# Complete Electrical Power Malfunction followed by complete loss of all power



## Evofire (Oct 3, 2013)

Left work yesterday and swung by the bowling alley to drop off something for a friend. Was inside maybe 10 minutes. Got in the car and left, and car performed what I thought was the ABS check, but it felt really really hard almost like a hard shift. Let my foot of the gas and the car revved down like normal, sounded fine looked fine, felt fine.

Get about a mile down the and every electrical idiot light known to the car came on. Traction control, stabilitrack, power steering, abs, all of them. So I pull over real quick (into a bus stop turn off) turn the car off then back on, and all seems fine, but have a check engine light. About 1/8th mile later, engine looses power but will still drive, but i have no guages (ODO or tach) and it will only go at idle speed. pressing the gas did nothing. I pulled off into a parking lot and turned the car off for a few minutes.

I called my dad told him to come and take a look. I turned the car on enough to be able to pull codes with my torque app. u0100, p069e, and one other that i cant remember. Tried to turn it on, and it would shift (physically with the shifter) into all gears, but wouldnt shift the trans into gear. I pick up my phone to get ready to call the dealer for roadside, and my dad says nevermind to just drive it becsuse he restarted it and its shifting fine. So i drive it about 6 miles to the dealer and all is fine, its shifting fine, nice and smooth, and driving fine, sounding fine. Even hard boosted the last 1/4 mile just to see, and all seems fine. Dealer is gonna pull the codes, and diagnose it and I should know today what happened/what is wrong. Thank god for warranty, and a second car!


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## iKermit (Dec 13, 2010)

Holy crap. Let us know what happens... warranty will take care of it and if anything we got Jackie on here for some push. 

 -I'm mobile-


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## weimerrj (Dec 4, 2011)

Sounds like a bad ground somewhere causing the ECM to go a little haywire.


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## Evofire (Oct 3, 2013)

Yeah I dont think I will have to get CSC involved. I took it to a different dealer then my last ordeal. I took it to the dealer that my dad has all his work done at for his Impala, Tahoe, and his 77 k10. Charlie and Rick know me and my dad and all of our cars very well.


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## ChevyMgr (Oct 27, 2010)

Any non GM electrical devices added?


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## Evofire (Oct 3, 2013)

nope car is 100% stock


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## ChevyMgr (Oct 27, 2010)

Evofire said:


> nope car is 100% stock


Then they should be checking the battery cables and the underhood fuse box.


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## Evofire (Oct 3, 2013)

history showed faulty ECM. i sent signals to all other control modules to shut down in order to not cause damage...all is fixed. they replaced the ECM, washed the car, changed the oil, rotated tires, and gave me a K&N air filter. all free of charge...had the car back in less then 18 hours.


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## sciphi (Aug 26, 2011)

Glad to hear it was a flaky ECU/ECM, and not something else. Still a bugger, but not as bad as it could have been.


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## Evofire (Oct 3, 2013)

All seems well except one thing. it almost feels like a well...um....like if i have cruise set at between 65 and 70, every once in a while i get a feeling of the car not really bucking but kinda the feeling of when a push car first makes contact with the car its pushing. like a surge kinda of. no gain in speed or change in rmp or anything. and its not all the time....its only a couple times then stop. i have only noticed it on one stretch of road, because thats the only time i have cruise set. so i am going ot pay attention over the next few days and use a different lane, and maybe take some different routes to work....maybe its the road?


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## obermd (Mar 3, 2012)

Evofire, can you correlate the little surges you feel to terrain? I ask because this really sounds like DFCO turning the injectors on and off. I can feel this in my ECO MT when descending extended 1-2% grades. Switch your car over to metric and watch for 0.0L/100KM as well. The little surges should occur just before you enter and again just before you leave 0.0L/100KM.


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## Evofire (Oct 3, 2013)

the whole road has changes, but nothing huge. i dont think its even 1% but i will pay better attention the rest of the week.


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## JCarlson (Jun 11, 2013)

Not sure if this will help, but a tidbit of info that I found out this weekend. Apparently most of all our cruzes have a battery with 525 cold cranking amps. Many of us seem to be experiencing electrical issues. When my friend who runs a body shop called the local dealer to get a warranty battery replacement for a 2012 cruze (not mine)...although the car is only a year old, it had 46,000 miles on it, it was out of warranty. Anyway, The dealer said they dont even have access to a battery with 525 amps anymore. They only have 600 and 650 amp batteries. And yet, there was never a service bulletin or recall for this info? Obviously they realized that they put underpowered batteries in the cars and stopped using them for a reason. A little frustrating if you ask me. Luckily I havent run into any electrical issues just yet, but I am expecting that I will at some point.


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## Chevy Customer Care (Oct 29, 2011)

Evofire, 

Did you have this experience again? Or, did the changing of the ECM resolve your concern?

Erica Tiffany
Chevrolet Customer Care


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## Evofire (Oct 3, 2013)

Erica the original concern of this post has been taken care of. I have mentioned something else that the guys are helping me diagnose, and it might be "normal".


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## Chevy Customer Care (Oct 29, 2011)

Evofire,

Oh, just checking. Thank you for the clarification. 

Erica Tiffany
Chevrolet Customer Care


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## Evofire (Oct 3, 2013)

obermd said:


> Evofire, can you correlate the little surges you feel to terrain? I ask because this really sounds like DFCO turning the injectors on and off. I can feel this in my ECO MT when descending extended 1-2% grades. Switch your car over to metric and watch for 0.0L/100KM as well. The little surges should occur just before you enter and again just before you leave 0.0L/100KM.


you might be right. I drove the same route today, and paid a bit of attention. these little surges were on a very very very slow incline. Id say it drops maybe 50 feet of elevation of 1.5 or 2 miles. but as soon as going back up hill or even flat, as verified by gps, the feelings stopped.


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## obermd (Mar 3, 2012)

That's enough of a drop to trigger DFCO. The fact that you didn't feel it before leads me to believe your ECU wasn't working right from the factory. It's a really odd feeling to have the car do this. You do get used to it however.


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## Evofire (Oct 3, 2013)

yeah its odd....i took the car for a nice drive through the mountains the day after i got it and felt it then, but that was on a 6% drop with cruise set at 75....so i figured it was normal with the car trying to stay at the desired speed. that was the only other time i had felt it. i didnt think about it till you mentioned it that DCFO is what it is. makes complete sense when in cruise control mode. an i agree, i think the ECM was jacked from the get go. the car feels completely different now since they changed it.


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