So about 2 weeks ago (maybe it was 3) I had that ticking noise on the Cobalt (2006 2.2L LS Stock) that we had fixed when we took the car in for maintenance, and everything was cool, or so we thought.

We took the car up this last Monday to the in-laws house for a few days and the trip up was uneventful. Wednesday morning we go to leave and get out on Crescent City's excuse for a main street (extremely small town in BFE Florida, about 2 hours away from where we live outside Orlando) and my wife is driving....

She looks over at me and asks "Is that supposed to be on?" pointing to the CEL light that has suddenly lit up. My initial response was "f*ck" because we were literally in the middle of nowhere, and while I knew there was an extremely small Chevy dealership in the town, I had no clue whether or not they had a service department.

As you can imagine I'm not too happy about this, we're already several hours late in leaving and the thought of having to leave the car there (if they had a service department) was not at all appealing.

We could have driven the car home, but honestly, what with GM weaseling out of the warranty over even the smallest issues, I was afraid that the car would crap out on the way home and then we lose the warranty because we tried to drive it. (even though the manual says to go ahead and drive it as it might just be a loose gas cap or a bad tank of gas).

ANYWHO... Turns out that the dealership had a service department, that the knock sensor had triggered, and that they had to spend an hour reflashing the computer. The technician acted like it was no big deal, but I started wondering about how long we've been driving the car with this issue, and god knows whether or not the CEL came on at another time and my wife just didn't notice it. Ya know?

So anyway, the car has been ok for the last few days. No ore CEL's, but I'm now wondering if this is just the start of the major issues on this car. I've owned a lot of cars, including some real clunkers, and I've never had a CEL on any of the stock vehicles I've owned.

Has anyone else had this happen, and have you had other issues that you thought were related to it pop up down the road?

I'll note that the technician in this very small town was extremely nice, and was extremely candid when he said, "We have to do this about once a week. Because we're the only GM dealer around here, we get a lot of different makes and models coming in with the software needing to be reflashed). The problem had a TSB out on it, (I seem to remember seeing it around somewhere), and when I asked what could have caused it, he hem and hawed for a minute like he was struggling with how to explain it and then basically said GM's software sucks. hehe.

As a side note: We had the low-idle while coming to a stop when the A/C was on, and it looks like the reflash might have fixed that too.

 

On today's cars where the computer controls practically everything, you can pretty a CEL on practically everything. I wouldn't worry about it too much...especially if the guy fixed it.

My motor blew at 381 miles (long story) but ever since they put in the new one I haven't has really ANY drivetrain issues at all.

Any car can have problems....but I wouldn't worry about it too much

 

Probably so, it's just a little worrisome because That 10,000 mile mark does not seem to be a good # with these cars. I've seen a lot of posts since I joined with people beginning to have issues at around that time.