Another car question

Factual Questions
1

In a prior thread I posted how my beloved Vibe needed to have the **electronic control module **replaced due to what was diagnosed as an intermittent short. After calling Pontiac they spoke to the dealer and agreed to cover half the replacement. I was originally pleased because although the car is four years old I have over 98 thousand miles on it so any warranty I had would be expired.

When I went to pick my car up today it started fine but after driving it just off the lot and onto the main highway the same lights appeared in my instrument cluster. I immediately took it back and upon reading the codes it had the same ones thrown again.

The dealer did further tests that determined that one of the O2 sensors was bad because the short in the computer damaged it and they spoke to Pontiac who wanted both sensors replaced at no cost to me.

I found it a little strange that the failure of an O2 (oxygen) sensor would cause the traction control to disable itself so I did a little googling and found a post on http://www.arfc.org that described my situation

in a nutshell it says there is an oxygen sensor that goes bad and does not set off a warning as it should and this caused the PCM to short out and be replaced.

I’m wondering if because Pontiac is supposedly aware of this I should ask them to contribute more to the original repair because if the sensor had thrown a code the computer may not have been damaged. Or should I be thankful that Pontiac is covering anything due to the mileage on the car?

2

a sensor doesn’t “throw a code.” The PCM will set a DTC if the value it reads from a sensor is outside of its expected range. If the PCM circuit is what failed, then it may interfere with sensing a problem.

3

What does DTC mean?

4

Moved to IMHO from GQ.

Colibri
General Questions Moderator

5

DTC = diagnostic trouble code.

6

I didn’t realize that Pontiac even existed anymore with the brand being shut down a few years back. Guess they still have offices somewhere, just not car sales.

7

There were still 2010 model year Pontiacs, so it wasn’t THAT long ago that they shut down. In terms of warranty service, the badge on your car and the brand on the sign outside don’t have to match so long as it’s a GM dealer.

8

Thanks Gary

I’m assuming it’s just a small subset now of GM itself to handle existing customer issues in hopes that by servicing us we will buy another GM product.

And with the Vibe being a joint GM/Toyota product I bet I could have gone to a Toyota dealer. What I appreciate is that the dealer I was being serviced at was not where I bought the car. You can be sure I will keep that family in mind for my next car.