OBD-II Code
P1361
Severity
Not yet reviewed
Nobody on our side has assessed this code yet, so we are not going to guess at how serious it is.
Can you drive it
We cannot say
Treat it as unknown until a shop reads it with live data. If the check-engine light is FLASHING, stop driving as soon as it is safe to — that means an active misfire, whatever the code.
Indicative cost (USD)
$60–$1,800
From this code's diagnostic notes. Varies by vehicle, diagnosis, parts, and local labor. This is not a repair quote.
$60 (single LSx coil swap) to $1,800 (Duramax under-valve-cover injector + control harness on an LB7).
P1361 is GM's Ignition Coil Control Circuit Low — the ECM is commanding an ignition coil primary driver but the feedback voltage on the control circuit isn't pulling up the way it should during the dwell cycle, indicating an open or shorted primary control wire, a failed driver inside the ECM, or a coil with an internal primary winding failure.
How a shop works this
Work from evidence to part, not the other way round. A code names a circuit or a symptom; it does not name the part that failed.
Note every code that is set, not just this one.
Codes that appear together usually narrow the cause faster than any one of them read alone.
Read the freeze frame — the conditions the fault was recorded under.
Cold or warm, idle or load, road speed and engine speed. A fault that only appears cold is a different fault from one that only appears under load, even with the same code on the scanner.
Confirm the fault is current rather than history.
Clear the code and see whether it returns under those same conditions. A code that does not come back may have been logged during a repair, a flat battery, or a bad connection that has since been disturbed.
Then follow the diagnostic notes further down this page, in the order they are written.
They are written in the order a shop works this code, cheapest checks first. Where they name a component, inspect its wiring and connector before replacing it.
If the code comes back after a repair, the underlying fault is still there. That is the point to bring in a scanner with live data and freeze-frame, or a shop that has one.
Common symptoms
- Check engine light
Read the full diagnostic procedureP1361 is GM's Ignition Coil Control Circuit Low — the ECM is commanding an ignition coil primary driver but the feedback voltage on the control circu…
P1361 is GM's Ignition Coil Control Circuit Low — the ECM is commanding an ignition coil primary driver but the feedback voltage on the control circuit isn't pulling up the way it should during the dwell cycle, indicating an open or shorted primary control wire, a failed driver inside the ECM, or a coil with an internal primary winding failure. The ignition coil primary resistance on most LSx and Vortec coils measures 0.4-1.4 ohms cold, and the secondary measures 5,000-15,000 ohms; on the LB7/LLY/LBZ Duramax, the glow-plug control architecture uses similar primary-circuit feedback.
Cheapest-first ladder
- Identify which specific coil the code points at (P1361 may be paired with a cylinder-specific extension code on some model years) and visually inspect the coil and its harness for chafe, oil contamination, or a melted boot.
- Pull the coil connector and measure primary resistance pin-to-pin with a low-ohms meter — anything below 0.3 or above 2.0 ohms cold is suspect.
- Wiggle-test the primary control wire from the coil back through the harness, especially at any harness-to-injector-harness branch point — chafe to a fuel-injector harness or to the cylinder head is a classic GM diesel failure.
- Verify 12V feed at the coil with key-on (one pin should show battery voltage, the other is the ECM-driven trigger).
- Swap the suspect coil with a known-good adjacent coil and clear the code; if the fault follows the coil, the coil is bad ($30-$80 LSx, $45-$120 Vortec). Don't replace the coil before inspecting the primary control wire for chafe at the injector harness on Duramax and at the valve cover edge on LSx — on the LB7/LLY/LBZ the ignition/glow-control wires bundle with the injector harness and a single chafed wire creates a P1361 that no coil swap will fix.
Vehicle-specific patterns2001-2007 Silverado HD / Sierra HD 2500/3500 with the LB7 / LLY / LBZ Duramax 6.6L diesel — the under-valve-cover injector harness is the famous fail…
- 2001-2007Silverado HD / Sierra HD 2500/3500 with the LB7 / LLY / LBZ Duramax 6.6L diesel — the under-valve-cover injector harness is the famous failure point (LB7 in particular), and the same harness routes the glow-plug and primary control wires that throw P1361 when the insulation chafes through to the valve cover or the head bolts.
- 1999-2007Silverado / Tahoe / Sierra with the LS-based Vortec 4.8/5.3/6.0 throws P1361 from primary spark plug wire failure on the early truck coils that still used short remote-mount plug wires (later trucks went coil-near-plug and the failure mode shifted to the coil itself).
- 2005-2010Cobalt SS supercharged and 2008-2010 HHR SS with the LNF 2.0 Turbo throws P1361 when the coil-on-plug boots crack and arc to ground at the cam cover. The 2007 LBZ Duramax-to-2007.5 LMM transition introduced new emissions hardware and the primary control wiring routing changed; some early LMM trucks had a TSB-driven harness rework.
Estimated repair$60 (single LSx coil swap) to $1,800 (Duramax under-valve-cover injector + control harness on an LB7).
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