Long cranking before starting up and Service Vehicle Soon lights up.

[canatto]

Hi Group,

It's been another year and good to see you folks still hang in there with our beloved Trigues. 2007 was a big year for my 2000 GLS. She put a hole on my wallet by going through a tranny rebuild at 120K miles as she lost the OD due to the stripped/worn splines on the 4-th clutch hub. The rebuild also fixed the intermittent harsh up-shift due to the pressure control solenoid going south. Other than that not much trouble at all. I was able to change the sway bar and the end-link without having to drop the sub-frame -- thanks to littlehoov for the inspiration and tips.

Lately, however, the car has developed an intermittent syndrome in a very consistent pattern: first it would take a significantly longer than usual cranking before the engine would fire up (5-6 seconds vs. 0.5-1 second), this mostly happens at a cold start after a long standing, such as the first start in the morning. This does not happen very often, only a couple of times a week, and it's a 40 miles/day daily driven car. Whenever the long cranking happens, the car would fail with no exceptions the Traction/PCS self test (the buzzing sound from the ABS pump) immediately afterwards when I begin to drive, and three warning lights, Service Vehicle Soon, Traction, and PCS, turn on as a result. Never in any other cases would the car fail the ABS/Traction/PCS self test. Now if I shut it down and re-start, it would fire right up with no warning lights on, just like nothing has happened at all. No code could be retrieved with an OBD-II reader, in fact I believe the ABS/Traction/PCS should be associated with the body control module where my generic OBD-II reader has no access. Therefore, I have no knowledge about there has been any codes at all. Wonder if any fellow Intrigue owners has ever experienced this and what the outcome was. Here in Canuckland my local GM dealers are blood thirsty and would demand 1-hr labor charge only to hookup a Tech-II.

[LittleHoov]

Here is a link to a thread with another Intrigue owner that has a similar issue, but its not exactly the same thing:
http://oldsmobileforums.com/forums/s...ight=unrelated

You have no stored SES codes, and the only time you have ABS,TCS,PCS issues is when its coupled with the hard starting, which is only intermittently.

It seems like a common cause of intermittent hard starting or dying, and just general weird things happenings is the ignition switch, many folks have had excellent luck just by removing it and cleaning it. There is a link in the post I linked you too that tells how to remove the switch.
I cant guarantee it will fix your problems, but its free. It does take a little time to do, and youll probably be pissed if it doesnt fix it, but its something you can eliminate at least.