Well I was driving today and during a normal acceleration where the Turbo PSI Guage did not exceed 5 - 7 PSI I heard a loud squeal from my engine and my PSI Gauge dropped to 0 and the car bogged. Since then the Gauge will only go to 0 and I have very sluggish acceleration so me thinks my turbo or something related to it stopped working. Since it is Sunday I will have to wait until tomorrow to call the dealership. Is there anything I should be aware of to tell the service department that could help them fix this problem? I guess I am a bit concerned since I have the stage kit installed and I do not want them to screw anything up or try to find some fault since I had the kit installed by another dealership.

 

Doesn't matter which dealership installed it as long as it was a GM dealership, they have to honor your warranty. Good luck and keep us posted on the problem/fix.

 

Ok here is an interesting tidbit. I was at my Inlaws fixing their computer that got infected from them clicking on a fake facebook thing and after the car sat a while and I started it up to drive up I now have PSI pressure and the acceleration is better but no where as it should be and I decided to give it a little gas and the PSI gauge shot up all the way to 30 even though I didn't floor it. So now I have no idea what the problem is but I know something is not right.

 

You went into limp mode. There are quite a few reasons this can happen, but the more common one is exceeding max boost for more than 3 seconds. If the car is bone stock + GM-installed stage kit, I'd definitely take it in for service. It should not have gone into limp. You may have a bad/loose sensor or other warrantable issue.

If you "lose a turbo," I predict you will know it without question. The impeller RPMs can easily top 100K RPM... that's 100,000 and beyond. When something fails in the mechanicals of something spinning at that speed, it will wake the dead.

 

Thanks. The only modification is the GM Stage Kit and when this happened the boost Gauge only registered about 5 - 7 PSI so it definitely was not maxed out.

 

I doubt you're watching the boost gauge so closely as to have seen any boost spike. If so, quit... and watch the road. Also, the boost gauge is electronic, and only does its best to represent the electronic data coming over the CANBUS. As such, it's not particularly accurate (the CANBUS data is, but the gauge can only respond so fast.., if you get a high transient, the gauge may not ever even reproduce it for you with the needle because it happened so fast). Having said all that...

You still went into limp mode. The question is WHY. Going into limp if indeed you were only at a real 5-7# of boost would, in my experience, more likely point to a physical failure/leak... like an IC Pipe "clamp" coming loose (I put "clamp" in quotes because, as anyone has seen, GM doesn't use them... instead going for these batter's box practice weights-looking things that pinch the pipes together. They have been known to come loose, and a loss in pressure there could easily send the computer into limp mode... and it would "recover" after a reasonable reset period. However, if you had a pipe come loose, it would likely still be loose (R2D2 wasn't there to fix it on the fly). As such, you'd still be having problems and going into limp mode the next time the computer felt a boost problem (ie, turbo is spinning, gates are closed, but not building significant pressure).

 

Well the HHR has been dropped off for service but I am a bit worried because the service rep gave me a funny look when I told him I had the stage kit installed and wanted him and the service tech to know just in case any parts are necessary or a computer flash is necessary.

Also to XXL, normally I do not watch the boost gauge that closely but I can always see it out of the corner of my eye but last night on my way home I was watching it more closely than I usually do and so was my wife in the passenger seat and I did notice the needle jump to almost 30PSI but since there was very little acceleration and my foot was not to the floor I assumed it was a misreading. I am very mindful of how my car operates and I always like to do a bit of research if there is a problem and reach out to those that know more on the subject. I find it helps getting the repair done right the first time and the service department is less likely to take advantage of you if you show you know what you are talking about and give them an accurate description of the problem. I work in IT/Tech Support and I know how it feels to get vague information or incomplete information.

 

fyi, if you really did hit 30 psi, that could set an overboost code... yet another one that will put it in limp mode.

 

Well the dealership called and said it was a map sensor and they are going to replace it. Is the map sensor different if the stage kit is installed or is it the same part without the stage kit installed?

 

Do you think it's one of the sensors installed with the stage kit?