Driving fine, then suddenly losing ability to speed up

[Tyrannosaurus]

2009 Aveo5 roughly 70k miles.


Hello,
My mechanic is stumped. My next step after this is paying the local Chevrolet dealer just to troubleshoot it for us.


My car sounds perfect for about an hour or so, then it gets loud (my mechanic leaves it on in the shop). When I was driving it, it'd drive completely fine on my work commute (about 30 miles). I had a check engine light come on, called OnStar, they gave code P0171. My mechanic, however, is getting P0011.


It will suddenly stop speeding up. I normally start in 2nd gear as 1st is so touchy. It started where I couldn't quite get enough gas to start in 2nd so I dropped down to 1st. Within a few blocks (stop signs every 1-2 blocks), it'll get to where I step on the gas down to the floor and nothing happens at all. The car will sound like it's off but it's not. Occasionally if I keep it like that, it'll suddenly rev the rpms for a second, then nothing. If I turn it off for a bit, I can start it again and it runs fine for a while again. It did run really low on oil at one point.


At one point before giving up, I could only speed up in 4th gear. If I got it to 60mph (highway speed for getting home), I could maintain the speed in 5th gear. However, if I dropped speed at all, I could not speed up again. At that point I let it sit on the highway overnight, then drove it 50 minutes or so to my mechanic without any trouble whatsoever.


My mechanic says my car is possessed and he's never seen this before, lol.


Please someone tell me you've encountered this and have a potential fix! I'd really love to avoid paying just for diagnostics. I'm injured and broke right now.

[xintersecty]

P0011 is the OBD-II generic code indicating the engine control module (ECM) has determined that the bank 1 intake camshaft is more advanced than what the ECM has commanded it be. This over-advanced condition could be during advancing or retarding of the camshaft timing.

So the second set of engines have variable timing cam-shafts. It uses oil and an actuator to change the advance or retard on the engines. this might mean a dig into the cars guts

[Newborn]

My aveo did something similar 2 times where it was really hard to speed up. Almost as if I was reving the engine on neutral.

Only happened when I drove it for prolonged periods of time in 100+ degree weather.

[jc_hans]

I had almost the same issue last Thursday. The car was fine till now, that morning it was fine - almost reached work. And then suddenly it wouldn't accelerate enough / strange sound could be heard. In the afternoon it was first gone again, but after couple of minutes it was back again. Luckily I was near the garage that also did the maintenance last January.

They read the system and came back with a faulty coil, because it was faulty it would skip the 4th cylinder after a short amount of time. In the afternoon the engine LED blinked before it was repaired. The spark plugs were already replaced in January.

I have an Aveo from 2013 (hatchback)

[Tyrannosaurus]

It ended up being the camshaft sensor! But then when my family transported it to the dealership for me, something happened and put a hole in the transmission. Can't win