U0029: Vehicle Communication Bus A Performance
What to do
Everything may still work, and this is still worth attending to — see U0011 for why. Your car's network is having to correct errors rather than simply carrying messages, and the system is good enough at recovering that you notice nothing.
Read it as an early warning. A connector corroding but still conducting, or a wire down to its last strands, causes errors for a long time before it causes a failure. The fault is present today, which is the easiest possible condition to measure — once it becomes intermittent it is one of the most expensive things on a car to chase.
One thing is worth asking about specifically here. This network is identified only by a letter, so before anything can be measured, the garage needs to establish which of the car's networks it actually is. The familiar test at the diagnostic socket checks a different one, and the numbers that apply to that network do not apply to this one.
Ask whether the car's network map has been read. It is a five-minute step with proper equipment and it comes before any measurement.
And say whether anything has been fitted to the car — a tracker, dashcam, insurance box, alarm or stereo. Anything added to a network is a well-known cause of exactly this.
What this code means
Vehicle communication bus A is working, and not working properly. See U0011 for what a performance code means — an error rate rather than a failure, and the early warning that precedes the faults at U0030–U0036.
One thing is specific to a lettered bus and it is a genuine obstacle: an error rate cannot be judged until the network is identified.
U0028 sets out why. The letter carries no information about medium, speed or which modules are on it — and what counts as an acceptable error rate, and what the bus should measure at rest, both depend entirely on which network it is.
So the sequence is fixed: identify the bus from the vehicle's topology first, then measure it against that network's own figures. Applying the high speed CAN numbers to an unidentified bus is how a healthy network gets condemned and a faulty one gets passed.
Once identified, U0011's causes apply unchanged: a connector corroding but still conducting, a conductor down to a few strands, a terminator drifting, or something added to the network that changes its electrical behaviour — see U0037, where that last cause is set out in full, because it is the one that produces error rates on a bus that measures perfectly.
Likely causes
Start here
- Poor wiring splice in an aftermarket installation · moderate
- Corroded or loose connector · easy
- Damaged data bus wiring · moderate
- Failed bus terminating resistor · specialist
Less common
- Water ingress into connector · moderate
- Intermittent wiring fault · moderate
Symptoms
Components involved
Information, not instruction
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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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