Chevy Volt Air Filter - The manual is wrong!
After our old Ford Fusion went for a swim in a rainstorm, we brought home a 2016 Chevy Volt. We’ve enjoyed driving the car over the past year. It’s a lot of fun to drive - and we really appreciate almost never needing to stop at a gas station. My wife likes the car as well.
We’re coming up on the 45,000mi service checkpoint. In general, electic vehicles don’t have much to maintain. At this checkpoint, GM suggests changing the engine air filter and the passenger cabin air filter.
The usual first step in changing the air filter was to check the user manual. According to the manual available from the Chevy website, the correct part number is an AC Delco Part A3148C.
When I searched all of the typical automotive supply companies - AutoZone, O’Reilly, RockAuto, they all showed a different part as the correct one. Digging into this further, I found this thread on an online Volt forum. It turns out the manual is incorrect. It seems that they never updated the manual when they released the Gen2 car in 2016. The correct part is AC Delco A3217C.
| Model Year | Generation | Air Filter Part | Cabin Air Filter |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2012 | 1 | AC Delco A3148C | AC Delco CF185 |
| 2013 | 1 | AC Delco A3148C | AC Delco CF185 |
| 2014 | 1 | AC Delco A3148C | AC Delco CF185 |
| 2015 | 1 | AC Delco A3148C | AC Delco CF185 |
| 2016 | 2 | AC Delco A3217C | AC Delco CF185 |
| 2017 | 2 | AC Delco A3217C | AC Delco CF185 |
| 2018 | 2 | AC Delco A3217C | AC Delco CF185 |
| 2019 | 2 | AC Delco A3217C | AC Delco CF185 |
Considering how few parts are actually replaced during maintenence on the Volt, I’m surprised they had the same misprint two years in a row! Moreover, this isn’t documented in any errata that I could find. Of course, GM will lean on the information in the manual to deny warranty coverage.
Hopefully this post will save some time for someone out there!