cam retard help

2003 silverado 1500 2wd 4.3L 5spd manual

i recently had the engine rebuilt past factory specs. Its bored .030 over, shaved deck, compression 10:1, lager cam .500 lift, heads ported/polished, balanced/blueprinted, billet aluminum distributor with factory gm internals (cam sensor, rotor, drive gear), factory coil, 8.5mm plug wires, factory spark plugs (.060 gap), cold air intake, magna flow exhaust, new gm crank position sensor and cam postion sensor.
after installing it in the truck and firing it up, its giving me dtc p0016. ckp/cmp correlation. i followed gm's procedure step by step for installing the distibutor. the engine starts right up and idles fine. but when i hook up my flashscan v2 and run the scan tool, the cam retard pid is showing 59 degrees at idle and when i rev the engine past 2000 rpm it shows 56degrees. the cam retard is suppossd to be at 0degrees (+/-5). im pretty much stumped as what to do.
im new to the scanning and tuning world but very mechanically inclined. any assistance is greatly appreciated. thank you

Is the rotor correctly orientated? You need to check the plastic pins on the bottom of it, making sure they line up with the pins in the shaft. If the rotor can go on either direction, (not sure about this aftermarket distributor) then the distributor is likely 180 degrees off.
Al

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Originally Posted by ChipsByAl

Is the rotor correctly orientated? You need to check the plastic pins on the bottom of it, making sure they line up with the pins in the shaft. If the rotor can go on either direction, (not sure about this aftermarket distributor) then the distributor is likely 180 degrees off.
Al

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well i figured out the issue, you were close in ur response. apparently the maker of the aftermarket distributor fudged when they pressed the rotor plate onto the shaft. and by rotor plate, im referring to the plate that the rotor attaches to, it wasnt lined up properly, off by 59 degrees. so i compared it to a worn out factory dist. that i had and noted how far off it was. so i marked the top of the shaft and rotor plate the pressed the rotor plate off of the shaft, rotated it accordingly and pressed it back together and voila !! all is well.

Glad you got it sorted. It’s a shame that sometimes the aftermarket doesn’t pay attention to details like that.
Al

Good job :cheers:

I'm confused how moving the rotor plate solved the issue when the windows for the CMP are in the same plate. By rotating the plate it would move both the rotor location as well as the CMP windows the same amount, thus nothing would change except the relationship between the rotor and the location it was pointing to on the distributor cap. Being an aftermarket distributor am I missing something?

remember that the dist shaft and the rotor plate are 2 separate pieces when they are first made. the shaft has to orientated correctly with the rotor plate when they are pressed together during the manufacturing process. the rotor plate has the "skirt" hanging off the side of it which is what passes through the cam sensor. and that skirt is a specific length for a reason. which creates the duration of time. so as the dist shaft rotates, the rotor needs to be pointing in a precise location when then skirt first enters the cam sensor