Hello everyone. I have an 08 Tahoe Hybrid with about 4k miles. Over the last couple of weeks, I've had something strange happen 3 times.

All of a sudden out of nowhere, the check engine light comes on, along with a couple of other lights, the chimes start going off, and the display under the speedometer alternates between "Service Stabilitrack Soon" and "Service Brakes Immediately". When this happens, I lose power braking! Luckily, all 3 times I was going very slow in electric-only mode, twice at drive-thrus and once in the grocery lot. The first couple of times this happened I turned off the ignition and restarted, and everything was back to normal, except that the "Check Engine" light stayed on for a day or so and then it went off. Yesterday when this happened for the 3rd time, I had to turn of and restart the truck about 10 times to get it back to normal.

So anybody else seen anything like this?

 

...thats what warranties and dealerships are for. Id just take it in and have them scan the obd codes

 

you place more value on hearsay and opinion than fact. Forums are fine for some things but NOT for issues such as the ones you describe. its about safety not convenience...I'll take the dealer any day over someone I don't knows opinion!

 

check your brake fluid levels.

 

As a former service manager I would have to agree with the first post by Jet 1. I would personally take it in right away, even without an appointment, to at least have them scan for DTC's (Diagnostic Trouble Codes) and advise on what your next step should be.

You can also contact Onstar by pressing your blue Onstar button when your check engine light has come on and they can usually pull a "current" or "stored"code and let you know the severity of the potential issue and let you know if you should or should not drive it.

The only thing that I would say to check yourself that is simple is the battery cable connections. A loose positive cable could cause multiple DTC's and warnings like you described. I had a loose cable and it set 53 codes in 11 different modules and I had warning lights galore.

Let us all know what the dealer finds, Good Luck!

 

Thanks for the nice tip. I had no idea Onstar had that capability.

It's going to the dealer tomorrow for an appt. I scheduled over a week ago. I'm not looking for anybody to tell me how to fix it -- just waiting for tomorrow, curious if anybody that had seen something similar might want to have some friendly conversation about the experience/outcome/service/warranty/dealer. Maybe I came to the wrong place.

You got it -- there are probably some non-hostile folks here that might actually be interested to know.

 

" "Service Stabilitrack Soon" and "Service Brakes Immediately"" this means you are endangering yourself but more importantly OTHERS. If I get a warning like that I go DIRECTLY to the closest GM dealer. but then I was hit by a car once cause the brakes failed on it when the guy tried to stop.....oh yeah in court he said his brake warning lite was on....pretty good defense...NOT

 

gltech,

Don't let a few responses taint you. This forum is great and everyone on here frequently shares our experiences with our vehicles no matter what they might be. It is a great group of people and a lot of great information has been shared by Everyone on here since this forum started. I think it is fair to say that no one is making important decisions based purely on what is shared in this forum; it is purely a friendly place for open discussion.

I hope that everyone feels free to discuss potential issues, actual issues, positive attributes about their trucks, as well as any cool things added or changed on their vehicles like wheels, Lock Picks, etc without being judged. Chances are that if you want to post something, at least one of us out there will find it interesting or useful. Forums are purely for open discussion and I think simply opening a discussion about your issue was a good thing. I know I am curious to see what the outcome is, but I am a service minded guy and find things like this issue interesting.

Keep us posted on what happens at the dealership. It is very possible that one of us could potentially experience the same issue in the future. Things like this are not usually isolated to one vehicle and it is fair to think that anything made on an assembly line could likely experience similar occurances.

 

Yes. My Tahoe is now being repurchased by GM per Lemon Law. They believe they have found a fix as a firmware update was released this week that necessitated a free battery change. I have not been able to test this last repair as we are not in legal process and they have sort of limited my use to 7500 miles or else I have to pay about 0.50 per mile when they buy it back. You'd think that after they sell you a car that turned out to be bad, they would bend over backwards to accomodate you. Nooooo. They only provide what the law requires. So in my case, if they buy back my Tahoe, it is as if I leased the vehicle for $800 a month. They want you to put me on another Tahoe Hybrid but I have to pay about 2500.00 in usage also.

Your circumstances was not similar to mine although the same messages appeared. I would lose my brakes going downhill too but not get it back until the dealer clears the code. Scary. Then it progressively got worse. I would get the messages but it would not last long enough to trigger the check engine light. Then work fine for a day and be dead the next day. Twice I drove about 100 miles one day and the vehicle was completely dead the next morning. Frustrating!

They have changed my battery twice. Each time with a higher capacity. The last time I was in the dealership, they were able to drive the vehicle to the service bay then once it got there it would not start anymore. I have been stranded and had to be towed 3 times. So tired of this and just wanted a vehicle that works. But GM wants to negotiate the replacement.

The service manager told me GM is still learning from all this. So we are all expensive guinea pigs.

I have started posting about this on my new blog which will contain info about the new firmware in a few days. Check it out - Chevy Tahoe Hybrid Problems

 

gltech,

Any update for us with regards to how your service appointment went?