P0216 - Sad but true...

[balsip]

I had the P0216 in my truck when I checked codes before purchased my 2000 Ram  in 2010. Mine was seized at minimum advance because of aluminum timing piston bore gauling which was apparently fixed in the new Bosch rebuilds. Caused a poor cold idle and lousy mileage. I am not sure how they fixed it but I they definitely identified the problem and improved things on the new one. Another big problem was the tiny circuit board in the pump. They used a soldering compound that broke down with engine heat and finally fixed that too in the new pumps. I have over 120Kmiles myself with no VP44 codes now.

Apparently Bosch was  using solder  + flux as a paste applied to bottom of cct board and melted the component leads to the board in a quick convection oven pass. This new procedure replaced wave soldering machines  but could not take continuous engine heat. I gather they have a better heat tolerant solder + flux compound that is more long term  heat tolerant that does not cause open circuits like the original stuff. This same problem could be in our ECM failures as the engine block gets quite hot? Wave soldering machines are now obsolete. The way TFaoro  remounted the ECM on the wheel well will make the ECM a lot cooler. Mighty impressive 64 page thread by Tfaoro on his rebuild - I learned a lot!

Edited April 13, 2017 by balsip