today after a rather harsh stop (people in front slaming on breaks) my "power steering" warning came on, the a/c stopped working, boost guage stopped working, driver info buttons stopped working. power steering did not go out.

last time a problem like this occured the solution was to replace a blown ignition fuse. that time, however, the power steering did go out. this time it did not. i check the fuse again today, and it was in fact blown. i replacaed with another 20A fuse, and it blew immediately.

any ideas what im up agaisnt? this couldnt come at a worse time, since i have finals all this week, and my car is my only mode of transportation.

 

bump. hoping for an answer before i have to pay dealer charges..

 

That fuses feed everything through the BCM.
pull the wiper fuse ,hvac fuse,air bag and powersteering all located on the bcm and then replace
the 20 amp ip ign fuse.
if it blows immediatly then you have a wire shorted
if it doesnt blow replace the fuses one at a time (in the bcm)until it blows again and then we can narrow it down to what is blowing the fuse.

If I had to guess I think the Hvac\IP circut (fuse 16 ,10 amps )is the problem.
clutch switch and Brake switch are on this circut.

 

There is a short to ground in the Ignition 1 circuit. My guess is after that hard stop, a harness partially shifted and the circuit made contact with a ground. Do you have access to any schematics? They are going to be invaluable to finding the short.

 

You don't have anything wired up to it do you?

 

thansk for the help guys, but i eneded up taking it to the dealer yesterday. there were 2 shorts in there sumwhere, and it cost me 450 to fix. im terrible with wires, so ill take the hit... lol

 

Damn son. What sucks worse is I bet that's all labor. It can be quite intensive to trace down a wire.

 

Three different occasions I had to replace my entire ignition system.. not sure if this is common with the cobalts but with mine it was a constant problem.. Good luck hopefully it doesnt keep happen

 

ya the wiring in the dash sucks, i kept blowing my passkey fuse because a wire had rubbed through and was shorting on a bracket by the radio. fixed it the first time, then it happened a week after so i took plastic wire loom and loomed every wiring harness i could find that would potentially touch a metal bracket hasn't happened since.

and ya tracking down shorts is a pain even for an experienced tech.

 

ya, the cost was all labor. ant it was that some of the wires rubbed through and touched metal brackets. at least its taken care of now. i hope it stays taken care of... lol

 

hopefully, chances are its the same wiring bundle i dealt with on mine. difference was both times i was kind of stranded, first time i was at a friends house, on the other end of town and no tools, eventually got it going. second time i was taking a friend and her daughter to get their hair done and it was -40*c out and it decided to do the same thing to me again. thankfully a buddy came and got us and i went and got my tools for that one too.

 

i just convinced friends to push the car and i poped the clutch. at least u can get it home that way... i very much dislike being stranded...

 

Im going through that problem now. I did the replacing of the fuse and when I replaced the hvac/ip ign fuse in the kick panel, the 20 amp ignition fuse under the hood blew right away. do you know what wire harness had the shorted wwire/wires??