Can a mod please change "they" to "then" in my title?

Hey guys,

I started up the car this morning, and left my house. About 10 minutes into my drive, I came to a stop, and the car started to shudder. It had a very rough idle. For a second I thought it was the MAF (I put on a revup box about a day ago), but it ran fine once I accelerated away from idle. I was VERY low on gas, but I doubt this had anything to do with it.

Either way, once I felt the shudders, I put some gas in the car, and found a place to park. I turned off the car, and came back out to see if anything changed. Within 30 seconds of starting it up, the idle was once again smooth, and the car ran fine. I drove to the nearest Autozone to borrow an OBDII scanner, and this is what came up:

P0021: Camshaft position actuator A - Bank 2, Timing over-advance
P0300: Random/Multiple Cylinder Misfire Detected

The car ran fine, so I wrote down and cleared the codes. It hasn't had any issues for the rest of the day.

Does anyone have any suggestions? Is the actuator/sensor going to fail soon? I know I replaced something similar about two years ago. I'll have to take a look in the car folder to see exactly what was replaced. I do remember it was either the camshaft position sensor or the actuator. I know that it was located at the front of the engine, right by the valve covers. The dealer charged me like $500 when it was all said and done.

Thanks for the help!

 

Could be a Cam sensor going bad. Pretty common problem where people have them stall out erratically. Let it be and you might not have any problems. It it continues to happen intermittently then I would change the passenger side cam sensor.

 

Yeah, I also noticed a was a bit low on oil. A while ago I did not put the dipstick all the way back in, and the car sprayed oil all over the engine bay (I happened to be doing some WOT testing on the highway ). Being an idiot, I did not refill the oil level immediately, and I finally checked my level yesterday to find it was around a quart low. Last time my sensor went, the tech said that they sometimes fail b/c of a lack of oil? That didn't make any sense to me, but it's the only thing I can think of.

I'll keep an eye out for it.