16396 fault code help

[marty.blake7]

Took my car to the stealers today for an MOT and they failed it on exhaust omissions.
They said that they had done some diagnostics of the lamda probes and that had come back fine, which suggested that it was the cat at fault. They then said that for a further £160 they would diagnose whether the CAT was indeed at fault.
Didn't bother with that and took the car home plugged it into VAG COM and there is the following fault:

16396 - Bank 1 : Camshaft A (Intake): Advance Setpoint not Reached (Over-Retarded)
P0012 - 35 - 10 - - - Intermittent

Been doing a lot of searching on here and other forums to see what the problem is, and from reading other posts it seems like it is either vvt adjuster or oil pressure related.

All cars that had this fault seem to have bad idling/running issues which my car doesn't have which is confusing.
I take it this would also give me bad omissions?

Any help or clarity on this would be greatly appreciated. Cheers

 

[<tuffty/>]

Telling us what car you have would help (model/year/engine code...)

Assuming you have a facelift 8L of some description (this code is VVT related)... this is indeed related to a faulty VVT tensioner and/or oil pressure...

On cold start do you get any rattling noises? faulty VVT makes a brrrraaatt!... noise...

<tuffty/>

 

[marty.blake7]

Yeah sorry it's an 02 S3 8l BAM.
Idling its seems fine, but I do get a strange rattle when driving slowly at low revs. Last year Audi couldn't suss out where the noise was coming from but looks like the tensioner. (Only done 1100 miles this year)
So hopefully a new tensioner and oil flush and change will sort it out.
This will sort the omission issue aswell I hope, was looking at over a grand to do the whole exhaust a few hours ago!

 

[Gops]

16396/P0012/000018 - Bank 1: Camshaft A (Intake): Advance Setpoint not Reached (Over-Retarded)


Possible Symptoms
Erratic Idle
Possible Causes
Intake Camshaft Adjuster tight/stuck
Intake Camshaft Adjuster faulty
Possible Solutions
Check Intake Camshaft Adjuster
Use Output Test, Meas. Value Blocks (MVB) & Basic Setting

 

[@udi A3]

Wow Audi were going to charge how much to scan it?!

 

[marty.blake7]

Wow Audi were going to charge how much to scan it?!

Na they said they would inspect the cat for £160. No thanks!!

 

[chris99]

hi marty, did you sort it out?
i'm having the same error and don't have any ideea where to start from..