My daughter’s 2009 Cobalt’s park lights are staying on. I woke up this morning to them being on very dim due to them running the battery down. I tried to crank the vehicle and everything went black. I didn’t have enough juice left to even get the dome lights on. I put the battery charger on the battery and notice the front and rear park lights were dimly lit again. I could cycle the headlights from auto, park lights only, to on and back off and the park lights stayed on. After a few hours, I came back to find the battery charger showing a fault code for a bad battery. I just had the batter changed about 1-2 weeks ago. However, I do know that when the battery goes bad, it does affect the electrical system in that the power steering assist gets hard to turn at times. I tried removing the park light fuse under the hood but the lights stayed on. Do I have a bad switch, or is the battery just bad? I am currently trying to charge the battery again off of the vehicle. Is there something else causing the lights to stay on that I am overlooking? Thanks in advance.
So update, battery charger showed 12.1 volts, so reconnected to the car. Anti theft engaged and car started honking. Got that off and tried to crank the car and it turns over like a dead battery. But, NO park lights now. Going to continue charging the battery and see what happens.
You could have a bad switch. but first i would change out the relay for the park lights. it could be faulty and stuck in the on position.
I charged the battery, put it on the car, cranked it and no more problem. Going to get the battery tested shortly. I was thinking a relay might have been stuck and no battery let it de-energize
Glad you finally got the park lights to stay off and a fully charged battery at the same time … I expect your battery remains good, charger fault code just means it doesn’t expect a battery it is trying to charge. to be that much discharged. Likewise my portable CD player sometimes refuses to recharge the battery, claiming the rechargeable battery is faulty. I have start the charging using an alkaline battery for 30 seconds, then it is charged enough the CD player will finish the charging job w/out complaint.
As far as why your parking lights wouldn’t turn off, could be a sticking relay like you speculate. I expect however there’s some sort of module electronics problem, likely with the body module. To know the cause someone w/ electronic experience and the car’s wiring diagram will have to trace through the circuity point by point using a test-light at the time the problem is occurring.