2011 Outback 2.5 with P0442 code

Ffpmme24 · Dec 1, 2019

Ok, so took the car on a little trip from Orlando to Charleston SC and back. With less then 100 miles the Christmas tress dash came on. Lucky I had my scanner with me and looked at what was going on, on road side. Came back with a P0442, small leak code. 1 confirmed, 1 pending. Cleared them and went home. Digging into the problem it sounds lie a purge valve is bad. It is rough idle and stalled out when I chawed from drive to reverse. Gas cap is fine, drove about 350 miles after getting gas, no issues

Scanned it just now and it is only showing a P0442 pending code, no CEL. Two part question 1) is there a issue there or no, because it is not coming back up a a CEL?? Does it need to go through a few ignition cycles to show up/clear?
2) Where is this stupid purge valve and how hard is it to actually replace? Thanks

cardoc · Dec 2, 2019

Most times, it's the cap. A 442 is a leak from a 1mm hole or smaller. How did you test the cap?

The purge valve is mounted next to the throttle, driver side (left). You can easily check to see if it's stuck open by unplugging it and removing the hose that goes to the rear of the car. Start the car and if you have vacuum on the port you took the hose from then the valve is stuck open. When this valve sticks open, it's larger than 1 mm and it effect fuel trims causing a lean code.

When checking for leaks in the EVAP system, in shops we use a smoke machine. Smoke generated from heating mineral oil is pushed in to the system at 5 psi. Where the smoke comes out, there's the leak.

A pending code means the computer has detected a problem. When the system runs it's test again and it fails, then it turns on the lights. Your 350 miles after filling the tank probably set a pending code and you didn't know it because the lights didn't come on. Your 100 mile trip, subsequent fail.

2011 Outback 2.5 with P0442 code

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