CHEVROLET AVEO 2002 Service Repair Manual

Care of Your CDs
Handle CDs carefully. Store them in their original cases
or other protective cases and away from direct
sunlight and dust. If the surface of a CD is soiled,
dampen a clean, soft cloth in a mild, neutral detergent
solution and clean it, wiping from the center to the edge.
Be sure never to touch the side without writing when
handling CDs. Pick up CDs by grasping the outer edges
or the edge of the hole and the outer edge.
Care of Your CD Player
The use of CD lens cleaners for CD players is not
advised, due to the risk of contaminating the lens of the
CD optics with lubricants internal to the CD mechanism.
Backglass Antenna
The AM-FM antenna is integrated with the rear window
defogger, located in the rear window. Be sure that the
inside surface of the rear window is not scratched and
that the lines on the glass are not damaged. If the inside
surface is damaged, it could interfere with radio
reception. Also, for proper radio reception, the antenna
connector at the top-center of the rear window needs to
be properly attached to the post on the glass.Notice:Using a razor blade or sharp object to clear
the inside rear window may damage the rear window
antenna and/or the rear window defogger. Repairs
would not be covered by your warranty. Do not clear
the inside rear window with sharp objects.
Notice:Do not apply aftermarket glass tinting with
metallic lm. The metallic lm in some tinting
materials will interfere with or distort the incoming
radio reception. Any damage caused to your
backglass antenna due to metallic tinting materials
will not be covered by your warranty.
Because this antenna is built into your rear window,
there is a reduced risk of damage caused by car washes
and vandals.
If you choose to add a cellular telephone to your
vehicle, and the antenna needs to be attached to the
glass, be sure that you do not damage the grid lines for
the AM-FM antenna. There is enough space between
the lines to attach a cellular telephone antenna
without interfering with radio reception.
Do not apply aftermarket glass tinting to the back glass.
The metallic film in some tinting materials will interfere
with or distort the incoming radio reception. Care
must be taken when cleaning the rear window because
it breaks in the resistive material heating element
and will adversely affect radio and defogger
performance. See your dealer for details.
3-44

Your Driving, the Road, and Your Vehicle..........4-2
Defensive Driving...........................................4-2
Drunken Driving.............................................4-3
Control of a Vehicle........................................4-6
Braking.........................................................4-6
Steering......................................................4-10
Off-Road Recovery.......................................4-12
Passing.......................................................4-12
Loss of Control.............................................4-14
Driving at Night............................................4-15
Driving in Rain and on Wet Roads..................4-16
City Driving..................................................4-19Freeway Driving...........................................4-20
Before Leaving on a Long Trip.......................4-21
Highway Hypnosis........................................4-22
Hill and Mountain Roads................................4-22
Winter Driving..............................................4-24
If You Are Stuck: In Sand, Mud,
Ice or Snow..............................................4-28
Towing..........................................................4-29
Towing Your Vehicle.....................................4-29
Recreational Vehicle Towing...........................4-29
Loading Your Vehicle....................................4-32
Towing a Trailer...........................................4-37
Section 4 Driving Your Vehicle
4-1

Your Driving, the Road, and
Your Vehicle
Defensive Driving
The best advice anyone can give about driving is:
Drive defensively.
Please start with a very important safety device in your
vehicle: Buckle up. SeeSafety Belts: They Are for
Everyone on page 1-10.
Defensive driving really means “be ready for anything.”
On city streets, rural roads or freeways, it means
“always expect the unexpected.”
Assume that pedestrians or other drivers are going to
be careless and make mistakes. Anticipate what
they might do. Be ready for their mistakes.Rear-end collisions are about the most preventable of
accidents. Yet they are common. Allow enough following
distance. It is the best defensive driving maneuver,
in both city and rural driving. You never know when
the vehicle in front of you is going to brake or turn
suddenly.
Defensive driving requires that a driver concentrate on
the driving task. Anything that distracts from the
driving task — such as concentrating on a cellular
telephone call, reading, or reaching for something on
the floor — makes proper defensive driving more difficult
and can even cause a collision, with resulting injury.
Ask a passenger to help do things like this, or pull off the
road in a safe place to do them yourself. These simple
defensive driving techniques could save your life.
4-2

Drunken Driving
Death and injury associated with drinking and driving is
a national tragedy. It is the number one contributor
to the highway death toll, claiming thousands of victims
every year.
Alcohol affects four things that anyone needs to drive
a vehicle:
•Judgment
•Muscular Coordination
•Vision
•Attentiveness.
Police records show that almost half of all motor
vehicle-related deaths involve alcohol. In most cases,
these deaths are the result of someone who was
drinking and driving. In recent years, more than
16,000 annual motor vehicle-related deaths have been
associated with the use of alcohol, with more than
300,000 people injured.Many adults — by some estimates, nearly half the adult
population — choose never to drink alcohol, so they
never drive after drinking. For persons under 21,
it is against the law in every U.S. state to drink alcohol.
There are good medical, psychological and
developmental reasons for these laws.
The obvious way to eliminate the leading highway
safety problem is for people never to drink alcohol and
then drive. But what if people do? How much is
“too much” if someone plans to drive? It is a lot less
than many might think. Although it depends on
each person and situation, here is some general
information on the problem.
The Blood Alcohol Concentration (BAC) of someone
who is drinking depends upon four things:
•The amount of alcohol consumed
•The drinker’s body weight
•The amount of food that is consumed before and
during drinking
•The length of time it has taken the drinker to
consume the alcohol.
4-3

According to the American Medical Association, a 180 lb
(82 kg) person who drinks three 12 ounce (355 ml)
bottles of beer in an hour will end up with a BAC
of about 0.06 percent. The person would reach the
same BAC by drinking three 4 ounce (120 ml) glasses
of wine or three mixed drinks if each had 1-1/2 ounces
(45 ml) of liquors like whiskey, gin or vodka.It is the amount of alcohol that counts. For example,
if the same person drank three double martinis
(3 ounces or 90 ml of liquor each) within an hour,
the person’s BAC would be close to 0.12 percent.
A person who consumes food just before or during
drinking will have a somewhat lower BAC level.
There is a gender difference, too. Women generally
have a lower relative percentage of body water
than men. Since alcohol is carried in body water, this
means that a woman generally will reach a higher BAC
level than a man of her same body weight will when
each has the same number of drinks.
The law in an increasing number of U.S. states, and
throughout Canada, sets the legal limit at 0.08 percent.
In some other countries, the limit is even lower. For
example, it is 0.05 percent in both France and Germany.
The BAC limit for all commercial drivers in the United
States is 0.04 percent.
The BAC will be over 0.10 percent after three to
six drinks (in one hour). Of course, as we have seen,
it depends on how much alcohol is in the drinks,
and how quickly the person drinks them.
4-4

But the ability to drive is affected well below a BAC of
0.10 percent. Research shows that the driving skills
of many people are impaired at a BAC approaching
0.05 percent, and that the effects are worse at night.
All drivers are impaired at BAC levels above
0.05 percent. Statistics show that the chance of
being in a collision increases sharply for drivers who
have a BAC of 0.05 percent or above. A driver with
a BAC level of 0.06 percent has doubled his or
her chance of having a collision. At a BAC level of
0.10 percent, the chance of this driver having a
collision is 12 times greater; at a level of 0.15 percent,
the chance is 25 times greater!
The body takes about an hour to rid itself of the alcohol
in one drink. No amount of coffee or number of cold
showers will speed that up. “I will be careful” is not the
right answer. What if there is an emergency, a need to
take sudden action, as when a child darts into the street?
A person with even a moderate BAC might not be able to
react quickly enough to avoid the collision.There is something else about drinking and driving that
many people do not know. Medical research shows
that alcohol in a person’s system can make crash
injuries worse, especially injuries to the brain, spinal
cord or heart. This means that when anyone who has
been drinking — driver or passenger — is in a crash,
that person’s chance of being killed or permanently
disabled is higher than if the person had not been
drinking.
{CAUTION:
Drinking and then driving is very dangerous.
Your reexes, perceptions, attentiveness and
judgment can be affected by even a small
amount of alcohol. You can have a serious — or
even fatal — collision if you drive after drinking.
Please do not drink and drive or ride with a
driver who has been drinking. Ride home in a
cab; or if you are with a group, designate a
driver who will not drink.
4-5

Control of a Vehicle
You have three systems that make your vehicle go where
you want it to go. They are the brakes, the steering and
the accelerator. All three systems have to do their work at
the places where the tires meet the road.
Sometimes, as when you are driving on snow or ice,
it is easy to ask more of those control systems than the
tires and road can provide. That means you can lose
control of your vehicle.
Braking
Braking action involvesperception timeand
reaction time.
First, you have to decide to push on the brake pedal.
That isperception time.Then you have to bring up
your foot and do it. That isreaction time.
Averagereaction timeis about 3/4 of a second. But that
is only an average. It might be less with one driver and
as long as two or three seconds or more with another.
Age, physical condition, alertness, coordination and
eyesight all play a part. So do alcohol, drugs and
frustration. But even in 3/4 of a second, a vehicle moving
at 60 mph (100 km/h) travels 66 feet (20 m). That could
be a lot of distance in an emergency, so keeping enough
space between your vehicle and others is important.
And, of course, actual stopping distances vary greatly
with the surface of the road (whether it is pavement
or gravel); the condition of the road (wet, dry, icy); tire
tread; the condition of your brakes; the weight of
the vehicle and the amount of brake force applied.
4-6

Avoid needless heavy braking. Some people drive
in spurts−heavy acceleration followed by heavy
braking — rather than keeping pace with traffic. This is
a mistake. Your brakes may not have time to cool
between hard stops. Your brakes will wear out much
faster if you do a lot of heavy braking. If you keep pace
with the traffic and allow realistic following distances,
you will eliminate a lot of unnecessary braking.
That means better braking and longer brake life.
If your engine ever stops while you are driving, brake
normally but do not pump your brakes. If you do,
the pedal may get harder to push down. If your engine
stops, you will still have some power brake assist.
But you will use it when you brake. Once the power
assist is used up, it may take longer to stop and
the brake pedal will be harder to push.Anti-lock Brake System (ABS)
Your vehicle may have anti-lock brakes. ABS is an
advanced electronic braking system that will help
prevent a braking skid.
If your vehicle has anti-lock
brakes, this warning light
on the instrument panel will
come on briefly when
you start your vehicle.
4-7

Let us say the road is wet and you are driving safely.
Suddenly, an animal jumps out in front of you. You slam
on the brakes and continue braking. Here is what
happens with ABS:
A computer senses that wheels are slowing down.
If one of the wheels is about to stop rolling, the computer
will separately work the brakes at each wheel.The anti-lock system can change the brake pressure
faster than any driver could. The computer is
programmed to make the most of available tire and road
conditions. This can help you steer around the obstacle
while braking hard.
As you brake, your computer keeps receiving updates
on wheel speed and controls braking pressure
accordingly.
4-8

Remember: Anti-lock does not change the time you
need to get your foot up to the brake pedal or always
decrease stopping distance. If you get too close to
the vehicle in front of you, you will not have time to apply
your brakes if that vehicle suddenly slows or stops.
Always leave enough room up ahead to stop, even
though you have anti-lock brakes.
Using Anti-Lock
Do not pump the brakes. Just hold the brake pedal
down firmly and let anti-lock work for you. You may feel
a slight brake pedal pulsation or notice some noise,
but this is normal.
Braking in Emergencies
At some time, nearly every driver gets into a situation
that requires hard braking.
If you have anti-lock, you can steer and brake at the
same time. However, if you do not have anti-lock, your
first reaction — to hit the brake pedal hard and hold
it down — may be the wrong thing to do. Your wheelscan stop rolling. Once they do, the vehicle can not
respond to your steering. Momentum will carry it
in whatever direction it was headed when the wheels
stopped rolling. That could be off the road, into the very
thing you were trying to avoid, or into traffic.
If you do not have anti-lock, use a “squeeze” braking
technique. This will give you maximum braking
while maintaining steering control. You can do this by
pushing on the brake pedal with steadily increasing
pressure.
In an emergency, you will probably want to squeeze the
brakes hard without locking the wheels. If you hear or
feel the wheels sliding, ease off the brake pedal.
This will help you retain steering control. If youdohave
anti-lock, it is different. See “Anti-Lock Brake System”
in this section.
In many emergencies, steering can help you more than
even the very best braking.
4-9