Strange Intermittent Start Issue and Resolution
Thread Starter
Racer
Joined: Apr 2007
Posts: 407
Likes: 90
From: Round Rock Texas
Strange Intermittent Start Issue and Resolution
I wanted to document a very odd intermittent starting issue I had with my 2008 Corvette convertible. Hopefully this helps someone down the road that runs into a similar issue.
Symptoms: Sometimes the initial press of the start button would do nothing. No sweep of the gauges. No starting. No anything really. The only sound was a click from behind the radio. (The same click you can hear when you turn the car off.) On the second or third or fourth press of the start button, the car would eventually start, show XM Error on the factory radio, and show "Service Vehicle Soon" on the DIC. In the beginning, this was a once a week problem. But eventually this would happen about every other time I'd go to start the car.
Failed Fixes: I went through all the usual trouble shooting. I replaced a 2 1/2 year old Optima battery with a brand new one. (I kept the car on a battery tender, so I wasn't surprised that the battery wasn't the fix.) I also changed the battery on both key fobs and changed the start button. Checking the codes pulled nothing despite the SVS message.
I took the car to Henna in Austin. Super rude service from them BTW. They kept the car for a week and a half and weren't able to duplicate the issue or see anything wrong with the car. Zero codes and the car started fine for them. I took the car back home, disconnected the battery tender leads that I had attached to the battery just in case the leads were causing an issue. The problem came up immediately and continued to happen. I also tried turning off the radio before I shut down the car thinking it was related to the radio. The problem continued to happen, and happened even more often.
So I took the car to Hewlett Chevy to see what they could do. Customer service was much much better there, but after another week and a half, they couldn't discover an issue either. The issue happened in their service drive when I explained the issue, and the service advisor tried it out. But after I left, they were unable to replicate the starting issue.
The final fix: Drove the car home from the dealer, and immediately had the issue happen when I attempted to start the car again. So on a hunch I started driving the car without ever turning the radio on. I noticed that the dealers turned off the stereo whenever they worked on my car, and I wondered if this could explain why they could never replicate my issue.
I went for three or four days without ever turning on the radio/XM. Once I stopped using the stereo, the problem quit happening. How the radio/XM could stop the car from starting was a mystery to me, but the problem did seem triggered by turning on the radio/XM at any time during a drive. The car always showed the XM Error message on the head unit when the car failed to start, but I always thought that was a symptom of the failed start and not a cause.
A week or so after taking delivery of my car in 2007, I had replaced the XM unit with the SIR-GM1 Sirius receiver that lived under the waterfall panel. So I went down this route next. I opened the car back up, removed the SIR-GM1 and installed an identical replacement SIR-GM1. Amazingly, the car has started like a champ since. Something must have failed in the original SIR-GM1 that was interrupting the startup. The car had no idea what was going on with the aftermarket Sirius unit, so no codes were being thrown.
Who knew that the stereo could stop the car from starting? In any case, this is just a very long description of the problem to help the next poor guy that runs into something similar.
Symptoms: Sometimes the initial press of the start button would do nothing. No sweep of the gauges. No starting. No anything really. The only sound was a click from behind the radio. (The same click you can hear when you turn the car off.) On the second or third or fourth press of the start button, the car would eventually start, show XM Error on the factory radio, and show "Service Vehicle Soon" on the DIC. In the beginning, this was a once a week problem. But eventually this would happen about every other time I'd go to start the car.
Failed Fixes: I went through all the usual trouble shooting. I replaced a 2 1/2 year old Optima battery with a brand new one. (I kept the car on a battery tender, so I wasn't surprised that the battery wasn't the fix.) I also changed the battery on both key fobs and changed the start button. Checking the codes pulled nothing despite the SVS message.
I took the car to Henna in Austin. Super rude service from them BTW. They kept the car for a week and a half and weren't able to duplicate the issue or see anything wrong with the car. Zero codes and the car started fine for them. I took the car back home, disconnected the battery tender leads that I had attached to the battery just in case the leads were causing an issue. The problem came up immediately and continued to happen. I also tried turning off the radio before I shut down the car thinking it was related to the radio. The problem continued to happen, and happened even more often.
So I took the car to Hewlett Chevy to see what they could do. Customer service was much much better there, but after another week and a half, they couldn't discover an issue either. The issue happened in their service drive when I explained the issue, and the service advisor tried it out. But after I left, they were unable to replicate the starting issue.
The final fix: Drove the car home from the dealer, and immediately had the issue happen when I attempted to start the car again. So on a hunch I started driving the car without ever turning the radio on. I noticed that the dealers turned off the stereo whenever they worked on my car, and I wondered if this could explain why they could never replicate my issue.
I went for three or four days without ever turning on the radio/XM. Once I stopped using the stereo, the problem quit happening. How the radio/XM could stop the car from starting was a mystery to me, but the problem did seem triggered by turning on the radio/XM at any time during a drive. The car always showed the XM Error message on the head unit when the car failed to start, but I always thought that was a symptom of the failed start and not a cause.
A week or so after taking delivery of my car in 2007, I had replaced the XM unit with the SIR-GM1 Sirius receiver that lived under the waterfall panel. So I went down this route next. I opened the car back up, removed the SIR-GM1 and installed an identical replacement SIR-GM1. Amazingly, the car has started like a champ since. Something must have failed in the original SIR-GM1 that was interrupting the startup. The car had no idea what was going on with the aftermarket Sirius unit, so no codes were being thrown.
Who knew that the stereo could stop the car from starting? In any case, this is just a very long description of the problem to help the next poor guy that runs into something similar.
