Suprnova74
New member
I bought my 2012 Chevy Sonic LT 1.4T Manual about 5 months ago and it has been running pretty good considering i bought it with 97k miles on it. Well, at 108k miles about 2 weeks ago, I noticed a rough idle that made me reminiscent of the "Magic Fingers" cheap motels used to have in the 80's/90's and the exhaust smell had that distinct lean odor to it. A day or two later, the check engine light came on. I just bought an obdII scanner so hooked it up and it came up with the codes in the title: P0106, P0171, P1101
P0106 - MAP sensor
P0171 - Lean fuel
P1101 - MAF sensor
My obdII can scan live data and noticed the MAF wasn't reading anything. After some searching on this forum, chevy cruze and other general google-foo, I popped the hood looking for a cracked air intake. Well, it wasn't cracked, but the hose clamp wasn't tight at all and it was almost off at the bottom!

I tightened it up, cleared the codes and crossed my fingers. Unfortunately that wasn't everything wrong as the check engine light popped back on the next morning. Same codes, MAF now reading ~ 3 g/s give or take. The other culprit looked to be the camshaft cover.
i probably could have picked one up cheaper, but I didn't feel like waiting. Dealer had one in stock for 78 bucks plus tax. Some gotchas on removing it. Many people on posts I've seen were wondering how to remove the plastic housing of wires on the left-side of the engine. You need to push the clips to the left(passenger) side.

Once I got the cover off, i could see where sealant was used to fix some oil leaks apparently:

I also noticed some leaking from the rear passenger side of the cover, so i guess that patch job wasn't holding.
Cleaned up the old sealant, put the new cover on, cleared the codes and it's been idling like a champ and no codes.
I took videos of the whole thing but need to clean them up and condense where possible, but can upload them somewhere if it's useful.
Hope this "weekend warrior" synopsis helps someone else with the same issue!
EDIT: almost forgot, perhaps a symptom of running lean, but i noticed that the radiator fan would run every time i'd turn the car off (it was 30F out and i drove it less than a mile in some cases). just another symptom with which to keep an eye out
P0106 - MAP sensor
P0171 - Lean fuel
P1101 - MAF sensor
My obdII can scan live data and noticed the MAF wasn't reading anything. After some searching on this forum, chevy cruze and other general google-foo, I popped the hood looking for a cracked air intake. Well, it wasn't cracked, but the hose clamp wasn't tight at all and it was almost off at the bottom!

I tightened it up, cleared the codes and crossed my fingers. Unfortunately that wasn't everything wrong as the check engine light popped back on the next morning. Same codes, MAF now reading ~ 3 g/s give or take. The other culprit looked to be the camshaft cover.
i probably could have picked one up cheaper, but I didn't feel like waiting. Dealer had one in stock for 78 bucks plus tax. Some gotchas on removing it. Many people on posts I've seen were wondering how to remove the plastic housing of wires on the left-side of the engine. You need to push the clips to the left(passenger) side.

Once I got the cover off, i could see where sealant was used to fix some oil leaks apparently:

I also noticed some leaking from the rear passenger side of the cover, so i guess that patch job wasn't holding.
Cleaned up the old sealant, put the new cover on, cleared the codes and it's been idling like a champ and no codes.
I took videos of the whole thing but need to clean them up and condense where possible, but can upload them somewhere if it's useful.
Hope this "weekend warrior" synopsis helps someone else with the same issue!
EDIT: almost forgot, perhaps a symptom of running lean, but i noticed that the radiator fan would run every time i'd turn the car off (it was 30F out and i drove it less than a mile in some cases). just another symptom with which to keep an eye out
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