My "Service Stability Control System" light is coming on!

VelocityYellowRules!

VelocityYellowRules!

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Jul 15, 2012
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Fairview, Alberta
VetteCoins
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2006 Z06
So ya, the latest event in my life. A few days back this warning light popped on. Aother WTF moment. It turns out that it maybe due to a steering wheel sensor connector problem for which there was a recall.

Turns out that my car had the recall done just before I bought it.

Well, not exactly. They "inspected" the plug and determined there was not a problem and so never installed the recommended clip to hold the plug together. The connector can apparently come loose or is subject to corrosion made worse when the steering column telescopes.......

Of course I am left scratching my head that they would remove the panel, clip the tie wrap, unwrap the electrical tape, inspect the plug and then NOT install the clip after all that effort!! I mean just as a precaution since you've already pulled the underside apart.

But the service guy is nice enough to check to see if they will do it again under warrenty and this time to actually put the clip on if it needs it or not. Peace of mind or being able to cross off a potential problem source off the list is always a good idea I figure.

I also got the new clutch release spring in today so that will be my job tonight - see if I can achieve a degree of mechancial skill to pull off this job. I'm hoping that it is a bracket that you remove a bolt from and then install the new spring and then I am back in business.

The weather looks very promising for Sunday so I hope to take the car autocrossing. There should be a 700 crank hp ZL1 there.............

Cheers,

Garry
 
How exciting! The autocross, not getting the car fixed. :D

Best of luck on the install. I hope it goes better than the snake charmer. :D:D

If you remember, take some pics at the autocross! Would love to see the ZL1!
 
Hate the gremlins that pop up from time to time. Such a pain, and always at the worst times too. Hope it gets sorted out soon.
Can't wait to hear about your AutoX experience. Should be wild with your "new" beast.

Sent from my SGH-I747M using Tapatalk 2
 
Good evening,

Good God I actually did something mechancial (not involving farm equipment!) and it worked!!! Getting the old spring out was easy enough, installing the two pins into the bushings was easy enough, compressing the pedal and then getting the "U" piece to pop into the white plastic holder on the back edge of the pedal - more of a problem.

I ended up using a windshield scraper to hold the pedal down which brings the needed clearance to just a few mm short and tried to pop it into place with a screwdriver. No such luck and of course it is hard to hold the pedal down while doing this at the same time. I see why people who have described this have a friend to hold the pedla down while they put the "U" in place. But no extra body here so after trying it a few times I finally hit on the idea of wrapping a heavy wire around the "U" and pushing the pedal down and holding it and giving the wire a tug and BINGO it popped into place! Like my father always said "if you want a job done find the laziest person you know to do it as they will find the easiest way to do it" - how true!! So I am smug right now. Of course in hindsite I am not sure what the spring even does as there is so much pressure on the clutch pedal it stays up very well all on its own. I can see while researching this I cam acress people commenting they either removed the spring altogether or when it broke never bothered to replace it.

No call from the dealer service guy yet re the connector clip, maybe tomorrow.

Next issue......the transport company that moved the car from Ontario to Edmonton managed to put scratches in the car, on the top right front fender, ahead of the drivers door latch and on the top of the left rear fender. The quotes blew me away for this work, just under $1000!

The deadline for submitting was 30 days after pickup (July 5th) so I am good there. I don't have a copy of the shipping pre-inspection as of course I was not in Ontario but they have a copy in Edmonton that I saw but forgot to ask for a copy of (oops!) so I am hoping that will not be the "out" they will try to use to avoid paying.

What I just noticed which might really rile me up (severely p*ss me off actually) is that they have a $500 deductable..........so does this mean that in this case they damage my car, the autobody shop says it will cost $1000 to fix it and I still end up $500 out of pocket myself?????? In other words, it is open season for them to cause $500 worth of damage to your car that they are shipping and they won't pay for any of it?????

I'll keep you all posted of course on how this turns out as I learn more.............

I am looking forward to the AX on Sunday, it should allow me to get ride of a bit of stress that I am feeling right at the moment. I'm watching "Initial D" to study "heel and toe" shifting!! Truth is that I don't expect to ever get out of 1st gear anyway if it is like last year, a very tight and twisty course it was.

Cheers,

Garry
 
Battery problems.

It would appear that perhaps some of our weird problems are due to battery condition or a battery with too little reserve capacity. The comb and tie wrap are a couple of the electrical quick fixes that GM has. This video explains the problems that people can run into. Our car had the battery replaced just before we bought it. Reserve Capacity.....110. Should be 120. Might be ok when the battery is new and all the connections are good. With a little age, problems start to creep in. I was told to make sure the battery cable connection at the starter solenoid is clean and the nut is properly torqued. It can get awfully hot. I posted about some of this elsewhere here. "Service Active Handling" is another warning that can come up. Some people on the American "Corvette Forum" apparently had individual brakes apply for no good reason with some causing accidents. It seems that the computer can get confused if voltage drops below 10.5 volts when starting the car. It can be serious

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Good morning Keith,

An interesting video and interesting premise. I will have to check the truck to see what is there. I know that I was always surprised how small the batter was, I was always taught that you wanted twice the CCA of the displacement in cubic inches, so for example a 427 shuold be 950 CCA and I know the battery is 660. But this is also for battery use in the winter time which of course these cars generally don't ever see use during!

I hope maybe to hear from the servicec guy today about the clip/cable situation. I finally got around to ordering the 2nd fob key abnd trunk release key as well so I will have spares. I can't believe that I made it through a year without a disaster in that area.

Cheers,

Garry
 
The one video suggests that you need the proper CCA for your vehicle but you also need the proper reserve capacity. The info is right on the top of the Delco batteries. There was talk a couple of years ago of car companies going to 24 volt systems. Perhaps the time has come. Our '69 Chevelle, with nothing but a big engine and four speed, not even a radio, and it worked fine with a 37 amp alternator. Now they are up around 140 amp to keep up with electrical needs.
 
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Good afternoon,

Fantastic weather here right now, a beautiful day to exercise and drive the Z06.

Well with more WOT effort actually got +2.0 of manifold pressure!! I can't imagine what it would take to get +4 and actually have the methanol system come on, scary thought!

Colin, have you been under boost enough that you've had to fill your reservoir to date??

Picked up my #2 key, made an appointment to get it coded next week, I have to admit it will be a relief.

No news re the connection recall.

Checked the battery - only 100 reserve!! Maybe time for an upgrade? Pity as the battery is even yellow! Not that you can see it of course but it makes me feel it is suited to the car!!!!

Cheers,

Garry
 
VelocityYellowRules! said:
Good morning Keith,

An interesting video and interesting premise. I will have to check the truck to see what is there. I know that I was always surprised how small the batter was, I was always taught that you wanted twice the CCA of the displacement in cubic inches, so for example a 427 should be 950 CCA and I know the battery is 660. But this is also for battery use in the winter time which of course these cars generally don't ever see use during!

I hope maybe to hear from the servicec guy today about the clip/cable situation. I finally got around to ordering the 2nd fob key abnd trunk release key as well so I will have spares. I can't believe that I made it through a year without a disaster in that area.
Cheers,
Garry
Click to expand...

Interesting, Garry. I'm a little surprpised to see that the Yellow Top Optima in my GS is only 100RC
C.
 
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VelocityYellowRules! said:
Good afternoon,

Fantastic weather here right now, a beautiful day to exercise and drive the Z06.

Well with more WOT effort actually got +2.0 of manifold pressure!! I can't imagine what it would take to get +4 and actually have the methanol system come on, scary thought!

Colin, have you been under boost enough that you've had to fill your reservoir to date??

Picked up my #2 key, made an appointment to get it coded next week, I have to admit it will be a relief.

No news re the connection recall.

Checked the battery - only 100 reserve!! Maybe time for an upgrade? Pity as the battery is even yellow! Not that you can see it of course but it makes me feel it is suited to the car!!!!
Cheers,
Garry
Click to expand...

Glad you're enjoying the weather out there.......

As for the methanol on mine -- Yes I"ve refilled the reservoir once. Since then I'm driving a little more conservatively and been watching the meth level and it's going down very slowly so I believe that coincides with the amount of boost on my motor.
I seemed to go thru quite a bit of meth initially --, but found no leaks, and chalked it up to over use of the gas pedal. (it is intoxication and tempting isn't it) -- .....

Have you used much meth since having the car back?

and in the other answer I forgot to ask if you had the Optima Yellow Top?
I believe you said that you did.....

Was the key expensive. I've recently found that they can be depending on the car.
My other vette won't have fobs (they were lost in the shuffle) and will cost about $300 to replace the both and that's with a discount. Regular price is over $400!!! -- and they are separate fobs -- not like the all-in-one 'magic' key in most C6's.
I can well imagine that GM charges a lot more for our C6 keys than the separate from keys fobs for my C4..


Colin.
 
Good afternoon guys,

Yep, next battery upgrade goes for more CCA and 120 reserve - but can I get it in yellow still??!!

Colin it sounds like we have twin batteries.

I will be checking the reservoir level before I leave for the autocross. I'm curious if I'll h ave to add any as I can't recall a single moment when the meth injection light has ever even come on. The darn car is putting out so much power as it is that it is proving hard for me to get it to make a lot of boost. In retrospect I'm sure that 650 would have totally sufficient but it still makes me happy to know how much there is there.

So no, I've never had to add any methanol, I just bought my jug to be prepared.

The key was shockingly inexpensive actually. With a new truck manual key and getting it cut I think was $165 or so. Of course I have to bring the car and both keys back for programming next week and that is apparently 1/2 hour so that will add to things. I hoping that if the clip connector recall will not be done that I'll get them to order the clip and do it at the same time and have to pay it out of pocket. But I don't like seeing that light on and the chance of the car deciding to activate the right or left brake on me unexpectedly!!

I wore my helmet today to help start to form it to my shape..........

Cheers,

Garry
 
my service light seems to come on in the rain, under acceleration. my son's mazda had the same problem in the rain. turned out it was a mal-functioning wheel speed sensor.
 
bigneez said:
my service light seems to come on in the rain, under acceleration. my son's mazda had the same problem in the rain. turned out it was a mal-functioning wheel speed sensor.
Click to expand...

Good to know.
I know that over or under-inflating any tire will cause that service light to come on (at a certain high or low level). I overinflated my tires by a few pounds back when it was very hot so after driving the car for a while the pressure was really high - up around 40 psi.
I lowered the pressures to 30 - 32 , shut the car off and restarted and it was fine.

There's probably a thousand other things that could go wrong causing the light to come on tho .. I was just relieved that it was only high tire pressures.

Colin
 
I'm having second thoughts too. An LS powered six speed Chevelle is looking more inviting all the time. I neither want nor need active handling, traction control nor a lot of the other add ons that people seem to like. At the very least, it would be nice to have the option of shutting this stuff down.
As for air pressure in the tires. It can go up easily 4-5 psi with normal driving. I stick to the factory specs and keep an eye on the air pressure regularly.
 
Keith Tedford said:
I'm having second thoughts too. An LS powered six speed Chevelle is looking more inviting all the time. I neither want nor need active handling, traction control nor a lot of the other add ons that people seem to like. At the very least, it would be nice to have the option of shutting this stuff down.
As for air pressure in the tires. It can go up easily 4-5 psi with normal driving. I stick to the factory specs and keep an eye on the air pressure regularly.
Click to expand...

Trouble is I don't like 30 psi .. to me it seems too low. Just my personal choice.
So I bump it a couple to about 33 just to pacify me.

As far as the traction control, anti skid and other computer controlled systems are concerned they do make the car better and safer to drive whether we like them or not and the insurance company likes them too which is reflected in their rates compared to cars without the systems. Survivability is another major factor when considering old or new too. So don't forget things like air bags and active head restraints and the like.

Sure older is cheaper to buy and cheaper (overall) to insure, but progress is progress and despite the fact that these systems are difficult to maintain and can be problematic, they do make the car safer for all -- (if and when the damned things work properly)..
Look what they've done with pollution control in the last 40 to 50 years: They all but perfected it for the internal combustion engine rendering cars all but non polluting. Where would we have been if cars today were equally polluting as they were back in the (our) day, or compared to a century ago? Pretty sure our atmosphere wouldn't have survived in that scenario would it. The reason: progress, mainly computers.
IMHO once they are either perfected or gotten complete control of, it'll be a banner day for the auto industry and many other industries.....(indeed my pc at home sometimes gives me the gears -- lol -- I don't know anyone who doesn't have problems to some degree)....

There certainly is room for improvement on these systems as was suggested the other day, but I enjoy what benefits they provide today and hope that they improve quickly and they don't break my bank account either in the interim.

I like the old cars, and indeed my favourite car all time is a '57 Olds, but I'll stick with the 'techy' for now and enjoy what I can and appreciate the better pollution control on them, and hope that I see improvements in these hi-tech systems in time for me to enjoy them..

Cheers,
C.
 
I certainly wouldn't go back to an SS396 Chevelle to save money. A decent SS Chevelle will be $30k and up. A real, restored L78 or COPO Chevelle will be the price of a new Corvette. The restored COPO cars will buy a couple of ZR1s. I've been driving for well over 50 years and not once have I been in a position where active handling or traction control would have been needed. Mind you there is always a first time. Then again, living in Omemee where they roll up the streets and put them away at 9:00 pm, there isn't much of a chance to get into a serious accident. ;) :driving:
 
Your choice of course Keith but if you go anywhere near TO -- you'll benefit endlessly by driving the C6 .... even if you're the best driving in the world..

Even our fair little city of Cambridge is getting busier by the day and benefitting from modern car tech is more frequent than you might think. I generally pick and choose the times that I drive....

Was so much nicer in a small community such as yours. I miss it a lot.

An LS3 powered Chevelle sounds interesting. Hope you go ahead with that project some time.

C.
 
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