sandmanusd

Has there been anyone that has received a free repair / replacement of their EBCM from a Chevy / GM Dealer?

I am contacting GM Customer Service to have them replace this thing for me for free and wanted to know if anyone else has had this done so I can reference this fact when I talk to them.

dougbfresh

Unlikely GM will do anything, many go to absfixer.com to get theirs fixed. It's worth the $150 or so to NOT deal with GM.

sandmanusd

Well, the problem is, in order to send it to ABSfixer, it has to be removed... and I am crippled, so I can't do it myself...

I thought I read somewhere on the forums of someone getting it taken care of or partially taken care of by GM out of warranty... But I can't seem to find that post again.

C50Bob

Does anyone have experience with mandigital on eBay for fixing the EBCM? At $50, it sounds like a great deal. His eBay ad looks very credible.

claytoncramer

Can anyone give me a link to mandigital? I can only find a couple of vendors of such repair services. One only fixes 2001-2004 EBCMs; autoecu.com advertises $50 on eBay for the repair, but when I emailed them (having lost a pointer to the eBay ad), the quoted me $495 for the rebuild, which sounds quite dramatically too high for a rebuild.

MightyDuc

clayton: go to the auction site, copy and paste the following into the search bar: DELPHI CORVETTE ABS COMPUTER EBCM ECU REBUILD REPAIR



I emailed him asking about this service; he seems confident he can fix it. I pulled mine out this morning, and it will be on its way to him tomorrow... I'll let you know how it turns out.

BTW - he claims to have 26 years of automotive electronics experience, and to have repaired over 3,600 of these things... Plus he has tons of positive feedback from people that have sent their EBCMs to him. I'm not scared!

claytoncramer

Thanks. It turns out that the variance in price from autoecu.com is that the 2000 Corvette units are a lot different from the 2001-2004. I look forward to hearing how yours turns out before I pull mine.

MightyDuc

Clayton: got my EBCM back yesterday, and installed it this morning. It isnt an overly difficult job unless you have big monkey paws like me, but it can be done... started the car up and all my codes and lights are gone. money well spent, in my opinion!

03WhiteConv

Any luck? I was going to take mine to the dealer also. The program you want to ask by name for the GM Goodwill Warrantee. I have already talked to the service manager here.

Here is how it works:
You pay a diag fee to troubleshoot the problem normally $99.

Service dept collect all of the info, including your "loyalty to the brand" and send the info to corporate who then sends it to the regional manager.

Then the regional and local service dept decide if/how they will cover it and contact you with their decision.

Brand loyalty is big. If you have owned a bunch of GM products, let them know, especially if you bought new.

claytoncramer

I may try this. Brand loyalty? What GM vehicles have I owned? 1964 Chevrolet Malibu station wagon (bought new by parents, gave it to me when I graduated high school). 1973 Chevrolet Caprice wagon (used). 1977 Chevrolet Nova 9C1 (new). 1978 Camaro Z28 (new). 1979 Pontiac Grand Am (new). 1983 S10 Blazer (new). 1984 Cavalier (new). 1986 Celebrity Eurosport wagon (new). 2000 Impala LS (new). 2001 Malibu LS (new). 2005 Equinox (new). 2007 Trailblazer (used).

sandmanusd

Yup, GM dealer contacted my local dealer, they called me multiple times, said they would work with GM customer support on the matter to get this resolved... called me back 2 weeks later and basically gave me the finger and said, even though my 02 has only 13k miles on it, its out of warranty and they refused to help me out in any way.

I am selling my Z06 as soon as I can get this problem fixed and I will never buy another GM product as long as I live. I hope GM saving the $200 is happy they lost a loyal customer that would have paid them 10s of 1000's in the future toward cars...

Perhaps this is why GM needed a bail out... a $200 fix refused, losing them 1000's of dollars in sales.... good going GM

dougbfresh

Really, just send it to absfixer and forget all the ranting. It's easier than trying to deal w/ any Service dept. anyway and for $150 it's guaranteed for life (or as long as he's in business).

Mark C5

Please let me know when you find a car company that warranties their cars forever

XX

If you wasn't across the nation from me I would take the time to pull it and reinstall for you. I had one done last year on a 2002 and just had one done on my 2004 both by autoecu.com from there ebay auctions at $50.00 a pop with life time warranty.

sandmanusd

This is a saftey issue on a vehicle that should be recalled, but since it hasn't killed 1000's of people yet, they don't bother. See Toyota for further details on ignoring safety issues and what they SHOULD have done. This is no different from Toyota issue..

Regardless of if a car can work without a safety feature, or the fact that back in the "olden days" cars didnt come with ABS doesn't work, as cars didnt used to have seatbelts either. Its called progress, ABS are standard on just about every car in the world now, and I expect GM to fix something that is an obvious issue with their product. If the A/C had gone out after this long, I would agree with you, but through no fault of my own, a faulty saftey feature on a GM car is broken and I expect a company to take care of it. If not because they care about it killing anyone, for business sake. As I have never taken my car to anyone but Chevy dealer for any service, oil change etc. Now they will never get any money from me again.

Its simple business 101... Make the repair for cost at $500 or whatever it would cost them, and continue to have a customer for life, who will pay $500 10 fold or more. OR... as they choose to do it: Save $500 now and lose 10's of $1000's in future sales and business from that customer and anyone he knows. GM was bailed out for poor business decisions by OUR tax money, yet you support poor business decisions by them now.

The fact is this is a safety issue that should be a recall. Anyone who has taken business 101 or any Economics course knows that the price for human life is anywhere between $5-10 million. So if it saves GM $500 by ignoring an issue and has the potential of killing only 10 people, they can pay out the $10 per lawsuit and still save money.

This is what Toyota decided to do all those years ago when they found out about the stuck accelerators... They opted to save money by denying it existed, look where that got them.

It's a changing world out there, business have to be able to change with it, as well as customers who dwell on the past of "well my 1965 Stang didnt have that feature and I'm fine, so therefore it must not be needed on new cars..."

dougbfresh

This "Safety Issue" argument has been argued to DEATH here-it IS NOT!
When the EBCM fails, the car acts like any other car without active handeling (90+% of the cars on the road)-so BUCK UP and pay someone to remove it if you can't, you can drive the car the few days it out and "FORGET ABOUT IT" after it's fixed.

sandmanusd

Right... so because a car USED to not have a safety component, its not a safety component.

Not all cars have airbags, but if one DOES come with airbags, and that system fails, would that not also be a saftey issue? According to you, no, because OTHER cars dont have it and you can drive just fine without it.

Ask yourself this. If Someone crashes and dies and its found out that his breaks locked up and the ABS failed because of a known issue with GM EBCM's, and he was expecting to have ABS and drove his car accordingly, IE... not pump his breaks because he is expecting the car's computer to do it for him... but it doesn't, because GM failed to put a recall out on a known EBCM issue... how do you think GM would look then? A lot like Toyota does now... the fact remains its not considered a "safety issue" with GM because nobody has been proven to have been killed by it. That doesn't make it any less of an issue... People drive their cars as if they have ABS, and if it fails because of a known EBCM issue and they react to the "danger" thinking they have ABS, who's fault is it? Exactly... fanboy or not, you can't deny that...

Think of the airbag scenario... In your world, not all cars have Airbags, so therefore a faulty airbag deplying mechanism isnt a "safety issue" cuz old cars and alot of new cars dont have them... But if you buy a car with airbags and that manufacturer has a KNOWN faulty airbag deploying module, and a person is killed because their airbag didn't deploy... That manufacturer would be up #$% creek without a paddle. Its no different, just that nobody has been proven to be killed yet. That is GM's standing, as it was Toyotas standing, until a bunch of high profile deaths changed their standing.

The fact remains GM KNOWS this is a safety issue but they have done the math and have CHOSEN to ignore it because of the following reasons:

1.) Ignorant people will just blindly pay the $2k to get it fixed and not even think twice about it needing to be a recall

2.) They would lose the money from the ignorant people if they put out a recall, thus, it would cost them more money

3.) Their research department has concluded that it would take XX amount of proven deaths and lost lawsuits to overcome the price they save by NOT putting out a recall.

NONE of these reasons are acceptable...

Your argument is old and I would guess comes only from hard core die hard Fanboys of GM. The fact remains its a saftey feature on the vehicle that is faulty.... it needs to be taken care of by GM but its not.

sandmanusd

Well I appreciate the idea none-the-less.

I have tried taking this out, I don't know what kind of octopus arms everyone must have to be able to get in and around to get this thing out of the car. I Tried it from above and found that even myself and my dad, who are both 6'1 and very skinny, cant get to the screws to get them out, and I put it on the RHino ramps and couldnt get to it from the bottom either... I guess everyone that says how "easy" it is has a lift they are putting it on? I don't know, but I am paying a mechanic to take it off. Its costing me quite a bit, but the only alternative is to have Chevy do it for $2k, which isnt going to happen in my lifetime.

I looked for Autoecu.com's ebay posting for this service, but could not find one from them, their website scares me to be honest and is pretty amature and has pricing listed as $0 for everything.

I did however find mandigital ebay listing for the service for $50, like someone listed above. 11600ish positive feedbacks can't be bad in my opinion. I sent him a message asking how long it would take and if he required me to put a pre-paid postage stamp in there with the item, or if the $50 would cover his return shipping. I will post what he replied on here for others that are interested, and if I go with him, if it was successful or not.

dougbfresh

Believe what you want-that won't get your car fixed. If it was a real safety issue, there has been enough STINK over this that there would have been a recall by now. A feature not working is NOT always a safety issue. Pony up the $150 and put it to bed-no manufacturer will cover their cars forever even if they have LOW miles on them.

When was the last time your ABS even enguaged where you noticed it? I think you can live without it for 3 days while your EBCM is being repaired. Either way, your driving without it now. I did mine on jackstands in less than 30 minutes.

I used absfixer because he fixes another issue that causes other issues later, you can read about it on his website, it costs another $50 for a total of $200.

Mark C5

I guess I should take my 1985 Z28 Camaro in to have it retrofit with active handling because it's "unsafe"