I took her home. I've driven her a total of 80 miles since to and from work with no issues, checking the oil each day and still looking full and like new.

After my drive home last night however, I hopped back in the car a few minutes after parking her and started her up, and the vibration was back. It's a very distinct vibration rocking the car side to side, which makes me think it's related to a cyl not firing or something similar.

Not sure at this point, but I will keep you guys posted.

Thanks.

 

vibration was back. It's a very distinct vibration rocking the car side to side, which makes me think it's related to a cyl not firing or something similar.

Agree

 

UPDATE

The vibration only happened that one time mentioned in my last post.

I drove her successfully for another ~3 months, 1000mi, when it popped the same code. This time however, it was for a camshaft position sensor in the DIAGONAL position as the first one.

Oil still looks like new. Only 1000mi on it after all. In general, I would say the oil consumption is not anything past what you would expect for an STi at ~57k miles.

I cleared the code and stopped driving her except for here or there. In 2 months I did under 100 miles. Then we had a overnight blizzard and I couldn't help myself, put a good 50 miles on her in full drift mode. 3 hours spent at 3500-5000rpm with next to no load (there was a perfect 1-2" layer of snow EVERYWHERE) should have been enough to trigger any issues once again, but nothing happened.

Since then I have driven her with no issues for another 50-100miles? I looked into the construction/functional design of the camshaft position sensors, and from what I understand they are simply Hall effect sensors with the tip poking into the oil channel right in front of the camshaft. I don't know the gap measurement but would imagine it is between 30 to 50 thou for the Hall effect sensor to function.

At this point, I am wondering if I let it go longer than I thought without an oil change the first time a code popped (~6000mi/10months) and the oil got very low and dirty, depositing debris in front of or fouling the Hall effect sensors. So when the shop changed the first sensor, it corrected that problem, but there was still a little bit of circulating debris or something that got stuck in a DIFFERENT sensor (it has only had 2 oil changes since the oil got low). Then, after running the motor at varying and high RPM speeds, it cleared out whatever schmoo was causing the Hall effect sensor to throw an error.

What do you guys think? I would imagine that I have driven enough miles at this point (>100) that the cleared code would have come back if the issue was still present.

Any feedback is much appreciated.

Thanks

 

Have you ended up fixing the problem? Has it come back?
A year ago I had a P000B/D code, whichever it was, it was the exact same thing as you. I had just gotten the oil changed by Subaru themselves to make sure I wasn't in the wrong. About one thousand miles after the oil was changed, the code came back. The reason they didn't change anything other than the oil was because they suspected the code came on due to poor/dirty oil in the system. We ended up changing the camshaft pulley and the code disappeared and never came back.

HOWEVER, one week ago, the same code came back but driver side this time. I am at a lost for words. We are now suspecting poor maintenance by previous owner which could've caused a lot of parts to go bad, but THIS bad...? Anyways, this time it came back on approximately 300 miles after the oil change. I had changed the oil myself, looking on forums to make SURE that everything was fine and I knew what I was doing, which is not really a magic trick... it's literally changing the oil. I did everything right.

I am now at a point where I literally don't know what part to change. We got a new cam sensor that we'll try and see if that sorts it out. Oil is perfectly fine and the levels are also good.

 

Theres alot to speculate here right from the beginning of this thread. One fix isnt always the answer across the board for every car. P000D can be due to many things from bad sensors, oil control valves, avcs, wiring connectors and oil. Just because you went 100 miles or so doesnt mean its "fixed"

None the less, i would keep a very close eye on your oil levels and lower you OCI down. Personally, i wouldnt be doing 6K OCI.

 

did you remove the banjo bolt screens?