StrokedOutVette

For the last year+ I've had the an incredibly annoying thing happen to my car about 3 times in a week, one week every 2 months or so. I would be driving along and for seemingly no reason, I would get a series of messages on the DIC along with several other symptoms.

The messages included: Service Vehicle Soon, Service Fuel System, Service ABS, Service Active Handling System, Service Traction Control.

My Oil pressure, coolant temp, and fuel gauges would all drop to zero.

The security, Brake and traction control idiot lights would come on.

The air conditioner would stop working. The lateral G meter on the HUD would stop working.

Sometimes after a few seconds, the gauges and the AC would come back but nothing else. After I turned the car off and then back on, most times everything was fine again. Sometimes I would hit the button and nothing would happen for 5 seconds or so, then everything would light up without ever turning over, and all the error messages would be there. The solution for that was to wait a minute or two and try again. Eventually it started.

Of course the first thing I did was search the forum but I didn't find any answers. I went to 3 dealerships, armed with all this excellent information for troubleshooting. All I got was, "well it's fine now, so we can't do anything." On one occasion when it happened I drove straight to the dealership so they could see for themselves everything wasn't fine. All that did was get me a list of 20 some codes; several of which were communication errors between different modules. However, "that's way to many codes to try to troubleshoot, we need to erase them and wait til the first one comes back, that will be your culprit." Give me a break. One dealership told me to replace the battery and take out the aftermarket radio. I replaced the battery but I refused to take out the radio (thats just a bullsh*t canned response anyway, if there's anything wrong, that aftermarket _____ must be the problem).

So I've lived with this for over a year, the whole time trying to find some pattern or something that triggers it but it seemed completely random. Finally last week I started to notice a trend, it seems to happen more frequently when there's someone in the passenger seat (not exclusively though because it did happen several times when I was driving by myself). Then I remembered that there's a computer under the passenger side floorboard. Maybe there's something under there getting pinched or grounded out or something...

So, car running, I pulled back the floorboard and found some fuses and some wiring and 2 big blue connectors.



The fuses and wiring all seemed fine, but as soon as I wiggled the first big blue connector, the damn car started beeping. I looked up and I have all my friendly DIC messages! I did this a couple more times to make sure I wasn't dreaming and sure enough it worked every time. Upon closer inspection of the back of the floorboard, I found a couple indentations from where the floorboard is supported when flipped up. One of them was the base of this connector. Now it all makes sense. Anytime someone was in the passenger's seat and pushed too hard on the far right side of the floor, it loosened this connector enough to break the connection, causing several modules to loose communication and thus all my symptoms.

So I put some dielectric grease on the contacts of the connector. Also, to keep the floor board from being supported by an electrical connector (stupid GM), I added some spacers (erasers) on either side of it.



This keeps the floor board from touching that connector at all.

So hopefully this solves my problem and I never see those annoying little messages ever again, otherwise I will be returning to this post as an extremely bitter forum member and there will be much cursing.

And I hope that if someone else is suffering from the same problems, this post helps them figure it out quicker than I did.

Atomic Punk

damn, that was a good find. i know that's a relief

paganharley

Thanks for the post. Glad you found it.

ncvette_1FUNRIDE

Congrats on finding that needle in a haystack.

DubsAndSubs

Nice observation skills, glad you got it fixed!

PeterSG

Thanks for the detailed identification of symptoms with description of your fix.

carjo

Man triumphs over electronics! I love it.

Kevin_NYC

U found out

Under fuse boxes is another area that shorts in many cars

WarDriver

When I clicked on this I was expecting some kind of street racing thread...

But the question is why are your passengers pressing so hard on the floor board? Are they desperately trying to press an imaginary brake pedal??

Thrash

Great info and thanks for posting. Love the Forum

1Corvette

Nice find, but I do have a suggestion for you to check. The floorboard may not be entirely your problem. I would pull the connector again and take a very close look at the connector. Make absolutely sure that all the wires are locked into the connector. I have seen a few in my day that were not locked and when connected at the factory, one side would push out the back of the connector and just be touching the opposite side. Very difficult to diagnose. Happens more than you might think. Also, look closely into the connections in the fusebox. You could potentially see the same thing, but it is far more likely to be in the connector. The wiring connectors are small and so are the plastic locks that retain them. With electrical gremlins, check grounds and connections. Hope you have it repaired for good.

cclive

This is one of the best things about this forum...someone learns something valuable and we all get to share in that knowledge. Very cool...Thanks!

HOXXOH

If that were the case, I would have had this problem years ago.

See5see6

Not only does it look like the problem is solved........but you did it yourself!!! GOOD FOR YOU.

Russell ZR1

Wow, way to go, good to see an electrical glitch could be so easily fixed. Good use of the erasers. If GM sees this, they will put out a notice and charge 70.00 per eraser after warranty expires. Corvette tax...

designerRob

Well done!

MR_JLR

I think the answer is "once he floors it, they get nervous and tense up"

ejbrace

Nice detective work. Thanks for the informative post.

dvilin

Jim Nebraska

Nicely done, Sherlock! (as in Sherlock Holmes). I have some annoying electrical gremlins as well....Sometimes the seat memory loses it's memory, and the radio stations change when the car is started.
Glad you got your gremlin fixed!