Canon Pixma 4000

[Studio1162]

A couple of years ago I purchased a Canon Pixma 4000 to use as a mobile printer when I am out in the field. I haven't used it in over a year. I deep cleaned it and realigned the heads numerous times. All of the other inks are OK except for the BCI 6 black cartridge. An error code keeps popping up. Everytime I hit the refresh button. Another, when it prints up the test results on the colors, the printer doesn't recognize the BCI 6 black as being full, unless it recognizes it as gray, but nothing prints up. Has anybody experienced the same problems with it? I have troubleshooted for hours and tried many different things. The quality of the imagery looks like it was painted, not photo quality printing at all. I noticed that when I made settings on plain paper, the color came out better. Otherwise when I set it on photo paper of any kind, magenta replaced the black in certain areas. All printing was very poor quality.

[sigmasd10]

Does the Pixma 4000 used chipped ink cartidges?...If it does then its possible that the contacts on the cartridge and/or the printhead need cleaning...Its worth a try.
Regards
Alf.