OEM battery / Service stabilitrak issue
 

So I will start by saying that my car has been slow cranking sometimes before starting. Not really slow, just not 100%. At first I thought it was starter heat soak, but I quickly realized that's not the case.

Last weekend, it started fine to move it over in the garage to do the rear diff swap. Afterwards when I started it, it was again slow to crank and then the service stabilitrak message popped up, as well as 3 lights under the speedo. Appears TC and stabilitrak are off, but car still seems to be running fine. I wouldn't think anything we did during swap would cause this.


I am reading and it appears this could possibly be just a battery going bad? I charged it up and 2 days later it showed 12.7 volts. Started car today and it was faster with charged battery, but still saying service stabilitrak.

I can't find a date on the battery anywhere that says how old it i. Makes me wonder if its OEM, but that's a long run for a battery. Just don't want to replace it if that's not going to fix the issue as batteries aren't cheap. But I am leaning toward that being the problem. Here is a pic of the battery pulled from car.

http://rs1079.pbsrc.com/albums/w520/...h=480&fit=clip

Looks like my originally equipped battery that I just replaced this winter. As an ACDelco battery it is a GM battery. Get a new one and get the cranking up to par again.

go to Farm and Fleet and buy their 7 yr battery usually under $100 on sale works great. My original lasted 7.5 yrs but changed it so I wouldn't have problems. 3 yr replacement on battery too.

Any vehicle with the battery located remotely, like the trunk, obviously works much harder to crank the engine. Even more so when hot, due to the added resistance. Your OEM battery may show voltage above 12v, but after 8 years it is tired and sulfonated. It will set CEL's/Codes and cause problems. These may have no performance impact, or they MAY with TC and throttle issues. Codes should be cleared, and battery replaced if it is the root cause.
"Sulfation, a build-up of lead sulfate crystals, is the number one cause of early failures of lead-acid, sealed AGM or flooded (wet cell-filler caps) batteries. A sulfated battery can lead to loss of cranking power and longer charging times."
Many newer battery Chargers now have a "Battery Reconditioning" feature which pulse charges the battery to break up Sulfation, and add some additional output and life to a battery. Almost all auto supply stores can also power test a battery to determine need for replacement.
Another key factor is clean connections and additional grounds. Our Camaro battery ground in the trunk is not the best, I highly recommend adding an additional cable from the driver side head to the frame (Blue Cable in Pics).
There are a gazillion posts on the site about batteries, but a good quality AGM or Glass Mat Battery is worth the additional $$$. BTW - I still run my OEM Battery, but keep it trickle charged all the time. I ran a simple Trickle Charge Power Tap in the trunk (plugged in, lower left in the Pic) to avoid the hassle of pulling out the trunk cover and guts. The Odyssey Battery is used to run my LEDs and Bling stuff independent of the Main Battery, and also has a Trickle Tap (not plugged in in the pic). I also keep a SCTX4 on hand to clear codes on the fly, cause sooner or later, they show up for some reason.

wow- just put a new battery in and be done with it, you're living on borrowed time anyway.

Here's how to read the date code:

http://www.acdelco.com/content/dam/A...nformation.pdf
It sounds like you need a new battery. I replaced the OEM battery after 7 years as a precaution even though it was still OK, but yours may be older.

The battery in my '05 Avalanche lasted 10 years then showed the same behavior. But it was garage kept and had only 25k miles on it.

Do you know how long the battery has been in the car? Batteries nowadays in general will not last very long. You can extend the life of the battery by putting a tender on it (in fact, what you could do is put a tender on it now and see if your cranking will improve...that is if you don't have one), but even with a tender your battery will last, on average, between 6-8 years. My TrailBlazer was on a tender since new, and its battery lasted 9 years (actually a record for me for the longest lasting battery in a car).

What happens to batteries is that eventually a power cell goes bad or wears down in it, causing it to fail. The cheaper the quality of the battery, then the sooner that battery will fail.

Good luck with it.

Had a battery do the same thing. Replace it before you get stuck somewhere.

I actually have a charger with this feature. It seems like it has (at least temporarily) saved the battery in my silverado. I tried running it on this for a few days but apparently it didn't help.


And I will get a new battery, and look into this extra ground if it will help. Hopeful the battery gets rid of the dash lights/error at least. What gauge wire did you use? I know there is an unused threaded hole on the drivers side head towards the front. Just need to figure out what the bolt size is for it.





No, that's what I was hoping to find out from this thread.

If it's an OEM/Factory battery that's original to the car...then it's pushing 9 years old and is certainly the culprit. But if it's newer than that, maybe it wasn't the problem? Looking like consensus is change it anyhow, so that's the plan I guess!





Thanks everyone! I will replace the battery and report back with weather that solved the issue or not.

Just to update. Bought a new AC delco battery and cleaned up the battery cable connections before connecting new one. Put in on charger for a while to make sure it was ready to go. Went to fire and it still long cranked (or seems long to me anyhow).

Still getting service stabilitrak message and associated lights. Also notice the abs light is on. Not sure if that is the cause or another symptom. Ideas? Could something we have done swapping diffs caused an issue like this? The long crank has been like that for a while with no other issues. The service stabilitrak was right after the diff swap

Idk what it could be but I’ll say this: my 2014 GMC Sierra would run very horrible and stabiltrak light came on as well as showing my traction control was screwing up. Come to find out it was a defective spark plug wire. One day I’m on the road and it happens again. Running rough, stabiltrak on, traction control light on. I pulled in a parking lot and popped the hood. Spark plug wire was off the spark plug. Put it back on and it ran fine. Check your wires.

Had that happen when I installed headers. But that time I had a CEL as well, and it was in "reduced power mode". This is something different, I believe, as the engine is running just fine. Even though we didn't mess with them directly, my best guess right now is we messed up one of the wheel speed sensors.

I am going in for a couple adjustments on my tune this weekend, so he is going to use scanner and help me see if we can narrow down what is causing the error message

Having ruled out battery voltage, you should be looking at the wheel speed sensors and associated wiring.

Really I think it's dealer time, where diagnostics will pinpoint the problem right quick.