Tom, if u had any oil present in there that could be one reason. Oil will have a tendency to travel thru that wire. Notice the oil on my connection. A little dielectric grease in there helps that and also helps keep oil off the connection

 

Good idea, there was a little oil, i will put some grease in there before I put all the engine covers back on
Thanks

 

Oil in there is common,,,glad u read this before u put her back together...Note: all u need is alittle. Too much will prevent u from plugging the two ends back together. Put some in and make sure it plugs together and locks into place. If u put to much in just q tip some back out

 

More on P1552 and P1554

Many thanks to both of you for this tip. I recently had exactly the same problem. To add a little more detail in case someone lands here after Googling, as I did, ...

* The pics that Lorenz kindly supplied were very helpful, but only after I had managed to figure our where everything was. At least in my case (GS '06), as with tomadamo53, the offending part was concealed under a cover (with a Maserati logo). There's one on each cylinder bank, of course, and one cam variator on each bank. After I got the cover off and clearing a bunch of wires out of the way, it was all very obvious. WARNING: There are little washers on each of the three bolts securing the covers. They're easy to lose/drop.

* In my case, the connector was also completely disconnected. This looks like a seriously ropey connector to me. As far as I can tell, the connection is held in place just by a press fit with a little O-ring. There's no positive engagement enforced with the connector by any clips or anything like that (perhaps there was once upon a time, but definitely not by the time I got to it).

* I got a P1552 fault code this time but some months ago I got a P1554 for what turned out to be the same sort of problem. At the time, I couldn't find any authoritative noises about the P1554 code, so I ended up throwing money at the problem (sigh). It looks to me like P1552 and P1554 are both very much the same sort of deal. I suspect that P1552 is for the right cylinder bank, and P1554 is for the left, but that's just a guess at this point.

* After cleaning this stuff up and putting the connector back together, and applying some dielectric grease, the same problem happened just a couple of weeks later. This time I decided that I should make damned sure that the connectors stay connected, and secured them together with zip ties. I probably would have used safety wire had I had any lying around, but the zip tie trick seems to be holding well so far.

I took a few pics, which might help to clarify things above and beyond the pics already provided.

Many thanks once more,



Lydia.

 

So I had the same issue with Cam sensor coming on. Been too cold here to wok on it or get it out. No noises or anything to lead me to think a big issue. I was reading this post and decided to get my coat on and unplug to check for oil. WOAH! it was full of oil on the side I was getting code. Here is pic of oil on Female side of connector. Male side of this connector is full of oil too. Time for a clean up tomorrow and some grease in there to keep the oil out. Thanks to everyone!

**My Mercedes S class did this same thing on a transmission wiring harness. Trans fluid would travel up the harness and into the computer near hood. turns out the connector had a bad o-ring.

 

Love this forum! I recently replaced my spark plugs and suddenly the check engine light came on. Couldn't figure it out. Ran the code, searched on here. Fixed in 10 min. I was freaking for a bit there. :smile2: