U0047: Vehicle Communication Bus C Performance
What to do
Everything may still work, and this is worth attending to now rather than later — see U0011.
One observation is worth more than any test here, and only you can make it: does it depend on the weather?
If your car carries this system on optical fibre — light rather than electricity, which many do for the entertainment systems — a marginal fault behaves in a very particular way. The fibre and its light source both change slightly with temperature, so a ring that is only just working fails on cold mornings and recovers when warm, or occasionally the other way round.
"It only does it when it's cold" is a precise and useful description on this kind of network, so write down what you notice and give it to the garage. It is not something they can reproduce on a warm afternoon.
And if a stereo, amplifier or screen has been fitted or removed, say so. A fibre bent too tightly behind a trim panel, or a connector end left with a fingerprint on it, costs a little signal — and a little is all it takes once the system is marginal.
What this code means
Vehicle communication bus C is working, and not working properly. See U0011 for what a performance code means and U0046 for why the medium must be established first.
On an optical ring, an error rate has a specific and rather elegant meaning: the light is arriving, and not arriving cleanly enough.
Attenuation accumulates. Every connector, every bend and every metre of fibre costs a little signal, and the ring works as long as what arrives is above the receiver's threshold. A single additional loss — a fingerprint on an end face, a fibre bent slightly too tight behind a trim panel, an ageing transmitter — pushes it toward that threshold without crossing it.
Which produces a characteristic worth recognising: an optical fault that follows temperature. Plastic fibre and its emitters both change output and loss with temperature, so a marginal ring works when warm and fails on a cold morning, or the reverse. "Only when it is cold" is a precise observation on this kind of network, not a vague one.
On a copper network, U0011's causes apply unchanged, and U0037's long-stub argument is the one that produces errors on wiring that measures perfectly.
Either way the instruction is the same and it is the family's: the fault is present now, which is the easiest condition to measure.
Likely causes
Start here
- Corroded or loose connector · easy
- Poor wiring splice in an aftermarket installation · moderate
- Damaged data bus wiring · moderate
- Aftermarket head unit fitted in place of the original · moderate
Less common
- Intermittent wiring fault · moderate
- Failed bus terminating resistor · specialist
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
Be the first to write this up
Nothing posted about this yet. Whatever you found is worth writing down — even a dead end saves someone the same afternoon.
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.
- What actually fixed it — or that nothing did, which is worth knowing too.
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