AtWhatMileage
Electrical · 5 owner reports

Wiring harness or short circuit on the 2010 Pontiac G6

Only 5 reports for this mode came with an odometer reading, which is too few for percentiles to mean anything. The page is here because someone linked to it; treat the figures as anecdotes, and see the full report for this year instead.

Reports of this failure 5
With an odometer reading 5
Reports per 1,000 built 0.0 per 1,000
Filed below 36,000 miles 20%
Mention a crash, fire or injury 0
Typical repair $400–$3,500
What it means when it happens High
Rank among this year's problems 17th

When wiring harness or short circuit gets reported

There are 5 reports of wiring harness or short circuit on the 2010 Pontiac G6, 5 with a mileage attached. That is too few to place the failure on the odometer with any confidence.

A part like this is normally expected to survive 88,000 miles. It is the 17th most-reported problem on this model year.

The whole distribution

Percentiles of the 5 odometer readings owners gave.
10th25thMedian 75th90th
120,000 miles

Read the 10th percentile as “one report in ten arrived this early”. Exact figures are shown in this table because it is the table of record; everywhere else on the site they are rounded to the precision the sample can carry.

What a percentile can and cannot tell you here

These five numbers describe the readings owners gave, in order. The median is the middle one: half the reports arrived below it. The 10th and 90th are the edges of the bulk of the distribution, and the distance between them is the part worth reading. A tight spread — say 70,000 to 95,000 miles — points at something that wears out on a schedule, and the schedule is knowable. A wide one, 20,000 to 190,000, points at a fault that hits some cars and never troubles others, which means the mileage on the listing in front of you tells you very little about your odds.

What these figures are not is a survival curve. Every reading here comes from a car whose owner filed a complaint, so the sample contains only failures: it cannot say what share of the fleet made it past 150,000 miles untouched, because those owners had nothing to report. Nor is the mileage the moment of failure — it is the odometer reading as recalled at the time of filing, which may be weeks later and is sometimes rounded to the nearest ten thousand by the person typing it.

Percentiles are shown at all only once 8 readings exist for the vehicle and mode. Below that the middle of a handful of numbers is noise wearing a decimal point, so the figures are withheld rather than dressed up.

What happens, and what it costs

Putting it right typically runs $400–$3,500 at an independent US shop. That range is an editorial estimate held in this site's failure-mode catalogue, not a figure from NHTSA, and it is a repair cost rather than a diagnosis cost.

The same failure on other years

The same failure is reported on 6 model years of this car. It shows up earliest on the 2005, at a median of 35,000 miles, and latest on the 2010 at 120,000 miles.

By volume the 2008 carries the most reports, with 53; the 2010 has 5. A mode that appears across most years of a model is usually a design choice rather than a bad batch.

If one year stands out to the left, that is the year to avoid; if the whole line sits at a similar mileage, this is wear rather than a defect in one production run.

Median
  1. 2005 Pontiac G6 wiring harness or short circuit 36k
  2. 2006 Pontiac G6 wiring harness or short circuit 105k
  3. 2007 Pontiac G6 wiring harness or short circuit 98k
  4. 2008 Pontiac G6 wiring harness or short circuit 68k
  5. 2009 Pontiac G6 wiring harness or short circuit 80k
  6. 2010 (this one) 120k

Tick median reported mileage Solid middle half of reports Faint 10th to 90th percentile Colour how bad the failure is when it happens

What owners wrote

Verbatim from NHTSA complaint narratives, trimmed for length. The mileage is the one the owner gave.

Tl* the contact owns a 2010 pontiac g6. The contact stated that the low beam headlights continuously burn out. The contact mentioned that after inspecting the vehicle he noticed that the wiring harness melted. The vehicle was not taken to the dealer for diagnostic testing. The manufacturer was not made aware of the failure. The failure and current mileage was 69,000. Updated 5/27/14*cn

69,000 miles NHTSA complaint 1051699 filed 2014-04-01

Repeatedly this car is worked on due to something electrical. The headlight wiring has shorted or burned before and after the recall (multiple occurrences). Now airbag sensors shorted out and wiring was burned. That was just replaced however mechanics can't figure out clicking noise in steering column that causes cruise control and air conditioning to turn off. This happens from time to time while driving on the highway. 2014 intermediate shaft recall does not cover my car. This car is a money pit and the recalls do not ever fix the issues. I have video of the clicking yet nobody can explain it or fix it. The clicking is new (last few weeks) yet electrical issues shorting out has been reoccurring for years.

120,000 miles NHTSA complaint 1386057 filed 2017-06-20

Repeatedly this car is worked on due to something electrical. The headlight wiring has shorted or burned before and after the recall (multiple occurrences). Now airbag sensors shorted out and wiring was burned. That was just replaced however mechanics can't figure out clicking noise in steering column that causes cruise control and air conditioning to turn off. This happens from time to time while driving on the highway. 2014 intermediate shaft recall does not cover my car. This car is a money pit and the recalls do not ever fix the issues. I have video of the clicking yet nobody can explain it or fix it. The clicking is new (last few weeks) yet electrical issues shorting out has been reoccurring for years.

120,000 miles NHTSA complaint 1386058 filed 2017-06-20

Also reported on the 2010 Pontiac G6

Other steering problem

130 reports median 115k

Other driver assistance problem

36 reports median 118k

Other electrical problem

30 reports median 95k

Loss of power steering

26 reports median 112k

Headlight failure or clouding

23 reports median 77k

Cruise control failure

22 reports median 78k

How far this goes

This page is kept out of search results because 5 reports is not enough to publish percentiles from. It stays reachable because somebody looking at this exact car would rather see the reports than be told there are none.

Complaints are voluntary, so 5 is a floor and not a count of affected cars. Mileages are typed in by owners and cluster on round numbers. And the mode itself is assigned by software reading the complaint text, which is reliable in bulk and fallible one report at a time.

Questions this page answers

At what mileage does wiring harness or short circuit happen on the 2010 Pontiac G6?

Across 5 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 120,000 miles. A quarter were filed before — and a quarter after —. These are the mileages owners reported when they complained, not a prediction for any individual car.

How common is wiring harness or short circuit on the 2010 Pontiac G6?

5 reports have been filed with NHTSA, about 0.0 per 1,000 vehicles. Complaints are voluntary, so this is a floor rather than a count of affected cars.

What this is and is not. These are the mileages at which owners chose to complain to a federal agency, which is not the same as the mileage at which the part fails on every car. It skews toward failures that happened outside warranty, cost real money, or frightened someone. It is still the only public dataset that carries failure mileage at all, and the shape of a few hundred readings is informative even when a single one is not. Methodology · JSON · this failure on other cars

Source Owner complaints and recall records published by the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, model years 1996–2027 Figures rebuilt Published by AtWhatMileage How every figure is computed