My daughter bought a new chevy cobalt in June. In august the battery died. Service dept said it was the ON STAR that was searching for the the car, couldn’t find it and ran the battery down. They said to disconnect it if she wasn’t driving it every day. Yesterday Oct. 20, the battery died again. She had driven the car the night before. What’s going on? This is crazy. Why have a service like on star if you have to disconnect it to make sure you don’t get a dead battery? Any help out there? The service dept. did all the electronic tests and they checked out ok. Help! Anyone!
There is an added drain on the battery from some electronic part that is no always working correctly. These problems can be hard to solve and take a lot of time. The service manager is trying to run you off with the none-sense about On-Star (It does add more drain when there is bad reception, but not so much as to run the battery down in even a week or two).
Go back and make them fix it. You are free to find a better dealer. You don’t have to use the one that you bought it from.
So based on the “service dept’s” expert advise, everyone with ON STAR equipped cars can never leave them at the airport for more than a few days? I think it’s time for another mechanic. If your have a properly charged battery to start with, I’d suspect you have a high residual drain (parasitic drain) from a trunk light, glove compartment light, etc.
Since the dealer service isn’t all that much help you may want to have another shop check things out and see if they find any trouble. Another dealer may do this for free for you, while an independent shop would charge a fee for the work but not a lot. If a problem is found then you have something you can present to the dealer to fix. Normal current drain while a car is parked is usually less than 35 milliamps after systems have gone into the sleep mode. If there is a current draw more than 80 milliamps then you should find out what the cause is.
I can understand the OnStar system draining the battery over time and if the car isn’t driven very much so the dealer may be correct about that. You will need to prove that isn’t the real trouble. I’m not sure there is a way to disable the system real easily. You may need to have a switch installed to turn it off when it isn’t wanted to be left on.
If you do take it to another shop have the battery capacity checked to make sure it is ok. As another option, you could have a small battery tender installed on the car so it could be plugged in and keep the charge up on the battery. I would only do this if the car isn’t driven much and no other trouble is really found to be causing this problem.
Thanks for the reply. Another friend thought it may be from some other electronic part…I never thought to find another dealer…thanks!
I have an appointment on Monday and will mention the parasitic drain from another spot…thanks so much.
thanks for the reply…good information!