alright well I have a 2005 cobalt ss/sc, pretty much stock with only 70,000 miles besides
zzp 3" intake
zzp 2.5 catted downpipe
muffler delete

i just drove my car yesterday completely fine, go to start it up this morning and it sputters while shooting out greyish black smoke??

oils fine (still pretty new actually), coolants good, the spark plugs look alright with no oil or fuel around them, im clueless. I will say that ive been driving around with the o2 sensor code from the downpipe on for a while(made sure i got it checked at autozone) but i dont think that would affect anything.

I already had to find a ride into work today and my car is now stuck at a friends house with no garage, ive pulled the negative in hopes of clearing the ecu but no go, so im going to stop at autozone tonight or tomorrow to rent a code reader and hopefully i can get some sort of idea whats going on.

any input is greatly appreciated!!!

 

judging by the color of the smoke, im guessing it has to be fuel related (car has oem green injectors) or somethings throwing off the ecu, at least im hoping. im just hoping its not anything too major

 

put your stock intake back on. your fuel trims are probably way off

 

unfortunately the previous owner put the intake on, i might have a spare intake from my last cobalt otherwise i might have to try and find one for cheap.

its just weird to me that this happened out of nowhere and so suddenly, I took a casual drive yesterday and the car was running great..

 

UPDATE*****

just figured id update this so anyone else who has this random issue knows where to check. turns out it was the maf sensor...
long story short I went through cleaning everything from injectors to putting in new spark plugs and still ran like ****. then i started unplugging things as the car was running to see what did and didnt make a difference. well i unplugged the maf and the car actually started running better haha. all i can think is theres heavy construction near my house and riding around with zzps huge air filter near the bottom of the car maybe i sucked up some dirt or grime. a huge pain in the ass but im glad it wasnt anything too major. for some reason my car never threw a code for it or else i probably would have realized a lot sooner

 

oh and a little advice for any noobs this just goes to show how tempermental our cars can be, i dont suggest cheaping out on an intake. i learned the hard way with my last cobalt when i tried to put a cheap 50$ intake and my car could barely run let alone move, pretty similar to the issue i just now had.