[Volusiano]

Thanks for the feedback, everyone! I just updated the guide to address common issues and changes.

I must join everyone here to extend my personal thank to @bit1817 for doing the write-up. Without it, I don't know if I would have the courage to try it out myself or not.

Just a short update that I was able to drive around all day yesterday and today and no SHVCS error shows up again. I was also able to recomplete most of my emission monitors except for the O2 sensor for the smog test, without having to drive for 100 miles or several days on gas like some of the dealers suggested. I've also heard of a suggestion to drive 500 miles on gas from a repair shop right next to the smog test facility.

To restore most of my emission monitors, I just depleted my battery then ran in Mountain Mode (not Hold to make sure that the ICE doesn't shutdown at times automatically) for about 15 minutes at 65 mph on the freeway until I got home to get the engine nice and hot. Then park overnight for >8 hours. The next day most of my monitors were set except for fuel system and O2 Sensor. I then followed the GM drive cycle recommendation to drive on gas at a constant 55 mph for at least 3 minutes. It's supposed to complete my O2 Sensor and my Fuel System monitors. But it only completed the Fuel System one, my O2 Sensor remains the only incomplete monitor now according to the Torque app. I guess I could have incorporated this 55 mph constant speed for 3 minute procedure with my first drive as well, if I had known ahead of time that this needs to be done to set the O2 sensor and fuel trim system.

The AZ emission test allows for 1 Not Ready monitor, so I think I'm going to take my Volt in for the emission test tomorrow anyway, despite the O2 Sensor monitor still incomplete. But if anybody has a suggestion on how to complete the O2 Sensor monitor, I'm all ears.

Update: another 3 minute drive in ICE mode at constant 55 mph on the freeway this morning on the way to the smog test helped cleared my last monitor, the O2 Sensor. Not that I needed it because I'm allowed 1 incomplete, but at least it's good to know that you don't have to drive 500 miles or even 100 miles to restore the emission monitors like the dealers tend to lead people to believe. In my case, it took 3 short drives of about 15 minutes each. But in hindsight now, I could probably have combined it all into a single drive of about 20 minutes altogether to restore all the emission monitors.

 

[torentino]

Hello, trying to set up the whole thing, but can't find the right subscription at ACDelco. Which one is suitable? Please, see the picture.

 

[Volusiano]

Hello, trying to set up the whole thing, but can't find the right subscription at ACDelco. Which one is suitable? Please, see the picture.

I assume that you go to the acdelcotds.com website?

It looks like you're in Europe because the pricing shown for the subscription is in Euros. The US-based subscription that costs $45 for a 2 year subscription for 1 VIN is for the SPS2. It looks like you do have the SPS2 subscription offerings in there, but it seems like it's based on hour, day, week or month. I would actually prefer this offering because it would cost much less if you can get everything done within an hour or a day.

If you want to get the US-based SPS2 subscription of 2 years, you would probably have to go through a VPN to mask your location as a US-based site. However, I don't really know if the GM system sees your VIN and determine that it's a European-sold Volt, it may complain that you need to have a European-based SPS2 subscription in order to reprogram the module.

If I were you, I would select the hour or the day option. The biggest hurdle to me was the creation of the VMWare virtual machine (simply takes a lot of time to download and install), then installing the VX Manager (due to virus and hard to find downloads). But if you finish all that first, then it's possible to get the TechConnect Line software to install and update within 1/2 an hour, giving you another 1/2 hour to complete the 2 modules reprogram. Worst case scenario, you just buy another 1 hour subscription to finish if you run out of time (assuming they let you buy by more hourly subscriptions).

 

[torentino]

Thank you, will try to sort it out....

 

[Ender]

Thanks for the Guide!

Just did it in Germany and it was 22 Euro for a day.

Worked like a charm.

Still have 20h left, anything else i can do / mess up with that setup?



Ender

 

[eansru]

Giant THANK YOU.

Amazing directions, tried this on Win7 but saw your thread and used it exactly as you said (w/ Win10) and completed the updates.

Since this thread is long, I'll throw out an error I got:

E4399 unable to connect to module.

I searched this thread and didn't see it. TSB says voltage/comm. issue.

The TSB also mentions ways to get past this: Change "Reprogram" -> "Replace and Reprogram". I didn't see that mentioned in the paper.

This selection is witnessed on the page where you click next to begin programming, on the upper right hand corner of the screen.

The TSB also mentions trying a different cord, or slowing down the programming speed. I didn't need that, so that's all I know.
The TSB is readily available with some googling around E4399.


Thanks again. I made an account just to say thank you. I guess my journey into this site begins!

 

[Chuckminister]

Afternoon! 2012 Volt- sitting in the garage for a few months. I get all the way to connecting vehicle, but when trying to “connect vehicle” using Techline Connect, I get an error message “PC Software Installation Error (or Missing Server/DLL/API), and am unable to get past it. Has anyone seen this before? Thanks!

 

[Volusiano]

Afternoon! 2012 Volt- sitting in the garage for a few months. I get all the way to connecting vehicle, but when trying to “connect vehicle” using Techline Connect, I get an error message “PC Software Installation Error (or Missing Server/DLL/API), and am unable to get past it. Has anyone seen this before? Thanks! View attachment 176436

Sorry I didn't see this post until now. Were you able to get past it yet? The only thing I can think of is that this is the step where your VCX Nano makes the connection between your Techline Connect software and the Volt, so it's possible that the VCX Nano was not configured properly somehow and therefore not visible to the Techline Connect software, especially if you didn't get to see a list of device type to choose from so you can select VXDIAG.

If you were able to complete the step 8 and 9 to download/install/setup the VX Manager successfully all the way through without any hiccup, and also able to install and launch Techline Connect successfully in step 10, then maybe there's some kind of USB interface issue between your PC and the VCX Nano. Did you make sure to select to connect the VCX Nano to the virtual machine and not the PC? (the star bullet in step 8 just before the last bullet to Click Finish)

Did you try to reboot your PC or at least your VMWare session and relaunch Techline Connect to see if it solves your issue?

If reboot doesn't help, I wonder if you may have a different PC you can try? Perhaps a different PC may not have the USB interface issue with the VCX Nano like the one you're using. Just a wild guess, of course, but that's all I can think of. Good luck!

 

[Ender]

Well i used (as advised) a fresh W10 VM.
If you did not that would be a second attemot, also because of the Malware / Virus scare that most of the involved Software raises...

 

[Chuckminister]

Thank you all for your advice, and of course the original post! my initial post was using Windows 7, and I was unable to get past the referenced error message (PC Software installation message). So I started over and followed the video/directions to the letter- and it worked! The car started! However, I charged the car for 2 days, and it showed 33 miles of battery range. Took it for a short test drive, and it was running on battery, but the battery was grayed out, and the computer showed it was driving on gas (although it showed 1 kw hour and 0 gas used). A bit spooked to take it for a long 30 mile drive to work yet. Any Thoughts?

 

[Ender]

Now that sounds very strange!
I heard that sometimes after the HPCM2 flash the battery will be recalibrated, maybe this is it?
-- driving to work, i guess the worst that could happen is that you really drive on gasoline. I hope

Good luck, spooky indeed.

Ender

 

[Volusiano]

Took it for a short test drive, and it was running on battery, but the battery was grayed out, and the computer showed it was driving on gas (although it showed 1 kw hour and 0 gas used). A bit spooked to take it for a long 30 mile drive to work yet. Any Thoughts?

You will need to clarify what you said. Was the car running on battery (green battery shown on the left on the dashboard), then all of a sudden it was grayed out? Or whether you put it in Mountain Mode while driving and because of that, the battery grayed out and the car is shown to run on gas.

Starting with the 2013 model, the Hold mode was added. But you said that you have the 2012 model, so it would only have the Mountain Mode. When put in Mountain Mode, about 40% of your battery is preserved to help you climb up a mountain with ease. Therefore you will see the bottom half of the battery indicator grayed out, and whatever battery juice above that grayed out level is still green. Once you start using up the green portion of the battery above the reserved gray portion, the car will switch over to run on gas to preserve the gray portion of the battery for mountain mode.

So if you switched the car to Mountain Mode while driving, that's probably what you're seeing. If your car is in Normal mode, the battery is supposed to stay green and get used up before the car would switch over to gas. If you're running on gas and switch to Mountain Mode, the car would run the engine harder than normal to build up a charge in the battery (that would show gray color) until about 40% of the battery capacity is reached before the car would run the engine at the normal pace.

 

[Volusiano]

Now that sounds very strange!
I heard that sometimes after the HPCM2 flash the battery will be recalibrated, maybe this is it?

Right after I reprogrammed the 2 modules, my car showed a 44 mile range after a full charge, which I could never get before. So I think that was from the battery getting recalibrated like you said. But subsequent charges went back down to under 40 miles like normal. I wouldn't worry too much about the battery "Guesstimator"'s range estimate. That fluctuates all the times depending on your varying driving habit.

On the gray battery thing, like I mentioned in my earlier post, it's possible that the Drive mode was changed from Normal to Mountain Mode. The gray color on the battery indicator should only happen in Mountain Mode for the reserved battery range saved up to climb the mountain.

But you're right that Chuckminister should just take it out for a drive to work, and the worst that can happen is that it eats into the gas, that's all. There's nothing to be spooked about. Maybe after a few runs, things will get back to normal.

 

[mitchtheriault]

I just flashed my BECM and HPCM2. Worked like a charm, and I was able to charge again. My first drive after charging, it greyed out the battery (even though it was showing a full charge) and ran on the gas engine, which was a little odd. Then, I started to notice the engine was sounding pretty funny. Like, extremely loud and bassy, almost like there's an exhaust leak or something. The next drive after that the car used battery so it was silent, of course. But if I open the hood while its running to check the engine sound, sure enough... it's way louder than it was before. It's going to be super obnoxious on the road next time I run out of battery range.

Could this have been related to reprogramming these modules? Or did my car just coincidentally develop an exhaust issue right after the procedure? 😅

EDIT/UPDATE: Took it to a muffler shop and they patched up the issue. Turns out it was in fact a coincidence. Correlation doesn’t imply causation, folks!

 

[Volusiano]

I just flashed my BECM and HPCM2. Worked like a charm, and I was able to charge again. My first drive after charging, it greyed out the battery (even though it was showing a full charge) and ran on the gas engine, which was a little odd.

You're the second person now who reported the grayed out battery after the HPCM2 and BECM reprogram. It is beginning to seem kinda weird. So when did it go green again? When you started the Volt for your second drive? Or did it go green some time during the first drive after you drove on gas for a while? And you're pretty sure you weren't in Mountain Mode when the battery grayed out?

 

[mitchtheriault]

You're the second person now who reported the grayed out battery after the HPCM2 and BECM reprogram. It is beginning to seem kinda weird. So when did it go green again? When you started the Volt for your second drive? Or did it go green some time during the first drive after you drove on gas for a while? And you're pretty sure you weren't in Mountain Mode when the battery grayed out?

It goes green when it feels like it, hahah! This morning I took it out and it was running on gas with a full battery. Later in the day, I drove it again and it was on battery. Just now I drove it again and it’s sticking to gas with 50km of electric range left.

I think this behavior is just a result of the battery being 12 years old and pretty degraded at this point. It’s almost acting as if it’s in “hold” mode (even though mine is a 2012), as if it thinks it needs to reserve most of the battery. It was 7 degrees Celsius out here today. Not super cold, so I don’t think this would be due to temperature… but we’ll see if this changes when it gets warmer here in Ontario.

Oh, and I haven’t used mountain mode today.

 

[Volusiano]

It goes green when it feels like it, hahah! This morning I took it out and it was running on gas with a full battery. Later in the day, I drove it again and it was on battery. Just now I drove it again and it’s sticking to gas with 50km of electric range left.

I think this behavior is just a result of the battery being 12 years old and pretty degraded at this point. It’s almost acting as if it’s in “hold” mode (even though mine is a 2012), as if it thinks it needs to reserve most of the battery. It was 7 degrees Celsius out here today. Not super cold, so I don’t think this would be due to temperature… but we’ll see if this changes when it gets warmer here in Ontario.

Oh, and I haven’t used mountain mode today.

How many km of battery range did it show you after a night of full charge, if you don't mind my asking? Just trying to establish how much charge capacity your battery has left after 12 years. Even if the battery had truly been degraded after 12 years to the point of causing it to be "reserved" like you said, I wouldn't think that you'd even see the 50 km (31 miles) of electric range remaining when your Volt switched to gas again this morning.

I assume that you know about the EMM (engine maintenance mode) where it would force you to run on gas for several minutes to exercise the gas engine if your car hasn't been in running on gas for about 6 weeks. I don't supposed that this is what happened to you this morning? I'm sure you would have gotten a message on your screen about it already to be aware of it.

Then there's the FMM (Fuel Maintenance Mode) where the car can be forced to run of gas to get rid of 1+ year old fuel if not mixed in with new fuel to raise the average fuel age up. I don't know if this is the case for you or not, but like EMM, you'd get a clear message about this. But it leads to the question of what you were driving the Volt on before you were able to fix the SHVCS error? Were you unable to charge and decide to drive the Volt on gas exclusively until you reprogrammed the HPCM2 and BECM? Or did you use a BDII to clear out the fault each time to let the car charge? If the earlier, then it couldn't have been year-old stale fuel that would need to be burned up.

Then there's ERDTT (Engine Running Due To Temperature). Although you said it was only 7 degrees C this morning, which is about 45F, for some late model 2012 (maybe yours?) and later, you can set it to either 35F or 15F. It's possible that maybe you had a late model 2012 and had yours set to 35F, and the temperature sensor on your Volt is not that accurate anymore and registered 35F instead of the sensor that was showing 45F on your dashboard. If that's the case, then it'd make sense that the car might have started on gas this morning first thing due to ERDTT to warm up the battery and the cabin, then as it warmed up enought later in the day, it switched back to be battery. Then "just now" (whenever that is?), perhaps it got cold enough again to trigger ERDTT again?

I think the ERDTT is probably the most likely scenario in your case, and possibly due to the car ERDTT sensor not calibrated correctly or drifted out of range over the years. Like you said, you can see if it changes when it gets a bit warmer in Ontario to truly know whether ERDTT is the real culprit or not.

I just don't think that the HPCM2 and BECM reprogramming would cause your battery to turn gray randomly like that. At least we've only heard from 2 folks who observed this grayed out battery out of the many others who completed the same reprogramming.

 

[mitchtheriault]

How many km of battery range did it show you after a night of full charge, if you don't mind my asking? Just trying to establish how much charge capacity your battery has left after 12 years. Even if the battery had truly been degraded after 12 years to the point of causing it to be "reserved" like you said, I wouldn't think that you'd even see the 50 km (31 miles) of electric range remaining when your Volt switched to gas again this morning.

I assume that you know about the EMM (engine maintenance mode) where it would force you to run on gas for several minutes to exercise the gas engine if your car hasn't been in running on gas for about 6 weeks. I don't supposed that this is what happened to you this morning? I'm sure you would have gotten a message on your screen about it already to be aware of it.

Then there's the FMM (Fuel Maintenance Mode) where the car can be forced to run of gas to get rid of 1+ year old fuel if not mixed in with new fuel to raise the average fuel age up. I don't know if this is the case for you or not, but like EMM, you'd get a clear message about this. But it leads to the question of what you were driving the Volt on before you were able to fix the SHVCS error? Were you unable to charge and decide to drive the Volt on gas exclusively until you reprogrammed the HPCM2 and BECM? Or did you use a BDII to clear out the fault each time to let the car charge? If the earlier, then it couldn't have been year-old stale fuel that would need to be burned up.

Then there's ERDTT (Engine Running Due To Temperature). Although you said it was only 7 degrees C this morning, which is about 45F, for some late model 2012 (maybe yours?) and later, you can set it to either 35F or 15F. It's possible that maybe you had a late model 2012 and had yours set to 35F, and the temperature sensor on your Volt is not that accurate anymore and registered 35F instead of the sensor that was showing 45F on your dashboard. If that's the case, then it'd make sense that the car might have started on gas this morning first thing due to ERDTT to warm up the battery and the cabin, then as it warmed up enought later in the day, it switched back to be battery. Then "just now" (whenever that is?), perhaps it got cold enough again to trigger ERDTT again?

I think the ERDTT is probably the most likely scenario in your case, and possibly due to the car ERDTT sensor not calibrated correctly or drifted out of range over the years. Like you said, you can see if it changes when it gets a bit warmer in Ontario to truly know whether ERDTT is the real culprit or not.

I just don't think that the HPCM2 and BECM reprogramming would cause your battery to turn gray randomly like that. At least we've only heard from 2 folks who observed this grayed out battery out of the many others who completed the same reprogramming.

I've driven the Volt on exclusively gas for the past 2 years or so. The battery has been exclusively maintained by the gas engine during that time. No chance it was EMM. Also, I don't think ERDTT is very likely either, unless it can do that without displaying the message. I bet one or more of the cells in the battery is just on its way out, and when the car detects a low enough voltage it triggers the range extender mode. I could show you the battery data from MyGreenVolt if you're curious, I don't know how to interpret it.

After a full charge, it was guessing 60km. We'll see if that changes next time I charge it. In the MyGreenVolt app, there's a battery health stat or something like that which said it was at 28%... take that with a grain of salt. Despite this, the car seems to charge up the full 10kwh.

Honestly, I don't think the reprogramming caused this behavior, per se. It just made it possible to observe.

 

[hanksterr7]

Thanks so much for this most excellent write up! I too just recently managed to reprogram the HCM2 module in order to clear the P1FFF code that came from the bad coolant sensor. I bypassed the sensor with the defeat plug. I managed to do the re-programming based on instructions at Volt - Guide: Clear P1FFF with TIS2Web and SPS, and found this thread afterwards which gave similar (although more detailed) instructions. A few observations to add: I initially had a windows xp vm which I used for having the vcx nano talk to the car for gds2 purposes (diagnostics). I tried installing techline connect on windows xp but that did not work (and I did not really expect it to work, since techline connect says it now needs windows 10). I downloaded a new copy of the vxdiag software (from Yandex, that seemed to be the only place now to get it). The download just brings gds2.zip to my pc. gds2.zip contains just a gds2 folder, and that folder contains GDS2AutoInstall.exe, along with an mp4 and a GDS2Install folder. In GDS2Install is gds2.exe, which is the only file I found that has a virus. If you extract the gds2 folder from gds2.zip, and have antivirus software active, you will get notified that gds2.exe is infected and it gets quarantined.
If you run gds2AutoInstall.exe with virus checking turned off, you will get a vx manager <version#>.exe file created. This is the installer for vx manager. I ran gds2AutoInstall.exe a year ago and at that time got vx manager 1.8.6.1224.exe (I think).
When I run this vx manager installer with virus checking enabled (windows defender on windows 10 with up-to-date definitions), I get no virus warnings.
In order to use vcx nano with techline connect, the only thing you need from the vx diag software suite is vx manager.
So, my approach to getting everything to work was to use my xp vm just for the purpose of getting vx manager <version#>.exe out of gds2.zip. I then copied vx manager <version#>.exe from the xp vm to a windows 10 machine and ran the vx manager installer on windows 10, with virus checking enabled, and got no virus issues. I was then able to do the rest of the techline connect stuff on windows 10 and my volt is now happily charging again. Apologies if my comments are duplicative of what others have said in this thread. I did read the comments and didn't see all of these points mentioned, and it seemed that the idea of using a vm just for getting the vx manager installer out of gds2.zip was an interesting option.

 

[Volusiano]

I've driven the Volt on exclusively gas for the past 2 years or so. The battery has been exclusively maintained by the gas engine during that time. No chance it was EMM. Also, I don't think ERDTT is very likely either, unless it can do that without displaying the message. I bet one or more of the cells in the battery is just on its way out, and when the car detects a low enough voltage it triggers the range extender mode. I could show you the battery data from MyGreenVolt if you're curious, I don't know how to interpret it.

After a full charge, it was guessing 60km. We'll see if that changes next time I charge it. In the MyGreenVolt app, there's a battery health stat or something like that which said it was at 28%... take that with a grain of salt. Despite this, the car seems to charge up the full 10kwh.

Honestly, I don't think the reprogramming caused this behavior, per se. It just made it possible to observe.

Thanks for more details on this. When you said that the battery had been exclusively maintained by the gas engine during those 2 years, did you mean that you ran in Mountain Mode during those 2 years to build up the 40 or 50% battery reserve and keep running in Mountain Mode each time to avoid the battery from discharging? Or did you build up the reserve, then ran the battery down, then built up the reserve again? Or did you just leave the battery at the depleted state of charge and just ran on gas the whole time? If the third scenario, then maybe leaving the battery depleted all that time might have been hard on the battery and messed up some cell(s) like you suspected.

Have you had the recall # N172130462 done? I think it's a reprogram of the HPCM2 module to rebalance battery cells properly again to avoid the low propulsion error message. So maybe this reprogram of the HPCM2 that you just did now has the update from that recall included. So if it does, hopefully your bad battery cells may eventually get balanced out eventually after a while and you'll no longer get the intermittent grayed out battery issue that you now have.