Top 5 Problems: Chevy Cruze Sedan 2008-16 1st Gen

hey friends its Elaine here from 1a auto today I want to talk to you about some of the top problems with this Gen 1 Chevy Cruze let's get started one of the first things I want to talk about is throttle lag maybe you step on that gas pedal and the car takes minute to think of what you're doing and then it takes off ah well that can be annoying sometimes the reason why that happens is because this is actually a wired throttle it's not a cable throttle so on older vehicles you'll have a cable that goes from the gas pedal goes all the way up through the firewall goes up to the throttle body and it pulls in that little lever as soon as you press the pedal boom instant right and a vehicle like this where it's much newer everything's pretty much electronic so it's called a wired throttle essentially what that means is as you step on the gas pedal has like a little sensor in there and as the gas pedal goes past it it's saying more voltage more voltage it sends a voltage up to the computer the computer says faster and it sends it over the engine and the engine says ok let's go boom right but it can take a little while because it has to go time to go so that's generally speaking why you're gonna have a throttle leg there are a couple issues that you could possibly have maybe you have a clogged fuel injector maybe your tune ups a little bit overdue but it's fairly common for it to just be something as simple as like I said it's a wired connection and not a cable connection the second thing that I want to talk to you about is oil consumption and this is primarily on the turbo equipped vehicles you may notice that you have a check engine light on and you're probably gonna see a code that says Pio 171 or Pio 106 and of course there might be a couple others that you might want to look for but you're not always gonna have a check engine light on some of the symptoms that you're probably gonna notice is that you have blue smoke coming from the tailpipe and you're probably gonna have a rough idle some of the fixes for this would be either replacing the intake manifold or even just the valve cover which is also considered the camshaft cover the third thing that I want to talk to you about on this vehicle is sometimes they'll end up having a coolant leak and it might actually even throw a check engine code which would usually come up is like a pol 597 through Pio 599 so pretty much three different codes will tell you that you have a low coolant system and you need to go ahead and check some of the symptoms you may notice you happen to look at the reservoir and it's very low that's fairly common you might also notice a sweet smell in the air when you're driving or even sitting still for a while you could even see something like this a little cool the residue here this is from evaporative cooling so essentially as this is vaporizing it's coming up here and it's causing an issue and you're gonna have that sweet smell a couple more symptoms that you might notice is an odd gurgling sound inside your vehicle generally speaking over on the passenger side that's where the heater core is when your coolant gets low it's supposed to be circulating coolant around through all the hoses in through the firewall and into that heater core if the coolant low it's gonna start pulling air pockets into the heater core so you're gonna start hearing weird noises it's just I can't even make the noise for you but you'll know it when you hear it if your coolant slow you might also notice that for some reason your heats semi intermittent and I'm not saying the blower motor decides it works or it doesn't work I'm talking about the blower motor works like it's supposed to but the actual physical heat the temperature of it is warm and then it cools down and then it's warm and then it cools down that's because the coolant level is low inside the heater core and it's gonna cause that issue the last thing that you're gonna notice is more likely a puddle on the ground that's gonna say hey I have a coolant leak let's figure this out right some of the causes for this could be something as basic as pretty much any part in your cooling system we can go the radiator we can go with the hoses the connection for the hoses to the thermostat housing thermostat housing on these things actually cracks a lot of times especially on some of the older models as they kind of progressed they realized that we had an issue with the plastic housings so they went ahead and they made them aluminum which of course it's much better you might notice that you have a leak up here at the cap if this is venting it's gonna cause issues like this and you're gonna have that sweet smell but overall if you have a leak that you could physically see more than likely it's probably gonna be from like I said the radiator the hose is a thermostat housing so fixes for this the first thing that I would do is I would try to pressurize that system just put a little bit of pressure in there you have a special tool for that and you'll be able to see where that leaks coming from once you find where the leaks coming from of course you would replace that part and of course take another peek along all the rest of those hoses and whatnot to make sure that the clamps are good because if the clamps are rotted they're just spring clamps they're not hold enough pressure on those hoses to hold everything together the way they should make sure you check that radiator along the seams where your tanks meet on to the aluminum part because a lot of times they leak along there as well once you do all that I would just go on to 1a auto comm check us out because we're more likely gonna have almost all the parts that you might need for this the fourth thing that I want to talk to you about is engine misfires it's very common in this particular vehicle and generally speaking it's because the coil pack you may notice that you have a check engine light on and you're probably gonna see a code that says something along the lines of Pio 300 through maybe Pio 312 some of these are going to be kind of like a generalized code and others are going to be more cylinder specific so you'll know exactly where to start looking some of the other symptoms that you might notice is the vehicles running rough you have poor acceleration and your fuel economy went down some of the causes for this could be something as simple as a bad spark plug or multiple spark plug so you'd want to check that tune-up and make sure you're not over on your intervals but generally speaking on this type of vehicle you're gonna have an issue with the coil packs on this as you can tell it's not just one single coil pack it's got one GI a coil pack going down to all four spark plugs just like that what happens is is inside here they get a little bit corroded and they have blue and all that funny colors in there and they're just not making a great connection to get that spark going down through here to the spark plug and then setting the power right down to the engine to burn up that fuel my main fix for this will be of course to check this coil pack make sure it's good to go if it's not I would just go ahead and replace it same thing with the spark plugs with the coil packs bad just do the spark plugs at the same time and of course check us out 1a auto comm we got them last but not least on this miracle I want to talk to you about the steering sometimes when you're driving and you're going in a straight line for a long period of time whether you're going 35 or even on the highway or whatever your speed is for that and you're going just straight for a while but maybe you have to be here to try to you know correct your course the steering wheel just doesn't seem like it wants to turn you have to give it a little extra to get out of that notch it's almost like the steering feels a little notchy every once in a while what happens is is this miracle has an electric power steering rack you may notice a little bit of a glitch due to an electrical response time but more than likely it's because of the electric power steering rack internal gears the most common fix for this is to replace your trick power steering rack okay so I had a lot of fun making this video and I hope you had a little fun too if you did make sure you like you comment and you subscribe and while you're at it ring the bell for us that way there you can keep up with all of our latest content thanks thanks for watching visit 1a auto comm for quality auto parts shipped to your door the place for DIY auto repair and if you enjoyed this video please click the subscribe button you

Channel: 1A Auto: Repair Tips & Secrets Only Mechanics Know

Views: 319,960

Rating: 4.8856039 out of 5

Keywords: top 5 problems chevy cruze, top problems chevy cruze, how to, diy, car repair, 1a auto, do it yourself, chevy cruze, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, throttle lag, coolant leak, P0171, P0106, oil consumption, P0597, P0599, engine misfire, P0300, P0312, electric steering problem, 1st generation chevy cruze, 1st gen cruze, chevy cruze problems, chevy cruze issues, chevy cruze sedan

Id: J2CGIC-vS7M

Length: 7min 14sec (434 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 24 2020