Car is jerky when accelerating, been doing it for a short while now, and the check engine light just came on....Havent pulled any codes yet. Ideas?

 

Spark plugs didnt work.

Anyone know of a downloadable factory service manual?

 

How about what the p0102 code is?

 

Seems like the clamps on the intake were leaking some

 

If you have an aftermarket intake on the car that could be what's giving you issues. I've noticed that putting an intake on our cars without a tune can sometimes have varying results, sometimes it runs fine, sometimes it'll throw a p0102, which means that the MAF is seeing less airflow than it should OR it's going bad. So if tightening the clamps on the intake didn't work then I would clean the MAF sensor with some MAF sensor cleaner, then if that doesn't work I would suggest simply replacing it and going from there.

 

all OEM

This has been going on since about 60k miles.

After changing plugs (long time ago from now) I also changed the MAF (which im sure now was fine (b/c it still did it after it was changed) Just not right away...w hile I had the intake off to clean it and check the TB.

It stopped for a while and then would come back mostly in the summer heat.

So when the wife complained about it or it would cut off on her, I would clean the maf sensor and intake out again. Still continued to jerk/buck on her occasionally.

This time I removed the intake did the usual cleaning, but when i put it together I put some tape b/t under the connections after the maf to the TB. So far no reports from the wife about jerking again.

I'll consider it a win if it makes it the rest of the summer without doing it.

By the next oil change it will be close to 110k miles.

 

Hmm that's weird, I would have guessed your MAF but you already replaced it haha. That's really all I can think of :P Hopefully you won't have any problems with it haha.

 

So far, wife hasn't reported anymore occurrences of jerking.... so it seems the oem intake likes to leak.

 

It could be the camshaft position sensor. I've been having jerking issues while accelerating and got P0010 and P0011 codes. If cleaning the MAF and redoing the spark plugs didn't work I'd take a look at that. I'd suggest running a scanner on it first though so you're not wasting money on parts you don't need to replace.

 

Bringing this back...

It stopped doing it for over a year and now just came back the past few weeks.
Some days it jerks a lot and theres a CEL and other days its fine but theres a CEL, and then sometimes it'll be jerking without a CEL...

The reading i found on the 3 dtcs suggested the cam position actuator solenoid... So i ordered both intake and exhaust and just put them in. I found several people that said they end up replacing them around 70-80k miles and my cobalt is at 124k ... maybe it was about time they were due. Hoping that the next time my wife drives it's fixed.