P01D3: Cylinder 5 Injection Timing Performance - Over Retarded
What to do
Ask for the timing faults to be read grouped by bank. On a V engine each bank often has its own fuel supply and pressure sensor, and several cylinders on one bank all affected means one shared fault rather than several injectors — a very different bill.
Ask for the crankshaft damper pulley to be inspected on a high-mileage engine. It is the rubber-bonded pulley on the front of the crankshaft, it fails with age, and when it does it disturbs the very signal these codes are calculated from — producing scattered timing faults with healthy injectors.
Say whether the roughness is worse from cold, which points at compression or a glow plug on that cylinder.
Mention any injector work and whether calibration codes were entered.
What this code means
Combustion on cylinder 5 is happening later than the module commanded.
A cylinder 5 code means a six-cylinder engine or larger, and on a V engine it is usually the first cylinder of the second bank — which is where the diagnosis should start.
A bank has its own hardware, and on many V engines that includes its own rail section, its own pressure sensor and sometimes its own high pressure feed. A late burn appearing at the first cylinder of a bank is asking whether that bank's fuel supply is short, not whether that injector is worn.
So read the timing codes grouped by bank before treating any of them as an injector fault. Three cylinders on one bank all burning late, with the other bank normal, is a bank-level supply problem — and replacing three injectors on a large engine is an expensive way to discover that.
There is a second candidate specific to larger engines: the crankshaft signal itself. These codes are derived from the crank's instantaneous speed, and a longer crankshaft twists measurably under each combustion event. On a six or eight, torsional flex blurs the very measurement the module is making — so a worn crank sensor, a damaged reluctor ring, or a failing crankshaft damper can scatter apparently random per-cylinder timing codes across an engine whose injectors are all fine.
A failing crankshaft damper is worth inspecting on a high-mileage six, because it is visible, it is cheap relative to injectors, and it produces exactly that scattered pattern.
Likely causes
Start here
- Failed fuel injector · specialist
Less common
- Low fuel pressure · moderate
- Worn crankshaft damper pulley · moderate
- Low engine compression · specialist
- Failed glow plug · moderate
Symptoms
Components involved
Information, not instruction
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