Jsdirt

Been a mechanic for 30+ years, and I haven't a clue! I think this is either a gimmick to sell overpriced tire balancers, generate unnecessary revenue, or, tires have just become such poor quality now that this is the only possible way they can be balanced. One thing I do know is Michelin SUCKS today. Used to be a real high quality tire. Now, all I see is warp-speed dry rot and weather-checking, and vibration issues. I'll never buy one again. I pulled an OE Michelin spare off a '07 Lexus RX350 a couple weeks back - the sidewall was just about coming off in CHUNKS!! Only the side that was facing the vehicle. Go figure. Never seen tires dry rot so fast in my entire life. My Silverado's spare is the exact same age - a Goodyear Wrangler - and not even the smallest weather check in ANY part of the tire. Sad part about this tire is, if I didn't press on the sidewall with my hand, the owner would've never noticed this! A nice hot day on the highway would be the last trip this tire took ...

I'll let ya know how it looks when mine fails. If the system was so great, my 94k mile engine wouldn't be ticking like a stuck lifter in a 350, and I'd still have the same oil pressure I had when the truck was new, up until about 80k miles. Royal Purple and Amsoil is all this engine has ever had in it. Amsoil is capable of 25k mile runs - I've never hit 10k. Definitely won't try now. Gets changed an average of 6k miles. Is that excessive on a premium name-brand synthetic? Since I've seen regular dino oil run 15k in 60's, 70's, 80's and 90's engines, with valve covers blacker than coal inside, I highly doubt it. Lack of maintenance isn't a new thing in the 21st Century - it just becomes evident, since no modern engines can handle this anymore! The AFM system is a poorly engineered POS, and I'm sticking with that.

They put a screen under the oil pressure sensor that plugs up and starves that area, and the rest of the engine of oil. That's a design flaw. If the system was designed correctly, it would run 300K+ WITHOUT an issue ... like anything built prior to '07 did. Not 90k-130k - if you think that's acceptable on a $40,000+ truck, then they'll keep building them this way.

Sorry to hear that. That's a typical dealership experience, unfortunately. I always tell everyone, if you're out of warranty, steer clear of domestic dealerships (Ford, GM, Chrysler/FCA). It's easier to count on one hand the number of good dealership experiences I've heard of. Yeah, MA, and New England in general, is it's own little world unlike any other part of the country. I won't even get started on the political aspect of it ... Shocks & brakes are a normal part of 30k service here, unless you've got a manual trans. - then you could get 90k if you drive really slow, and engine-brake constantly.

Finished my dad's boat, finally - it's only been here 12 weeks. My brother had ran it through a pile of rocks out in the dead center of a huge lake up in ME - I guess nobody marks the rock piles, since they want to keep the area natural. Fantastic - just cost my brother over $500 to fix this one. Ripped the skeg right off the bottom of the lower unit of the outboard. Ended up taking a big gamble and buying a new lower unit from a Russian website called Megazip - they came through! Got the unit straight from Japan in 4 days! Suzuki 20HP outboard. Just had to swap the gears, studs, anodes, and water pump assy. over. Pretty easy job. Then, I rolled a set of truck wheels down the hill here to save time ... and of course, 3 out of the 4 went right into my brand new building. Just my luck. Spent an hour and a half fixing that yesterday. Don't look as pretty, but it's water tight again. Didn't get good "before" pics, but you can see part of the old siding with the tread marks on the ground in the pic - took that one after I was halfway done. A phone call and a bunch of texts interrupted me, so might as well snap a pic. Siding shattered! Guess even siding ain't what it used to be these days. I've done worse to the 30 year old siding on the house!

Definitely low for rears, for sure. Then again, I haven't really seen any really high mile numbers out of rear discs on GMs. Back when everything had drum rears, you'd get 2-3 front brake jobs for every rear brake job. Seems about half that for disc. I remember the '99's had nothing but parking brake problems around here, along with frozen calipers. I also had nothing but trouble with the rear calipers on my '00 Jimmy. I was glad to see drums on the back when I bought my '07.

Your '93 doesn't count - I had a '94 with 266k on it - THAT was a well-built truck! One of the last good ones, IMO. I'd take my '94 anywhere and not worry one bit. 2007 new body and up are NOTHING compared to the reliability of the GMT-400 ... or even the 800. I had an '05 800 with a 5.3 here for tires that had 320,000 MILES on it. Driveline still good! The question is, what has changed between the 400, to 800 into the 900's? We all know the answer to that.

Lets put things into perspective, shall we? I bought a '72 El Camino for $500 in '00. God only knows how many miles were on it when I got it - it was an OLD restoration - over 20 years just by the looks of things. When exhaust pipes have deep surface rust in Phoenix, you know it's over 15 years old, if not more. I drove that car 100k miles PLUS - NEVER had ONE MECHANICAL ENGINE PROBLEM. I was younger then - full throttle starts were the norm. Leaving rubber everywhere was too. Ran that thing up to 5,500 RPM and held it there forever doing burnouts. Drove that thing to Nogales, MX, the Grand Canyon, and made several trips to Livermore, CA, in addition to driving 2 years in Phoenix, city stop and go. Then in '01, I hooked up a U-Haul trailer to it, loaded up my motorcycle, and everything else I owned into it - tools, furniture, TV, microwave , etc, etc., and drove 3,300 miles back to MA, spinning 4,000 -4,500 RPM at 90 MPH across half the country for 5 DAYS straight (would've made it home in 3, had it not been for a Rocky Mountain blizzard in WY through NE) - and I wasn't going easy on it either - I wanted to get HOME! Full throttle launches out of every rest stop, trailer and all, right up to 5,500RPM when it shifted. Made it home without an issue (went through a case of oil due to excessive blowby - like I said, who knows how many miles were on this thing and how it was taken care of in the 100°+ temps of Phoenix for decades). Drove the thing back and forth to work as my only vehicle for 3 years, then it became a second vehicle for the next 8. STILL left rubber up the road at half throttle when I sold it in '11. NO ENGINE TROUBLE WHATSOEVER!! NEVER once ran synthetic oil in it. Oil was always changed between 2-5k miles - Pennzoil and Fram filters. That's it! Most extensive engine work was pulling the valve covers to replace a leaky cork gasket. Took all of 10 minutes with a thorough cleaning! If I had to guess, I'd say I put 160k miles on it - a conservative guess. Guaranteed it had well over 100k on it when I got it. The odometer never worked in that thing ... The car I had before that was a '86 Grand Marquis - like the one I own now, except dark blue instead of light blue. That towed a similar U-Haul out to Phoenix with 230k miles on it at the time. 1 week before I left, I overheated the shit out of it after doing a coolant flush and fill, without doing the t-stat - got a big air pocket behind the t-stat and melted the thing down. Coolant was VIOLENTLY boiling out of the overflow, and I watched my rubber hoses deform before my eyes, before I yanked the Lev-R-Vent cap to release all the pressure! Had to change the milky white oil, since it was so hot, the heads warped enough to let coolant by the head gaskets. Changed the oil, and it was FINE!! Drove it 3 days straight pulling that U-Haul - overheated it several times again going into a headwind across NM. Blew a heater hose outside of Flagstaff in the mountains - threw a deep socket in, clamped it, and off I went. Drove it back and forth to school and work for a year (10k miles), before it got stolen for ONE FULL YEAR - was found in Bell, CA when someone tried to register it with a false VIN. Took a bus from Oakland to LA at 2am (that's a story in and of itself ...), and bailed my car out of impound. I drove the thing 5 hours back to Livermore from the impound yard - only issue was a dead battery that I had to replace halfway home. It still had my same oil filter on it, and presumably the same oil, due to the color. The thieves put 8k miles on it. Sold that to pay for my trip back to MA. 256k on it then - NEVER had the timing chain changed, NEVER had any internal engine work. My current '86 Marquis has just shy of 258k on it. No smoke out the tailpipe, and NO engine noise whatsoever ... except when I start it up below 40° with 15w-40 in the crankcase. I changed the timing chain at 230k miles. Still had the OE plastic cam gear. Got a little sloppy because a few oil changes got stretched to 8-9k miles. Car will still leave rubber off the line, and get 20+ MPG on the highway out of that 302 V8. Will have owned that car 16 years this January. Back in 1993 I bought a '78 Cutlass that a local guy had built. 7 years before I bought it, he dropped a Goodwrench 350 in, and mated it to a TH400 which had no expense spared. I was pretty young then - I heard through the grapevine the guy was laughing at me for buying it, since they beat that thing SENSELESS for 7 straight years. Reverse drops, 100's of drag launches, redline neutral drops, endless burnouts, street races, etc.. They had put well over 100k on the build, and sold it because they were afraid it was going to let go at any time. I drove that thing everywhere from the mountains of NH, down to NYC and back MANY times. Several 100+ MPH trips down the highway racing people who felt froggy. Lived in the city then, so that thing got relentlessly beat at every stoplight for 3 years straight. Sold it still running perfect - 150k+ on the build - NO engine work whatsoever. Same 3-4k oil change regiment I gave all my vehicles then on the cheapest oil I could find. There's a few more vehicles I'm leaving out because I don't want to be typing all night ... and then there's 10 or more of my close friends that have done the same or worse to their vehicles - NONE of them has EVER had ANY KIND of internal engine failure! Now my '07 Silverado, bought new in April of '07. I'm a little older now, and have the 2 page driving record behind me. I don't drive like I used to. Hell, I paid THIRTY TIMES what I had normally paid for cars my whole life! I want this thing to last forever! Right from the first oil change I went with Royal Purple synthetic. Ran that every 5k miles MAX for 40k miles, then switched to Amsoil, and changed the entire driveline to Amsoil as well. Longest I've ever run Amsoil was just under 10k miles - ONCE. Oil analysis from 55k to the present 94k has shown HIGH wear metal content - it also showed the oil was more than capable of going longer, but they suggested a change due to high wear metals. Wasn't the oil's fault! At 50k miles, it started burning oil. Yeah, I tow with it - isn't that what trucks are for? I haven't done anything nearly as rough to this vehicle as I had to my old $500 beaters. Even at 94k miles, this is the lowest mile vehicle I've ever owned in my life, aside from when it was brand new! Last oil analysis was showing high levels of copper and iron - cam bearings, no doubt, as I've read of over 40 LMG engines suffering this same fate, anywhere between 90k and 140k, in addition to failed lifters that are so common. Not a single one has made it past this mileage without extensive valve train work - I'm just one guy out here in MA .... so how many more of these do you think have failed around the globe when I alone have read of 40+ ? That's a pretty big failure rate - don't care how many GM has sold. That's alot for just one state out of 50!! Cars used to "take a lickin' and keep on tickin' " , even with poor maintenance. My personal experience with the Silverado shows me that even with top notch maintenance, today's engines don't hold a candle to the engines of old. These kinds of issues across the board were a rarity. Today, it's just par for the course.

Camera systems are really cheap these days. Plus, there's quite a few now that are wireless. You can run them through a desktop computer, or a standalone DVR recorder unit. I put my system in back in '09. Only thing I'd have done differently would be to NOT cheap out on the wire. All the problems I've had with this system have been related to the crap chinese BNC cable I got ... Anyway, if you get the camera close enough to the area without being able to be seen, you'll get some pretty detailed video you can show the police.

Sorry to hear that. Looks like they've done ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to fix this problem going all the way back to model year 2007. This system has cost alot of people ALOT of money over the past 11 years. Some sooner than others, but all eventually end up this way. Problem is, nobody will know if/when they fix it until their new trucks have 90k or better on them. AFM sounds like a great idea on paper, but like most things GM does, they create a system by pinching every single penny they can. What really burns my ass about this whole thing is, THEY are the ones who cheaped out on the entire valve train from top to bottom, yet, it's the CONSUMER who got stuck footing the bill. In the days of old, THEY would have had to pay for THEIR screwup! It's only right! As much as I'm against lawsuits, this is one that I'd agree with 100%. They did cover a few under warranty, but a large number got stuck holding the bag (like I will, eventually).

That's a great way to unlock those POS lifters. Great video. The OP has a lifter that's physically stuck in the block, however. BTW to the OP, any luck?

That's a dealership story that's become all too familiar the past 10+ years. I went through the same crap with my '07! Sorry to hear that.

You've got a leak somewhere. Shouldn't have anything to do with fuel mileage, unless you were leaving a trail of gasoline behind you - that would've thrown the light on, for sure. Not sure what that was all about Only way you're going to find that is with a smoke machine, and/or a bottle of soapy water (or Windex). Remember, you cannot pressurize that system more than TWO psi, or bad things will happen. It's not designed to handle any kind of double-digit pressures.

How many miles? That's part of the trade-off with EBC - you trade life for more stopping power. Just like Sylvania Silverstars - they don't last at all, but they're as bright as the sun at night. Mine lasted just about as long as the OE's did - 32k miles give or take (actually the OE's lasted less than that, since I had 5 or 6 brake jobs under warranty), and I ran them right down to nothing. They don't make rear shoes for my '07, so only had them on the front. Yellowstuff. They grab GREAT. I won't put any other pad on this truck, since I drive the thing like a sportscar, plus I tow pretty heavy occasionally - got to be able to get that 6k lbs. stopped, especially around here.

Oh I hear that. 32° here in MA this morning ...