P0020 Camshaft Position Sensor Location.
 

My car is throwing a P0020 error code. It's in relation to the camshaft position sensor (bank 2). I've noticed a thread in here showing the sensor location is towards the back. But a few google searches and YouTube videos are showing me the VVT sensors are located in the front. Both intake and exhaust, which makes a total of four sensors. I'd just like to get a clearer understanding of location and maybe even a part number. Any input would be great.

Here's a video showing the sensors are in the front. Is this correct?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGW9CoZrACE

Here's another video showing location of sensors.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5HOKT6PvMo

P0020 is camshaft INTAKE bank 2.
there are 4 camshaft sensors. Intake and exhaust bank 1, intake and exhaust bank 2.
I'll hit the repair manual and see if it says where bank 2 intake is located.

So it says rear of bank2 cylinder head.
Exhaust is also back there.

May help:
Exhaust Bnk 2 wires: green/brown, black/brown, violet/blue

Intake bnk 2 wires: yellow, white/blue, black/violet

From what I can tell, the sensors are arranged vertically. So intake should be the upper one, exhaust will be the lower. Bank 2 is the left side of the car (driver's side in USA)

Thank you very much, sir. I will take a look under the hood today.

You are 100% correct about its location. Back side/driver side/top side. I purchased the sensor at Auto Zone for $37. No other fancy names for the sensor, just "Camshaft Position Sensor." It's very accessible in the engine bay. Took me about 10 minutes to switch it out. Just hoping this solves the problem and clears the P0020 error code. Thank you very much for the input!

I see green and purple (violet) wires disconnected there. Are you sure that is not exhaust?
Just double checked the schematic in the repair manual, and intake colors are as above for the wires.

I may have the upper vs lower wrong. Maybe upper cam is exhaust??

just checked the repair manual. Upper cam is intake.

Okay great. Thanks for double checking. That makes me a little curious now to know if exhaust and intake are using the same sensors. I cleared the code and did a couple full-throttle pulls, engine is running like a charm. No rough idle at the moment. Fingers crossed it stays that way 🤞

I would think the cam position sensor would be the same part # for both exhaust and intake cams.
There are probably metal splines (or just one spline) on the cam and the sensor uses a magnetic field to sense it going by (Hall effect sensor). The 3 wires are power, ground, and signal.

The code came back. The engine still isn't running as rough. I'll give it a few days before I try replacing the VVT sensors in the front. A couple of videos show how to replace those, so maybe they're a common issue to throw that error. Gonna check wires for damage as well.

Still wondering why I see the wire colors for the exhaust side sensor in your photo. Did you have to disconnect both to work on it?

That's a good question. I'll take a look under the hood again today. Could it be the front are intake and the back is exhaust? Would you happen to know the location of the sensors on the underside? Would they be vertically underneath?

Here we go. I didn't observe hard enough the first time. Looks like intake sensor is directly next to it on the left. I had to take off that material cover on top of intake manifold in order to see it. I think these are the colored wires you're referring to.

I threw my old exhaust sensor back in since I was only getting an error code for intake. If it fails, I'll throw another brand new sensor at it. Engine is purring like a kitten right now. Feels smoother :thumbup:

My original symptoms were rough idling, sounded like my V6 had high performance cams. At one point, after driving aggressively on the highway, my car felt like it was accelerating even with my foot on the brake. Driving in a 35mph zone, my car wanted to push 45. Backing into my driveway, my car wanted to reverse fast. Could this have been from too much fuel and not enough air? Maybe vice versa?