New 2015 GMC Acadia issues - won't start some mornings, clicking noise when accelerating
Just curious if anyone else has had the two issues below on a 2014 or 2015 Acadia. I know this is more of a car buying forum, but I wasn't sure where else to turn. I LOVE the car, but have two weird issues....
1) The car doesn't start... most mornings, the car doesn't start the first 1-5 times I try. The battery is generating power because the gauges come on and the touchscreen turns on, but engine doesn't start. Most days it starts after a few tries, but this weekend we had to use remote start to get the engine going, and once we put the key in the engine died. It did start the next time we put the key in and started it normally. Dealership has never heard of this issue, I have to find a day it happens when I can drive straight to the dealership, but not sure how soon that will be with stops at kids 2 schools every morning.
2) Every time I start the car and start out driving, the car makes a clicking noise when I get to about 8-15 mph (or about 30-50 feet). It sounds as though something is engaging. That is the only time I hear the noise (when I've just started the car up, doesn't happen when accelerating from a red light), but it makes it every single time I start the car and start driving.
Otherwise I love the car!! Thanks in advance for any help anyone can provide...
1) The car doesn't start... most mornings, the car doesn't start the first 1-5 times I try. The battery is generating power because the gauges come on and the touchscreen turns on, but engine doesn't start. Most days it starts after a few tries, but this weekend we had to use remote start to get the engine going, and once we put the key in the engine died. It did start the next time we put the key in and started it normally. Dealership has never heard of this issue, I have to find a day it happens when I can drive straight to the dealership, but not sure how soon that will be with stops at kids 2 schools every morning.
2) Every time I start the car and start out driving, the car makes a clicking noise when I get to about 8-15 mph (or about 30-50 feet). It sounds as though something is engaging. That is the only time I hear the noise (when I've just started the car up, doesn't happen when accelerating from a red light), but it makes it every single time I start the car and start driving.
Otherwise I love the car!! Thanks in advance for any help anyone can provide...
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Comments
We're very sorry to learn you've encountered starting issues with your Acadia and we recognize it can be discouraging when the dealership is unable to find a solution. If you'd like, we'll gladly contact our internal resources and further investigate this matter. We'll just need your VIN, full contact information, and mileage to do so. We're best reached via private message or email at socialmedia@gm.com.
Thanks,
Amber N.
GM Customer Care
While the video displays the reported issue, it actually does nothing to help a technician logically rule anything in or out. Once the car starts beyond some potential historical codes it is unlikely that a solid assessment of the cause can be made.
Consumers need to be more aware of the main issue running in the background. The dealership technician gets a one time labor fee of .3 hours to attempt to do the diagnostics on any failure like this. That means if the tech makes $30.00/hr then he/she gets a whopping $9.00 to study and try to diagnose the reported issue. Any subsequent visits are unpaid time. The problem for consumers is that since the techs aren't paid fairly to do this work, most simply refuse to learn how to do it and really you can't blame them. When they can make more money doing a brake or transmission fluid flush and not deal with the headaches they aren't doing anything any different than any other worker would tend to do. The old adage of "Work smarter not harder" applies here because diagnostics at this level are some of the hardest things that techs ever have to do, and its just smarter to do easier work that pays better.
It takes a tech with very special skills to diagnose problems like this, and when you understand that they learned to do this while predominately not being paid for the time that it took to develop those skills it should be no surprise that they are hard to find. The shortage of qualified technicians took years to reach the point that it is at today and it will take decades to reverse the trend. Meanwhile there is less work because the cars really don't break as often as they used to and the things that do fail are quite often one time events in a technicians career. Problems like these are usually not a pattern failure that once someone figures out the first one, everybody else just gets to read about it and get to take a short cut to the answer. As each year goes by the cars are getting to be more and more complicated and the diagnostics demand even greater technical skills and the ability to apply the kinds of critical thinking skills that reduce the number of specific pin point tests that have to be performed.
We also noticed that there was some power loss when the A/C was on, heat, day time running lights, opening the tail gate just some examples.
Amber N.
OnStar Customer Care
I tried to charge the battery but seems it is fully charged and it is not a battery issue....also tried to jump start it... No luck!!!! I have seen few vedios on YouTube with the same problem but no one has posted a solution... I will be the first customer at the local dealership tomorrow morning...
I'm so sorry to say my next car is a Toyota for sure... I live in Detroit and auto plants are all around this my second GMC car and I'm not satisfied at all... Also I had an explorer it is not much better.. My lease is due on February... And they will take it back...
Any trouble codes pulled?
You might check this website (below) for a specialist near you who has the skills to track down a problem like this:
http://www.iatn.net/