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

Hey, friends. It's Len here from 1A Auto. Today, I wanted 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 a minute to think of what you're doing and then it takes off. 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 on 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, 'Oh, okay, let's go a little faster.' And it sends it over to the engine and the engine says, 'Okay, let's go, boom,' right?

But it can take a little while because it has to go pip, pip, pip, pip, pip to here and then pip, pip, pip, pip, pi to here and then vrrrm, time to go. So, that's generally speaking, why you're going to have a throttle lag. There are a couple issues that you could possibly have. Maybe you have a clogged fuel injector, maybe your tune up is are 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 P0171 or P0106. And, of course, there might be a couple others that you might want to look for, but you're not always going to 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 going to 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 as like a P0597 through P0599. So, pretty much three different codes will tell you that you have a low coolant system and you need to go ahead and check that out. 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 residue here. This is from evaporated coolant. So, essentially, as this is vaporizing, it's coming up here and it's causing an issue and you're going to 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's 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 you're coolant's low. You might also notice that for some reason your heat's 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's low inside the heater core and it's gonna cause that issue.

The last thing that you're going to notice is more likely a puddle on the ground that's going to 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 with 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, is much better. You might notice that you have a leak up here at the cap. If this is venting, it's going to 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 going to be from, like I said, the radiator, the hoses, the thermostat housing.

So, fixes for this. The first thing that I would do is I would try to pressurize that system. Just to put a little bit of pressure in there, you have a special tool for that and you'll be able to see where that leak's coming from. Once you find where the leak's 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 going to 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 onto the aluminum part because a lot of times they leak along there as well. Once you do all that, I would just go onto 1aauto.com, check us out because we're more than 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 of the coil pack. You may notice that you have a check engine light on. You're probably gonna see a code that says something along the lines of P0300 through maybe P0312. 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 vehicle's 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 plugs. 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 going to 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 giant coil pack going down to all four spark plugs, just like that.

What happens 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 this spark plug and then sending 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, if the coil pack's bad, just do the spark plugs at the same time and, of course, check us out at 1aauto.com because we got them.

Last but not least on this vehicle, 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, whatever your speed is for that, and you're going just straight for a while, but maybe you have to veer to try to 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 this vehicle has an electric power steering rack. You may notice a little bit of a glitch through the 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 electric power steering rack.

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