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We thought we’d found the perfect used car for our 19 year old niece. A 2008 Hyundai Sante Fe with only 60,000 miles. It was clean, had new tires, brakes, struts, alternator and battery. It rode well and shifted smoothly.

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It was a one owner car with a clean record.

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The price was on the low end of a fair market range.

But because I’ve gotten to the point where I don’t trust anyone, we took it to our trusted mechanic/old friend for a once over.

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He crawled under it to check for rust.

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He put it up on the lift to check whatever you check when you put a car up on a lift.

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He checked the engine and fluids and belts.

He even test drove it.

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We were pretty sure it would get his seal of approval until we pulled back into his garage …

And the dreaded check engine light came on.

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Hooking it up to his handy code reader…. it said error POO18.

Poo is rarely good, but no one wants to spend thousands of dollars on an engine full of it.

P0018 is the OBD-II generic code indicating that the camshaft position sensor A for bank 2 does not correlate to the signal from the crankshaft position sensor.

The bank 2 intake camshaft is out of position compared to the crankshaft position. The bank 2 camshaft phaser is stuck in one position or will not move.

So, poo!

Back to the dealership she went along with my hopes and dreams of ending the month and half long car search we’ve been on for a 19 year old’s first car.

In my day unscrupulous car dealers used to roll back the odometer. These days that’s too difficult, so they just switch off the check engine light instead.

Grrr.

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