P2445: Secondary Air Injection System Pump Stuck Off Bank 1
What to do
The car drives normally; cold-start emissions are affected and it will fail an emissions test. If a pump is quoted, ask that the check valve be replaced at the same time — a failed check valve lets exhaust into the pump and is what usually destroys it, so a new pump on its own tends to fail the same way. Ask too for the relay, fuse and supply to be checked first, since a pump that is silent because nothing is feeding it is a far smaller repair.
What this code means
The bank 1 secondary air pump is not running when commanded.
This is the code the whole family most often ends at, and the cause is almost always the same one. The pump is destroyed by the exhaust it was protected from: when the check valve fails, hot moist exhaust reaches an ordinary electric air pump, corrodes the impeller and the bearings, and eventually seizes it. That sequence is described at P2257 and in the check valve's own vocabulary entry, and it has one practical consequence worth repeating every time.
Replacing the pump without replacing the check valve destroys the new pump the same way. It is the single most repeated mistake on this system, and the check valve is a fraction of the pump's price.
The cheaper possibilities come first, as always: the relay, the fuse and the supply. A pump that is silent because it is not being fed is a different and much smaller repair than one that is silent because it has seized, and the two are separated by measuring at the pump rather than assuming.
A silent pump is also worth distinguishing from a normal one. These pumps are loud, and their absence is the symptom — a driver who used to hear a whirring for the first minute after a cold start and no longer does is reporting this code before it is read.
Likely causes
Start here
- Seized secondary air injection pump · moderate
- Failed secondary air check valve · moderate
- Faulty secondary air injection relay · easy
Less common
- Blown fuse or failed supply · easy
- Corroded or loose connector · easy
- Blocked secondary air pipework · moderate
Symptoms
Components involved
Information, not instruction
CarGeek is a reference, not a service manual. Its pages are written from public sources and from what other people have found, never from a manufacturer's own service information, so they can be wrong or incomplete for your particular vehicle. Some of what they describe carries real risk: high voltage, fuel under pressure, stored energy, hot and moving parts.
Have anything you intend to act on checked by a trained person against the manufacturer's own procedure for your vehicle. Nothing here replaces that procedure.
Community experience
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What makes one worth reading:
- The car — make, model, year and engine. The same fault behaves differently on each.
- What you measured, not only what you replaced.
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