ledesordre

Hey guys; lightning hit about 25 feet away from 2008 c6 and ever since then I’ve had some really bad problems with it. I could use some advice. Everything worked PERFECT before this happened and it’s a really nice low mileage under 50k c6. I believe the trickle charger was hooked up when the strike hit because the car is not driven much. I am not 100% sure though.

First issue: the cooling fans no longer work, so the AC stops blowing cold and the car overheats and isn’t drivable. So it’s basically been parked.

second issue: the battery drains very fast over night fast even on a trickle charger. Some kind of major draw. I can measure 12v on the battery after I charge it up, disconnected, which will get the car to start up. But when I leave it over night it will drain down again. It also reports a much lower reading on the voltmeter when the car is hooked back up to the battery. Making me think it has a major draw.

third issue: when I unlock the doors with the key fob, I can hear a pretty loud popping sound from the hatch area like the rear lid is opening, but it does not. It does open the rear hatch normally but the sound caused when simply unlocking the doors is new and alarming.

Looking for some solid advice here. I’m normally a diy’er but this one has me pretty wary. Thank you guys.

BadAV

Maybe it just fried the battery and the bad battery is causing the other weird symptoms. First place I would start is to try a different, known good battery.

Judgebull

Sounds like you have some serious electrical problems. I would check the codes to see what they indicate. A lighting strike produces thousands of volts and amps easily destroying every electrical system in its path.

Turbo6TA

Yup ... Before you spend lots of time and money chasing down various problems, put a brand new battery in it first and see how everything goes after that.

ledesordre

P0480 only code so far
Fan 1 control circuit

Turbo6TA

And after you get finished replacing the battery, pull all the various fuses 1 at a time and replace any that are burned out.

Don't forget the fuses under the passenger compartment kick panel too.

russ472

enough talk about the vette, lets hear about the trans am

ledesordre

Ls1/t56 swap

FatsWaller

If the 12V reading is accurate, then your battery is considered to be essentially discharged at 25% of its full capacity. That in itself would cause any number of electrical gremlins. A fully charged battery should read 12.6 volts. If the battery charger was hooked up during the lightening strike, it's quite possible that the charger has been damaged, and unable to fully charge the battery. If you measure the voltage when the charger is connected, you should see something like 14.5 volts. Have you investigated that? As another comment, I don't see how a momentary high voltage spike could fry a lead-acid car battery. They're pretty robust. And the charging cable from the charger would be something like 12 gauge at most, good for 20 amps, so if the charger tried to pass a significant part of the amperage from the lightening strike into the battery, the cable would have vaporized. I'm guessing that didn't happen.

BadAV

Lightning strikes do strange things that they theoretically shouldn't do. More than amperage, it's the high voltage that causes the issue. We had a strike close to our house one time. It fried the electronics to the garage door opener. It also fried our answering machine/cordless phone base unit, which was on the other side of the house. Also fried our VCR. Nothing else was damaged.

Again, the easiest item to initially verify is the battery and low battery voltage is a known source of many gremlins.

ledesordre

Update: Advance said the battery is dead-dead and replacing it free under warranty. It’s only from late 2018.

Doubt it will resolve everything but fingers crossed. Will update when I know.

FatsWaller

You might want to get the charger checked out before you hook it up to your new battery.

ledesordre

yep good call I actually have a second charger that was not in use during the strike so will be using that one.

dmaxx3500

make to charge the new battery too,and leave it disconnected from the car when doing it

ledesordre

New battery charged up and on. As soon as I connect the battery I can hear a thud from the passenger side door area (possibly lock mechanism).

sometimes when I unlock it with the fob I get a loud pop from that area but it’s hard to replicate (again this never happened before the lightning incident)

the cooling fan is still not coming on and still kicking me the same code as listed above.

Turbo6TA

Again ... check all the fuses in the car ... won't take much time

ledesordre

I will
I will also leave the battery disconnected until I have a chance to and report back

thanks all

Boilerman

A few years back we had lightning hit the satellite disc that was mounted on a corner of our roof, scared the heck out of the wife as she was home at the time..
It fryed the disc, all of the boxes on all of the tv's and took out the battery tender I had on the Vette and the battery was shot and it was only 3 months old!
We were lucky did not damage any of the TV's and did nothing to the Vette other than the battery and no damage to the house or any of its wiring and nothing to any appliances.
Had the satellite company come out and replace all of their equipment and the guy said he had never seen anything like it before.

ledesordre

crazy man. Yeah it hit closer to my neighbors house and she was looking at 20k in damages. I lost a lot of outlets, appliances, and electronic devices too, including the circuit board on my furnace. I didn’t even know the vette had issues until this week because I drive it so rarely, although the strike happened in the first week of sept.

Ira T

Do you have homeowners insurance?