My car has recently begun starting the motor any time I'm moving at low speeds and accelerate rapidly. It's as though it was trying to give me some extra power... but it's actually a bit of a nightmare.
The problem is that when you first start the engine on the volt it's useless for about 2 minutes while it warms up. Not only that but there is always a power drop as it starts, so while I'm trying to accelerate, it's actually slowing down.
The bigger problem, however, is when this happens it seems as though the clutches lock for about 10 seconds. What I mean by this is that the wheel speed is tied to the engine speed--and the engine is stuck at idle so the car absolutely refuses to accelerate at all--in fact it slows down more often than not.
I've been ignoring the problem thinking it was something simple and mostly harmless but this happened today while I was doing a U-Turn and since I was moving extremely slow and the engine was tied to the wheels it started making a bunch of not-good sounding noise. I put it in neutral and it calmed down, but since I was in the middle of the street I had to go, as soon as I put it back in gear it stalled the engine (More noise as it tried to restart it) until I went back into neutral. this happened a few times until I just sat and waited out the 10-20 seconds that the engine usually runs until it decides it's not really needed and shuts itself off again--After that I dropped it into gear and it happily drove off.
I haven't seen a dealer yet but I'm not sure how to describe this to one--I'm afraid they will say it's "Engine maintenance" or something. (I just tried calling Chevrolet's help line and, yeah, it's absolutely impossible to describe to someone who doesn't understand the volt)
Does anyone know the cause of this or how I should describe it to a tech who doesn't necessarily specialize in the volt?
