Well, I went and had my recall done this A.M.. Add me to the mystified; what the heck could they have done to make both the ambient air temp and the intake air temp stick way too high?

Ambient was reporting in the DIC as 70F to the OBDII port as -40. The intake temp was reporting via OBDII as 140F.
I disconnected the negative cable from the battery for 15-30 minutes; now ambient is 99F and 32F, the intake is 126F.

 

Well, that's just strange.
I haven't noticed any weird readings with mine. Since you got my attention, I'll go double check my RPD and DIC. Ambient and intake temps.

I checked. Mine's normal. 89 ambient on both and 86 intake on the RPD at startup.

 

I just can't imagine what they might have done. Maybe there is a ground connection at the switch?

 

I'm wondering if the tech got lazy and didn't follow the first two steps in the manual pertaining to the repair.

"1. Before servicing the vehicle, refer to the Precautions Section.

2. Disconnect the negative battery cable."

If he/she was inattentive and rushing to get your HHR "out of the bay" quickly due to being allowed X hours of flat rate time. They may have inadvertently spiked one of your modules.

 

Don't say that, I just sent a perfectly good pre-programed ECU back because it did not fix the P0420.

Only took an hour 20 in to out.

 

An update: after the car sat for a couple of hours the DIC reads 93F The OBD reads 118F and the Intake reads 110F. The actual ambient is id the middle 80's.

BTW; there is a guy on Ebay that sells programmed to your VIN ECUs, you do need to have the Crankshaft Position Sensor learned, that takes a scantool (NOT a TechII) most shops have. Been tried, works, good product.