The vehicle performance started getting worse than normal. Fuel economy was worse than normal. The vehicle needed more pedal to go uphill. Then the check engine light came on. I checked things like the air filter and oil levels. It needed a quart of oil. I took it to the local car parts store to get the codes read. It was then that I found we had 2 cylinders misfiring. Cylinder 2 and 5. I figured it was because of the milage. The vehicle had 113k miles on it. So, I arranged to have the spark plugs and coils replaced.
With them successfully replaced, I had expected the fuel economy and the performance to go back up. They did not. After 3 days, my wife went out to start the vehicle and she was greeted with a flashing check engine light and an engine that would not turn over. I looked up the flashing check engine light and found that this meant that the engine had a catastrophic failure.
We had it towed to our mechanics who diagnosed the problem. They found that the ECM had shorted out and was causing a 15 amp breaker to trip. They did not have the machine necessary to program a GM ECM module.
Had it towed to the local GM dealer who informed me that the ECM module shorted out due to overheating. The overheating occurred due to the location of the ECM module in the engine compartment. Admittedly, it took 113k miles to do so, but GM engineers could have put the module in a safer place.
It is taking $500 for a new module and $700 in labor to get it replaced and programmed for our vehicle. The bright side is that the performance and fuel economy should go back to what they were when the vehicle was new.
The vehicle performance started getting worse than normal. Fuel economy was worse than normal. The vehicle needed more pedal to go uphill. Then the check engine light came on. I checked things like the air filter and oil levels. It needed a quart of oil. I took it to the local car parts store to get the codes read. It was then that I found we had 2 cylinders misfiring. Cylinder 2 and 5. I figured it was because of the milage. The vehicle had 113k miles on it. So, I arranged to have the spark plugs and coils replaced.
With them successfully replaced, I had expected the fuel economy and the performance to go back up. They did not. After 3 days, my wife went out to start the vehicle and she was greeted with a flashing check engine light and an engine that would not turn over. I looked up the flashing check engine light and found that this meant that the engine had a catastrophic failure.
We had it towed to our mechanics who diagnosed the problem. They found that the ECM had shorted out and was causing a 15 amp breaker to trip. They did not have the machine necessary to program a GM ECM module.
Had it towed to the local GM dealer who informed me that the ECM module shorted out due to overheating. The overheating occurred due to the location of the ECM module in the engine compartment. Admittedly, it took 113k miles to do so, but GM engineers could have put the module in a safer place.
It is taking $500 for a new module and $700 in labor to get it replaced and programmed for our vehicle. The bright side is that the performance and fuel economy should go back to what they were when the vehicle was new.
- Earl C., Buford, GA, US