A friend told me to remove the battery and touch the terminal ends together (off the battery of course) and try to start the car with it disconnected to try and get all the residual power out. So I did that last night but I will try leaving it disconnected tonight.

 

Did that trick kill your radio?
some friend.
for further readers of that post, don’t do that !!
Never touch the positive and negative cable ends.
it can damage the computers and the radio.

 

He is a trusted mechanic so I doubt he would give me bad or invalid advice.. just to make sure I looked it up and found this, which is pretty much what he told me to do and what I did.

"This tip was provided by Honda for solving odd electrical problems. Many automotive systems today rely on software. Should that software develop errors, which can happen from something like a low battery or interrupting a learn procedure, it can cause all sorts of odd electrical problems that can be hard to troubleshoot. Try doing a battery cable reset.

A battery cable reset forces all capacitors to discharge faster, and clears and resets most control unit volatile memory. It’s like removing and reinstalling the battery in a cell phone that’s acting weird or locking up.

Before you start, make sure that the battery is fully charged. A low battery can cause problems with electronics. Then, get the anti-theft code and write down your customer’s audio presets.



1. Turn the ignition switch to LOCK and remove the key. This lessens the chance of voltage spikes.

2. Disconnect the negative battery cable first, then the positive cable.

3. Short the battery cables together with a jumper wire.

4. Turn the ignition switch to the ON position and wait 10 minutes.

5. Turn the ignition switch to LOCK and remove the key.

6. Remove the jumper wire and reconnect the battery cables…positive cable first, then the negative cable.

7. Check ISIS and perform the required reset/relearn procedures for the specific vehicle.

8. Enter the anti-theft code and restore the audio presets"

 

I don't know what that is supposed to accomplish on a Chevy. Probably wipe out all of the programming, don't be surprised if your TPMS/ remote door lock and remote start go away.

 

You can't "reset" the fuel trim; it is dynamic.

If you are going to do all of this reading and "trusted mechanic" stuff narrow it down to Chevrolet HHR.

Well, you can restart the long term fuel trim. That will last for 20 minutes, or so; until the computer has enough data to calculate.

Vapor doesn't drip. Look around and under the plastic clip that secures the fuel lines and under the insulation.

 

Disconnected the battery overnight, problem returns..
Reading the live data the fuel trims are almost always negative 20%. The only time the LTFT reaches close to 0 is during more aggressive acceleration. (When it gets to under -4% that's when I notice the power return I was speaking of earlier as it comes and goes) At idle it sits at -20% when I increase RPM to 2500 it will reach -10% or so but returns to -20% as soon as I take my foot off the pedal. Looking at my freeze frame data from BEFORE I fixed the air leak the LTFT was at a positive 7%

 

 

I hope you read this^, first; but how long did you let it run before this video was taken?

Have you checked for intake leaks beyond the MAF sensor? Introduction of un-metered air can do things like this too. The ECM expects something it isn't getting...

 

That video was taken while the car had been running for maybe 4 hours or so?

I was rechecking everything and looking around and spraying all the intake parts and found nothing.. I pulled out the stethoscope hoping I would come across something but I did not. Then I heard a high pitch sound I haven't noticed before and started to hone in on it and it seemed to be coming from under the car so I put her on the ramps and saw a crack I previously did not see the first time (hooray for daylight!) in the exhaust manifold. Would this crack be enough to be causing these problems? If it needs to be replaced is there anything I should know, tips, tricks, learn from my mistakes?

 

You can get a used one cheap from a junk yard, check the classifieds a couple of members are parting vehicles out. You can get to the nuts from above, Torque spec is 89 lb.in.

This is the sequence