electrical grimlin
05-05-2007, 02:20 PM
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electrical grimlin so i've had this thing almost a week, and i guess i'm experiencing my first problem, i'd like your guys' input on it if you would.
i noticed several days back, that sometimes when i would start the car, it would forget some things (but not others). average mpg, elapsed time, average speed, my settings on the HUD would all be forgotten. trip distance, radio stations, the track of my cd that was playing would all be remembered however. well i rolled it out to wax it for the first time this morning, and when i started it the status bar thing read "charging system failure" and it forgot the settings as mentioned above.
this isn't a huge issue to me, just a minor annoyance at best, but the car is certified / warranted 3months/3000mi so if i have anything to fix it needs to be soon. any ideas what this could be? i'm kinda wondering if it's a poor ground on something. anyone know of a good gm repair place (for warranty work) in the phoenix area?
thanks.
i noticed several days back, that sometimes when i would start the car, it would forget some things (but not others). average mpg, elapsed time, average speed, my settings on the HUD would all be forgotten. trip distance, radio stations, the track of my cd that was playing would all be remembered however. well i rolled it out to wax it for the first time this morning, and when i started it the status bar thing read "charging system failure" and it forgot the settings as mentioned above.
this isn't a huge issue to me, just a minor annoyance at best, but the car is certified / warranted 3months/3000mi so if i have anything to fix it needs to be soon. any ideas what this could be? i'm kinda wondering if it's a poor ground on something. anyone know of a good gm repair place (for warranty work) in the phoenix area?
thanks.
05-05-2007, 04:17 PM
#3
best guess you have a faulty ground.. It's pretty common on these cars. You can clean the grounds up yourself and usually resolve these problems.
I know for sure there are two grounds in the engine bay on the fram close to the lights. turn car off. use a socket to remove bolt. take a wire brush and clean the area until you have a reflective surface. Clean wire ends the same way. Clean bolt... reassemble.
Even if this doesn't fix your problem it's a good thing to do to prevent future problems
the next problem to lookin to is you battery. You can usually take it to a local parts house and have them test it for free. If your battery checks out ok. next woudl be your alt.
Assuming your batt and alt test ok and the grounds don't solve your problem there is something i've noticed about vette owners...
Don't take offense to this... but many vette owners don't drive their cars enough. ya sounds silly but the computer uses a lil power all the time. Also if you are starting the car and just rolling it outside and then putting it back you could be slowly draining your battery. You use so much power to crank the motor over that if your not giving the alt enough time to charge up that loss you are using more than your putting back... insuff. power and the car will stop using up system resources to give you enough power to crank over.
honestly.. i bet it's in the grounds.
I know for sure there are two grounds in the engine bay on the fram close to the lights. turn car off. use a socket to remove bolt. take a wire brush and clean the area until you have a reflective surface. Clean wire ends the same way. Clean bolt... reassemble.
Even if this doesn't fix your problem it's a good thing to do to prevent future problems
the next problem to lookin to is you battery. You can usually take it to a local parts house and have them test it for free. If your battery checks out ok. next woudl be your alt.
Assuming your batt and alt test ok and the grounds don't solve your problem there is something i've noticed about vette owners...
Don't take offense to this... but many vette owners don't drive their cars enough. ya sounds silly but the computer uses a lil power all the time. Also if you are starting the car and just rolling it outside and then putting it back you could be slowly draining your battery. You use so much power to crank the motor over that if your not giving the alt enough time to charge up that loss you are using more than your putting back... insuff. power and the car will stop using up system resources to give you enough power to crank over.
honestly.. i bet it's in the grounds.
05-05-2007, 05:25 PM
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haha no, no offense taken. i've been driving this about 2 or 3 times a day though, it's my daily driver. i'm taking the battery to get it checked now... i kinda doubt that's what it is, it seems strange to me that it's only forgetting certain things, but what do i know? i'll check the grounds next. thanks magic.
05-05-2007, 07:10 PM
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ok got it fixed. i cleaned the grounds, that didn't do anything but some of them were looking pretty poor, the frame paint was blocking them it seemed.
i thought there was no way it could be the battery, since some settings were being remembered, but apparently the radio and trip meters are stored in non-volatile memory, as when i removed the battery to get it checked they remembered their values. when i got the battery checked at the local napa shop, it turned up bad, and now with the new battery everything seems to be working smoothly. easy fix.
i thought there was no way it could be the battery, since some settings were being remembered, but apparently the radio and trip meters are stored in non-volatile memory, as when i removed the battery to get it checked they remembered their values. when i got the battery checked at the local napa shop, it turned up bad, and now with the new battery everything seems to be working smoothly. easy fix.