P1606 VVEL issue/code

mendoza_ms

February 20, 2018

Replaced the Cam sensors but she didn't idle right this morning. Starting to get really tired of borrowing the wife's car - she is too as she can't leave the house nowadays. I need to fix this ASAP. Starting to consider taking it to the stealership or trading it in for a new ride altogether...

February 21, 2018

Tried troubleshooting after work. I noticed that the voltage dropped quickly after idling and shutting off the engine, so I decided to do a full stress test of the electrical system.

What I did was I let the car idle for 3-4 mins, then I started turning on the accessories - High beams, A/C, Defroster, Hazards, Heated seats, blasting stereo on full bass, etc. Normal voltage while driving is usually 14.5v. With everything else running it dropped to 14.1v over 1-2 minutes. Then I turned off accessories and let the car idle so the battery could recover before shutting it off again.

After shutting it off, I switched the ignition to the "ON" position without starting the engine so I could run my code reader and I noticed it dropped from 12.7v all the way to 12.2v within about a minute. That didn't look right so I switched it off and used a DMM (voltmeter) to read the voltage off the battery directly and it was reading 12.13v, which is below spec.

After this discovery I ran the code reader and started/idled some more and got the same P1606 and P1606 pending with an additional P0300 and a random U1024 and P1421.

I checked my yellow top Optima battery's date of manufacture and reads 05/2013. The Optima website says battery life can range anywhere from 18 months all the way up to 4 years - depending on operating temperatures and whether or not the battery is properly maintained by the Alternator, etc:

https://www.optimabatteries.com/en-u...r-battery-last

I'm hoping the battery is the root cause - it seems like it would be time to replace it, but the symptoms don't add up. I really don't know anymore... I'm a former Computer Science/Electrical Engineering student, a full time web developer and consider myself proficient with tools and technology but I'm just out of ideas now and really tired of this. I don't want to get rid of my Z...

Any help would be appreciated at this point...