I took my SS on a road trip to Austin this past weekend and a few things started messing up on the car. On the way up there the cruise control wouldn't work most of the time, and when i did get it to engage it would shut itself off after about 1-2 minutes. Also under heavy acceleration there were popping sounds like minor backfires occurring. I thought it might be bad gas or something since I had it sitting for a month prior to the trip with a full tank of gas, so i drove it until I had to refill and then put small amounts of gas in it twice in order to get all the previous gas through the system. On the way back the cruise control finally started working again (I'm not sure how long that will last) but the backfiring was still occurring under heavy acceleration. I went to get the computer scanned and the only code that popped up was PO161, which I have had for over a year now and it causes no trouble. Since no other codes were thrown I am kind of lost on how to go about this problem. Does anyone know what could be happening here? Thanks.

 

Isn't PO161 "Running Too Rich: Bank 1"?

If that's what it is, your catalytic converters may be bad. If your car has less than 80,000 miles on it, their replacement is free from GM. I had this happen to me and my exhaust smelled like rotten eggs.

 

No, PO161 is a malfunction in the heater circuit for oxygen sensor 2 in bank 2, behind the passenger cataytic converter. This code went off when I had longtube headers installed and the shop put in new converters, I've never had a problem with that code before, but fixing it is as easy as getting O2 simulators. This seems like something else is occurring....I just can't seem to figure out what.

 

ttt