Purchased this 2014 Impala 2LT with ~38000 miles on it around Christmas of 2016. A little over 2 months later the infotainment screen went black and never came back on. The radio, wheel controls, and the button for the storage compartment work, but the screen and center console media controls are dead.
Seeing as the car was out of warranty and I needed it for my commute to another city for work, I couldn't afford the time or money to take it in to get repaired, so I postponed.
I am no longer commuting for work so I finally had time to bring the car in for diagnosis on 3/22/18, over a year after the screen died. Frankly I've gotten used to it at this point...
Diagnosis is that the screen is shorted out. Dealer wants $1,100 parts and labor to replace the entire center stack (GM Part: 84207719), because apparently making this Chevrolet (not Buick, not Cadillac...) as expensive to fix as possible was GM's design criteria.
I have declined the repair and do not intend to get the problem fixed unless GM is willing to take some responsibility for the defective parts and poor design of a component that should last the lifetime of the vehicle.
I've owned many GM vehicles over the years and all of them have been 10+ years old and had working factory radios, cassette decks, CD players, etc. This is the first time I have encountered something so absurd.
This part failure and associated cost to repair is unacceptable.
Update from Jul 12, 2018: Purchased a working control panel from a reputable junkyard and installed it. The condition of failure remains the same so I can only conclude that the control panel is not to blame.
I have done more troubleshooting with wiring diagrams and have discovered that so far the failure symptoms all seem to be USB and HMI related. There are three USB connections on the HMI for three standalone USB circuits in the car: one for the USB behind the screen, one for the USB hub in the center console, and one for the USB cable that runs to the control panel screen.
None of the USB related components work. I don't know much about the HMI's construction but my assumption at this time is that the USB module of the HMI has failed. I think the power for the radio passes through a separate circuit in the HMI (plug X1) allowing the radio to continue functioning even though the rest of the module has failed.
I will update again in the future if I know more. For now though, I have discovered that my AUX jack works because it connects straight to the radio rather than the HMI. So I have that going for me and my music.
A D V E R T I S E M E N T S
Purchased this 2014 Impala 2LT with ~38000 miles on it around Christmas of 2016. A little over 2 months later the infotainment screen went black and never came back on. The radio, wheel controls, and the button for the storage compartment work, but the screen and center console media controls are dead.
Seeing as the car was out of warranty and I needed it for my commute to another city for work, I couldn't afford the time or money to take it in to get repaired, so I postponed.
I am no longer commuting for work so I finally had time to bring the car in for diagnosis on 3/22/18, over a year after the screen died. Frankly I've gotten used to it at this point...
Diagnosis is that the screen is shorted out. Dealer wants $1,100 parts and labor to replace the entire center stack (GM Part: 84207719), because apparently making this Chevrolet (not Buick, not Cadillac...) as expensive to fix as possible was GM's design criteria.
I have declined the repair and do not intend to get the problem fixed unless GM is willing to take some responsibility for the defective parts and poor design of a component that should last the lifetime of the vehicle.
I've owned many GM vehicles over the years and all of them have been 10+ years old and had working factory radios, cassette decks, CD players, etc. This is the first time I have encountered something so absurd.
This part failure and associated cost to repair is unacceptable.
Update from Jul 12, 2018: Purchased a working control panel from a reputable junkyard and installed it. The condition of failure remains the same so I can only conclude that the control panel is not to blame.
I have done more troubleshooting with wiring diagrams and have discovered that so far the failure symptoms all seem to be USB and HMI related. There are three USB connections on the HMI for three standalone USB circuits in the car: one for the USB behind the screen, one for the USB hub in the center console, and one for the USB cable that runs to the control panel screen.
None of the USB related components work. I don't know much about the HMI's construction but my assumption at this time is that the USB module of the HMI has failed. I think the power for the radio passes through a separate circuit in the HMI (plug X1) allowing the radio to continue functioning even though the rest of the module has failed.
I will update again in the future if I know more. For now though, I have discovered that my AUX jack works because it connects straight to the radio rather than the HMI. So I have that going for me and my music.
- Carter P., Buffalo, NY, US