Chuck FB

I imagine the cold winters up here with repeated short runs in town every day for those that live and work in town and given what I have come to learn on this forum with DI engines having fuel dilution issues, and if they don't change the oil until it says to but keep driving it for a while, I bet all that is just lovely on those finicky lifters.

I certainly could be wrong but I hear of pickups far newer than that 2007 cutoff which may not be going to the wrecker but are having engine work done and be that a reman engine or new engine or trying to repair the existing engine. Some of it would be design issues as per the cylinder deactivation system that GM has and one of those lifters wiping out the cam and the question of oil changes moving the needle or not on that whole mess, or in the case of Ford pickup engines that have the long timing chains and wearing them out and the roller followers and phasers and some of that certainly goes back to oil change intervals. But in those various cases the truck has all sorts of life left in it and so the unfortunate owner and may be original owner or used market owner that is pouring money into repairs so the truck is not seeing the salvage yard yet but damage is happening by infrequent oil changes. A friends son had bought a 2018 I think it is half ton GM and it had some sort of extended or used dealer warranty on it and of course the lifter issue bites and its rattling and so the dealer had to swallow the bill and was at least 7000.00 and I think they only replaced what they felt they had to replace so yeah, I can see that being a ticking time bomb in the not too distant future. Would frequent oil changes cure all these engineering "marvels", probably not but some engine designs have shown that they do much better if the oil is changed a lot more often then if the manufacturer service claims are followed. New trucks cost so much that there is an incentive to keep the existing truck on the road by repairing.

I hear you over the negativity towards dealerships as some most certainly have earned their reputation and not exactly good reputations either, in either the quality of work done or with outright ripoff tactics and the problem is when one lives in a rural area where there are only so many dealers in a main town and don't have the options that someone who lives in or is surrounded by cities with multiple competing dealer businesses has available to them. Then there are the independent shops and again some can be more on the up and up while some are always waiting to pounce on that circumstance where they can rip the customer a new one and the customer does not realize what just happened was not how it could have gone. And interestingly enough and I don't know if all dealers have the access to genuine parts and a completely different lower line of parts and suspect rebuilt parts but there are certainly dealers that play that game and the customer can be lead to believe they got the genuine part like what came on the vehicle when in fact they got some inferior part that in some cases is extremely failure prone and they know it but they replace it with that junk anyway as that vehicle will come back again with the same issue once again. If one comes across a dealer or independent shop that actually does proper work and stands behind their work if it goes south, that's the shop one certainly wants to associate with.

Right, I know Demonworks youtube channel talked about the the new pan design, I just never knew when that came out but your right that in theory it should drain out more. The neighbor that has the 2022 model 3.0 drives his front end up on blocks and made the comment that it more than likely drains out better due to where the drain plug is situated to have the front end up on his series of truck.

That's interesting about the oil splatter, makes sense though the thinner it is as it doesn't have the body as such to it that helps slow the flow slightly and also holds itself together better for a lack of a proper term. I've never handled 0W20 yet to experience what its like. I probably had asked this before but have you been cutting your filters open to see what shows up within the filter media. Certainly to begin with no doubt there would be a bit of something show up on that initial filter but after that there shouldn't be much, that is unless the thrust washer takes a dump and the crank shifts from end to end as that would show up as quite the spectacle in the filter.

The sad fact is that some of these oil pans and it certainly makes no sense to me, that in the case of the GM 6.6 Duramax and the 3.0 Duramax as a couple of examples, neither of those pans are designed with as good of complete drain then they could have made them with by a fair margin. So getting every other oil change done by a sucking method that may not be quite perfection, its a far cry better than not changing the oil at all at that interval and having it done only every 10000 miles. And at Valvoline they never touch the drain plug by that method so one less thing to screw up is never a bad thing. Your watching and paying attention and making sure they fill the engine with oil and no doubt noting if there was ever any oil leaking at home for reasons of a leaky plug gasket or the filter not snugged up enough. I can just imagine how horrible ( way extended ) the average north american vehicle does get its oil changed in this current era and the amount of engines that run low on oil because of becoming leakers or burners and the owners having zero clue as they don't check the oil, after all they need that money for fancy coffees, doing their hair and nails etc ( ok maybe that is a San Fran exclusive on some of that )

I feel better now for my own view point and actions or lack there of towards the dealership service theme reading your post and others. GM corporate is who offers the two free oil changes on the HD trucks and I bought my truck in Feb of 2025 and those oil change offers run out within 2 years I believe and I highly doubt I will be using either one of them. I had asked if I could officially give those free services to another customer ( a friend ) and they said no, its all a GM corporate thing based on the vehicle in question. What that service advisor did however was go into a little story about how such and such customer was denied engine warranty because he had done his own oil changes because then they are not documented ... you see where that goes and so an employee playing the game of scaring the customer into having the service work done there most certainly triggered my thought process. At a later date I did talk to the person who handles warranty claims at the dealership and she said to be sure to document the oil changes and keep receipts for the oil and filter ( coped the receipts from cases of Mobil oil and case of filters I bought from them ) and the vehicles VIN, the date of service, mileage etc and staple that together as a record I would give them if that was ever needed and I keep my own log book for services for each vehicle as well. Oh and about 8 months after I bought the truck the dealer starts calling me to offer a maintenance service since they haven't seen my vehicle show up on their system ... for the mere fee of 300.00 Canadian to change the oil and rotate the tires and a few other minor checks and I declined the offer, I get the call again a couple of months later for the same thing and she could tell I was not interested and she asked if they should take my name off the call list and I said yes, do that !. By the way did you happen to keep your factory oil filter to open it up and see the surprises inside as I expect some will show up as per the odd little sliver of metal shaving and particles that the filter does trap along with bits of grey silicone sealer that come off of the inside edge of mating surfaces. I have cut open every filter so far on my truck although few miles but have changed the oil often and the second filter was vastly better with very little of anything, that first filter was the unsettling one as I expected it would be.

I doubt two wheel drive pickups are a hot seller off the new vehicle lot in your area !, I highly doubt any of the dealers around here have brought in one two wheel drive pickup for many years as that four wheel drive system isn't along for the ride here or I can well imagine in Vermont during the winter. Of course some of our more poorly maintained gravel roads are so bad that during the summer if it rains a person could get stuck right in the middle of a gravel road in two wheel drive LOL.

Definitely its a habit to get into, every so often go through the motions of both high range and low range and allow it to rotate over for some distance to coat all the surfaces with oil that otherwise may not receive any otherwise and like was said to coat and work the seals etc. I too am doing it on a non busy gravel road during the summer or come winter again the snow covered gravel road simply because its not busy and can mess around putting it into four low. Of course I am using four wheel high range quite often for portions of each drive all winter which would be different then one who lives in an area where unless going off roading the four wheel drive almost never gets used.

Indeed that photo makes me laugh as its almost comical in a sense when I think about Christmas at a certain brother inlaws as he turns on the tv and puts it to the burning fire place channel, an image of reality but yet far from reality in what it accomplishes in any physicals sense. When I search for answers to what is the optimum oil level in which to run an engine, of no surprise it states that its NOT ideal to run the engine constantly at the add mark but IS ideal for the longevity of the engine to run the oil level at or near the full mark on the dipstick. While its fairly typical although not written in stone as per the one quart difference between full and add on what I would refer to as a full size vehicle engine, as one goes up in engine size for trucks, field tractors, other industrial equipment etc and the oil capacity increases they stretch out the volume between full and add. Typically highway tractor engines tend to be a gallon of oil and that may be 1 tenth of the total engines oil volume. Looking back at the older GM full size pickup engines, some of them only held hardly over 4 quarts ... that 1 quart low was taking 25% of the total oils volume away and no wonder they started bumping up the total oil volume with a larger sump on pans for the same engine platform to help the engine and retain the oils integrity to increase the odds of the engines life span.

I did a search outside of this forum and came across a thread from this forum from two years ago which was amusing but one I recall now from a trusted member who had himself had to add a quart on his brand new truck to bring it up to near the level plug level. Then after accumulating 5000 or so miles on the truck he pulled the cover to drain it out and wiped out the bottom of the diff housing and put the factory cover back on and in his case it took exactly 4 quarts to bring it up to within that 4/10 of an inch below the fill/level check plug, far more than the GM spec. That is a big difference between that GM spec ( which is why the GM diffs are below the level they themselves say they should be when coming out of the factory ) vs what amounts to around 8 pints of oil. My own truck when I first got it home from new, I had not measured how much volume mine took since I used a hand pump on a 6 gallon pail of gear oil to top it off but I had measured it by using a bent wire on the flat shop floor after the truck sat overnight and a ruler and it was exactly 1" below the bottom of the fill hole on the rear diff. That fell right into line with what others have measured from a factory filled rear diff on these HD trucks, however the GM instructions are to fill from within between 4/10" of an inch or up to the bottom of the fill/level check hole as the full range. So that is why it alarmed me when you mentioned not seeing any oil in that window although I wasn't sure if that diff cover held the exact same amount as the factory cover so can only speculate its probably very close to retain the same oil flow characteristics over the top that the ring gear provides with the factory curved cover vs some of these odd flat back diff covers ( the whole video Gale does on that about some of the goofy after market covers out there ).

Yes I read that as well on their website and its all in how its interpreted for one thing and I believe the GM spec itself does not call for enough volume to bring the oil level up to the bottom of the factory covers fill/level port which also is puzzling. Banks are also bouncing between two different truck makes in the instructions since both the Ram and the GM use AAM axles with those instructions. The problem with not seeing the oil in the window is that one has no idea where the actual level is. Certainly anyone else on here reading this and having worked with the banks covers should chime in as they may have more information to provide. I am just simply concerned because I don't want to see someone underfill the diff as its not just the diff that is critical to lubrication, its the wheel end bearings. The dealership I bought my truck from had two HD pickups a while back have their rear wheel bearings fail because of being too severely underfilled at the factory and no one had checked and topped them off at the dealer but luckily warranty paid for a whole new complete axle housing as it mangled the axle housing spindles when the bearings failed and sent metal throughout the whole diff.

That is an odd comment Banks would have about the volume given that the sight glass is there for the specific reason to allow for not only bringing the level to that range but to visually be able to check at any time that the diff has a sufficient level. I know its been commented that what GM claims is the volume required for the rear diff ends up falling short of what it actually takes if filling it to the bottom of the factory level plug, and the fact that GM ( actually the axle manufacturer ) is underfilling the diff at their factory below their own specs as mine was as well which has been a whole other issue and is leaving the oil down almost a quart low from full. As I read about the Banks cover instructions right on their webpage, they do say to go by the sight glass ( half way up the sight glass on level ground ) unless the vehicle has had the pinion angle changed due to a lift etc that throws off the factory pinion angle. I'll put it this way, if I installed a Banks cover on my own stock truck I would fill it half way up the window and then recheck after the truck has been driven and sat for hours while sitting on level ground to confirm the level.

That's certainly good to hear that there was nothing alarming on the cover magnet volume wise or chunk wise of metal. I don't recall if the Banks cover holds more oil than the factor cover, what volume did you estimate that it took ?. As to the transfer case I assume you bought whatever brand you wanted of a Dexron VI automatic transmission fluid. Have you changed the automatic trans fluid at some point and actually I don't recall if your truck is the gas or diesel version as that makes the difference as to which transmission and oil type is required in 2023. The problem with my truck is that its the gas engine with the 10 speed and I've not yet attempted to see if I can drop the pan as the silly exhaust is right in the way and I do not want to touch the exhaust system on the manifold end if I can help it, the diesel does not have the Y pipe style exhaust under the pan so is not an issue to remove the pan.