GenVibe - Community for Pontiac Vibe Enthusiasts

The new Vibe is great! Lots of compliments and here is a picture after three coatings of Mother's carnauba wax.

One thing though is the gas pedal/accelerator is way too sensitive - I barely touch the pedal and the car is spinning gravel in my driveway. And 1/4 push on the gas pedal kicks down the tranny TWICE and the next thing I'm doing 70 mph!



Any insights will be most appreciated!

Nice Vibe


It does have Drive by Wire, which is probably explaining the touchy pedal. The Scion xd which is also DBW has been described as having a "touchy" pedal as well. Try to find an empty lot and practice with the accelelerator. You may have one where not too much pressure will get the car moving fast, as you've mentioned. What engine do you have?

Capnblinski wrote:The new Vibe is great! Lots of compliments and here is a picture after three coatings of Mother's carnauba wax.

Looks REAL good Love that shine

Capnblinski wrote: One thing though is the gas pedal/accelerator is way too sensitive - I barely touch the pedal and the car is spinning gravel in my driveway. And 1/4 push on the gas pedal kicks down the tranny TWICE and the next thing I'm doing 70 mph!

You can thank those four people who's Camry/Corrola (not sure which car) whose car had a 'runnaway STUCK" acceleration pedal and drove their car into a pond and drowned. Anyways that sparked the nationwide recall of the accelerator pedal and then MOST of the 09-10 Vibes had the pedals circumcised and a shim installed somewhere to where it is now much tighter and takes a bit more force to rev the engine. The problem is exactly what you & others here have described. Anyways it was this recall that messed up your acceleration. I believe you can go back to the dealer and demand a completely new pedal to be installed. Others here had this done and it made a huge difference. I personally refuse to have mind altered. I have the manual 5-speed and don't ever see any issues with the car running away from me. Look into this and maybe you'll get somewhere

Definitely contact your local GM dealer and see whether any of the pedal recalls tpollauf mentioned have been done to your Vibe or not. After having both recalls done on both our Vibes, I had the dealer replace both accelerator pedal assemblies with the brand new, re-designed ones and they are not nearly as touchy as they used to be.

Hmmmm - I will delve into this issue some more - thanks!

zyther - the engine is the 2.4L

Have an appointment with the GM dealer next week who sold the car to us. I also have a case opened with the NHTSB. So we'll see what happens - I'm hoping this won't turn into a worse SNAFU - just don't trust the dealerships too much.

Mine was kind of tweaky when I first got my '06 (it was 2 years old). I found a procedure to calibrate the gas pedal that involves pressing it down fully with the engine off and operating the ignition switch in a particular sequence. It fixed mine, or at least it is a lot less sensitive now. I'll see if I can find the procedure that I used.

Here is the thread:

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Okay. I fixed my "sensitive" throttle that makes the car lunge forward from stop. A lot of people said it's the normal DBW (drive-by-wire) being slow to register etc etc. But all it is the throttle body needs to be cleaned. 5 mins and the throttle response from stop is smooth as a Lexus now