I've lurked and searched this group often in dealing with my 2000 Cavalier issues right from the moment I bought her. Today has marked a big day in the fact I have finally, after putting off trying to fix the car off and on for over a year and a half. From the moment I bought the car and got it home it had issues of one sort or another. Setting off the anti theft feature.. oops. Have to love wiring in radios. I also had to repair a substantial section of the in dash wiring harness that connected to the BCM, middle connector primarily. Done. Car ran pretty okay for most of a year with the occasional having to reset the anti-theft due to dead battery or playing with the radio wiring getting it sorted out. At this point, I had fixed the loose ground on the battery tray which gave me back half my cluster gauges while occasionally my speedometer would only rarely work and that it jumped erratically about.

The past two weeks have been a nightmare and one which I for some reason had forgot about past issues with the car. When it got rainy/snowing or moist weather the car would always run oddly for a time an eventually either just stop running or tapering out to a rough running situation. This past two weeks when she died in rather snowy weather she would no longer start at first or run well at all. I without thinking thought it was the anti-theft (in part it was part of the issue). I managed to get the car home an ran again straight into another no start situation the next morning. I was so angry I stopped thinking right an contemplated just buying another more reliable car.

I slept on it and the next day was nice, car started up, ran roughly for about 10 minutes and leveled out. Great, drove to work with only minor hiccups. Leaving work.. raining like mad. Uh oh I thought and I was right, she bucked idled up and down from 800rpm to about 3k constantly. Was a not so pleasant drive home. Got home, again no start.

So I decided I may as well get down to fixing those things I had put off. Broke down and bought a OBDII scanner, grabbed Torque ap as it has been suggested to me often and set to work.

I pulled the drivers seat so I could access under the dash more easily and to my suprise, 2 of the wires I had repaired had come undone. Yea at this point I was kicking my butt for using crimp splicing and not splicing/soldering and shrink tubing the connections that were repaired. So, it started fine after this fix but, again still running horrible. I put it off for the night it was late and I was once more angry at the car.

This morning, I had decided I was going to do an overall inspection of the wiring underneath the car. I had done a rough over when I inspected the PCM 6 months previously but I did not crawl under the car. Right away as I traced the harness I found a rather glaring issue staring me in the face. The lower trunk of harness as it left the drivers side front of the car was jammed in between two metal components in a fashion where it had sheared through 9 of the harness wires and put severe crinks in many of the other wires. I was taken in shock and set out to removing the protective cover as well as inspecting the rest of the trunk line going to the PCM. After several hours, much shivering(it was raining), I got it temporarily fixed until I can get better supplies.

I say thank you as this place has given me so many ideas and directions for troubleshooting over the past two years that the only money I've put into the car aside from plugs, wires, filters and oil was for tires and replacement headlights.

I did hook up my OBDII scanner and drove the car for over an hour, sometimes highway sometimes in stop and go and the car performed far better than the day I bought her.

The damage found under the car, drivers side.

Gaurd & tape removed.

Temporarily repaired mostly for testing and the fact I don't have a solder gun on hand today.