themuleskinner

One more to pile on as well.
2012 Captiva Sport LT
Electrical Parking Brake warning will illuminate intermittently and radio will shut off at various different times. After reading most of your posts, it looks like I need to have the battery cables changed before this problem becomes more serious.
Dear Chevy rep, my entire family has been brand loyal to Chevy and GM for years (Monte Carlo, Blazers, Silverados, Grand Am, Vibe, now the Captiva.) Taking it in tomorrow because we have a beach trip planned starting Thursday.

carolinef

ABS lights, tire lights, traction control lights and radio goes on and off. Car would not start the other day, keys locked in ignition. Had to call for jump. We had to take the battery terminals out. and bypass battery to jump. Towed car to Dealership only for them to tell us nothing is wrong with the car! Frustrating! I still have car at dealership. I am afraid to drive it for fear of getting stranded

themuleskinner

Apparently, there is an electrical sensor attached to the battery cable wiring harness that will begin to fail. That's when the radio will randomly shut-off or any number of gages will start to illuminate. Those are the canaries in the coal mine. If left unaddressed the sensor, which (I think) regulates voltage to the rest of the car's electrical system, will continue failing & either short or surge other systems causing more serious problems.

My local garage spliced a new sensor (ordered from the dealership) into my existing battery cable harness & I have driven the car over 200 miles with no problem.

Good luck in your quests to find the fix for yours.

LoveMyCaptivaSport

I have recently been having many of these same issues -- usually not all at the same time. It started with my electrical system going completely dead when I turned off the ignition. The key would not turn to the "off" position, thus preventing me from removing it. At the same time all the electrical system would be dead -- no lights, no chimes, no displays -- nothing at all. If I let the vehicle sit, it would come back, but only after a widely variable amount of time (from a few minutes to overnight). When it came back on, my clock needed to be reset, the Average MPG was back to zero, but all my radio presets were still present. Lately, it has manifested itself into the other issues described in this forum -- including the transmission shifting into neutral and then back into gear as I'm driving. I've hooked up my scan tool after these incidents and there are no stored or pending codes. In my frustration, I starting tinkering under the hood and found that if I jiggle the wire connector located just behind the back, left corner of the battery (facing the engine from the front of the car) the lights and chimes and everything would come back like it does after just sitting. I think this connector is part of the wiring harness that connects from the battery sensor on the positive battery cable into the fuse box. My next step is to disconnect this connector and see if I can duplicate the problems. That should tell me if the battery sensor is bad or if the problems is elsewhere in the wiring.

harrynangle

I've had my Captiva for 2 years and it is back in the shop again today. This is very frustrating as I do like the car but this electrical thing is driving me crazy. All of the symptoms as above, turn off the cruise, the radio shuts off, turn the lights from bright to dim, the cruise shuts off. If there is a fix for this, I really wish that Chevy would let us know or at least let the service departments know. Mine is back in for the 5th time and I have a feeling I'm going to get that call again.....we can't find anything wrong with the car. One day it acts like it has a mind of its own, the next day it drives fine. This all scares me.
any suggestions???????

kktremblay

I had my 2012 Captiva for 18 months with all the EXACT same issues. I have complained here & to my dealer.. Someone named "Patsy" here in this forum said to send her a private message and all she replied in private was "sorry for your troubles".

I had to keep paying out $100 diagnostic fee plus $100 deductible every time the car had these electrical issues at my dealer. I guess I was "lucky" since these things were covered under my extended waranty. But to have pay my car payment each month plus these fees often, I was spending too much.

Last month I finally traded the piece of junk in after getting stranded in a dark parking lot alone on a Saturday night & had to wait 3 hours for a tow and had to pay another $200 cash out of pocket since I used up all my tows with this piece of junk.

GM should reburse everyone who has issues and recall these junky cars!!!!!

kktremblay

Trade it for anything else! You will continue to have all the same problems .. I knew I had to get rid of mine when I ran a quick errand to get my disabled & very sick young son medicine at a drug store & stopped the car and couldn't get my keys out of the ignition! I was alone in a very dark parking lot late at night and I ended up having to wait hours for a tow truck and I had to walk to an ATM to get cash ($200 bucks) since my tow limit was used with the captiva & the tow company only takes cash- it was my mortgage money. GM does not care- I have brought all these same issues printed out to my dealer & they didn't care. Do yourself a favor and trade it!!

harrynangle

well here we go again. Got my car back today. New alternator. on the way home from work tonight every time I turned on the brights, the radio goes out for a couple seconds, the cruise shuts off, I get an error message about traction something or other and an error light flashes on then off. anti skid, parking break or some other thing...take your pick. seriously???? back to the garage tomorrow.

LoveMyCaptivaSport

As mentioned in my 10/2 post, my next step was to disconnect the wiring harness at the battery sensor and see if I could duplicate the problems I (we all) have been having. I finally got around to trying this. I disconnected the sensor expecting the previously experienced “dead electrical system” that I had been having (along with the “Service Traction Control System”and other warning messages when hitting the high beams, turn signals, or brakes. To my surprise, disconnecting the sensor did not cause a no-start condition or any of the other symptoms experienced before. Now I’m confused about the purpose of this sensor – I had expected it to be a fail sensor that prevented the electrical system from energizing (fail) if the sensor did not sense voltage in the positive battery cable. I have been driving without any incidents since disconnecting the sensor a little over a week ago. In fact, I just returned from a 650 mile trip upstate to see the fall colors and had absolutely no problems after driving everything from 70 MPH interstate highways to 10 MPH dirt, forest roads and getting nearly 30 MPG for the trip. (My only complaint is with the very noisy Destination LE tires on the concrete Intestate highway pavements).

Now, I must add one caveat to this post. When I was disconnecting the sensor wiring harness, I also took the opportunity to disconnect, inspect, and reconnect both the positive and negative battery cables due to some of the other posts that indicated the dealer had diagnosed faulty battery cables. I wanted to make sure I didn’t have any loose battery post connections that could have been causing the problems. I have tinkered with all of these connectionsin the past (on both the sensor and the battery cable terminals) and experienced several weeks of driving without the problems before they restarted. However, this is the first time I been driving without the battery sensor being connected. We’ll see if this is a long term solution or if the symptoms will come back after several weeks like in the past. MY FINGERS ARE CROSSED. Also, I’m not sure how the battery sensor can be replaced by itself – it has a solid circle that completely surrounds the battery cable and is too small to possibly fit over the battery post terminal. I guess the battery terminal could be cut off and replaced with a new one after slipping a new sensor on the cable.

LoveMyCaptivaSport

There are still no issues since I've disconnected the battery sensor connector over a week ago. This is leading me to believe the cause of the electrical issues was (is) a faulty sensor. This would be consistent with other posters to this forum who've had their battery cables replaced since the sensor is mounted on the cable that runs from the positive battery terminal to the starter. The sensor completely encircles the cable and cannot be removed and replaced without removing and replacing the battery terminal connector (which appears to be crimped onto the cable from the starter, together with another large gauge cable that runs from the + battery post to the under hood fuse box). If push comes to shove, and I have to replace the battery sensor (I'm still not clear on its function), I may try cutting off the battery post connector, slipping on a new sensor, and replacing the battery post connector with an after market clamp-on replacement. From memory, I think there is enough slack in the battery cable for such a repair.


By the way, what's happened to getting any responses lately from the Chevrolet Customer Service people who are supposedly monitoring these posts? If you're still watching, I'd like to know what function the battery sensor serves.