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Bent Frame from the factory on new Silverado?


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So... bought a new 2017 high country about a month ago. 6.2L, long bed, love the truck. My 3rd new Silverado since 2009 and definitely my favorite. Get it home and the neighbor and I are standing behind it and notice the bed is leaning sharply to the right when using the rear window as a reference line. Get out the tape measure and measure from the top of the bed at the corners of the rear windows and sure enough, a full half inch lower on the right side.

 

Since I bought the truck on a Saturday, I ran over to the dealership Sunday afternoon when they were closed and looked at the other trucks, all parallel. Contacted the dealer on Monday that the bed was crooked and ran it by in the evening. The salesman told me- "Don't worry, sometimes you have to drive them for about 500 miles and they'll straighten right out". ....huh? I don't think so.

 

The next day they run it out to the body shop and call about a day later and say it's ready. Before i picked it up i asked the salesman what was wrong and he said he didn't know. Called the body shop manager and spoke with him. He said they had to shim the bed and it's not uncommon. I asked if it was common to see one this bad and he stumbled and said "it's been a long long time since we've had to do a full bed shim". 1/2" of shim I asked? he said"... well, that's a lot" . My next question was what kind of shim are you using? I asked if they were just shoving washers in there or if they were using a full face captured shim. His response was that GM makes a shim kit that is full face and that's what they use. Ok, not at all happy about having to shim the bed on a brand new 60K dollar pickup but it's a good temp solution. At least the body lines would line up. Washers are the worst option I told him as it would reduce the contact area and at full load the compressive force could damage the bed with the reduced area. He assured me that they wouldn't use washers.

 

So I picked it up, it was better, but the right was still 3/16" lower than the left. Grrr....... back she goes. This time they have it for 5 days as now the tailgate won't open- definitely in a bind as it feels like the handle will snap off if you don't push in on the tailgate as you're pulling the handle.

 

Get it back last week and the reference to the rear window was much improved, now appear to be slightly higher than the left. During the cleanup they sprayed wax all over tailgate handle and stained the handle white. GRRR Had to make a road trip last week so I took the truck and the dealership agreed to take care of the handle at a later date. Make arrangements to have it picked up tomorrow and decided I had better look at the shim job before they wrench on it again as I told them i wouldn't accept shims under the bed of this truck- fix the problem.

 

When I crawled under the truck this evening the first thing I noticed was the GM shim kit was nothing more than stacks of washers, -seriously. Next thing I noticed was a loose bed mount bolt in the rear, and when I crawled out from under the rear bumper I sat up and noticed the bumper to tailgate gap.

 

Every bed to frame mount on the right side was washer-shimmed. The half inch drop at the rear window has now relocated to a half inch rise in the bed over the rear bumper as shown in the picture. Right side gate to bumper is 2", left side is 1.5" stopped by the dealership and they all measure 1.5" on both sides.

 

Can this be anything but a bent frame on a new pickup? I can't see how it could be anything else. This was originally reported to the dealership when the truck had less than 100 miles on it. Logic tells me the entire right frame rail from the cab back has to be lower than the left.

 

I did start a claim with GM on or about the 2nd business day after buying the truck as i was concerned something like a bent frame may be involved. They have been very interested in updates but keep telling me the fix will have to be determined by the dealership as they are the "qualified repair technicians".

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Wow that sucks. Just looking at your photo and it looks to me like your bumper is higher on the left side than on the right, looking at the distance from the bottom of the tailight to the top of the bumper?

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?

Center of fender to ground is the same on both sides. The bed is now level left to right after they shimmed it up the right side. The left isn't high, the right is actually low. Raising the bed on the right side to match the cab now made the gap between the bumper and tailgate greater on the right than the left.

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My drivers side leaf spring was cracked from.the dealer ship. I didn't see it until I pulled the truck apart to lower it. Sucks but I had already pulled the truck apart

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So... bought a new 2017 high country about a month ago. 6.2L, long bed, love the truck. My 3rd new Silverado since 2009 and definitely my favorite. Get it home and the neighbor and are are standing behind it and notice the bed is leaning sharply to the right when using the rear window as a reference line. Get out the tape measure and measure from the top of the bed at the corners of the rear windows and sure enough, a full half inch lower on the right side.

 

Since I bought the truck on a Saturday, I ran over to the dealership Sunday afternoon when they were closed and look at the other trucks, all parallel. Contacted the dealer on Monday that the bed was crooked and ran it by in the evening. The salesman told me- "Don't worry, sometimes you have to drive them for about 500 miles and they'll straighten right out". ....huh? I don't think so.

 

The next day they run it out to the body shop and call about a day later and say it's ready. Before i picked it up i asked the salesman what was wrong and he said he didn't know. Called the body shop manager and spoke with him. He said they had to shim the bed and it's not uncommon. I asked if it was common to see one this bad and he stumbled and said "it's been a long long time since we've had to do a full bed shim". 1/2" of shim I asked? he said"... well, that's a lot" . My next question was what kind of shim are you using? I asked if they were just shoving washers in there or if they were using a full face captured shim. His response was that GM makes a shim kit that is full face and that's what they use. Ok, not at all happy about having to shim the bed on a brand new 60K dollar pickup but it's a good temp solution. At least the body lines would line up. Washers are the worst option I told him as it would reduce the contact area and at full load the compressive force could damage the bed with the reduced area. He assured me that they wouldn't use washers.

 

So I picked it up, it was better, but the right was still 3/16" lower than the left. Grrr....... back she goes. This time they have it for 5 days as now the tailgate won't open- definitely in a bind as it feels like the handle will snap off if you don't push in on the tailgate as you're pulling the handle.

 

Get it back last week and the reference to the rear window was much improved, now appear to be slightly higher than the left. During the cleanup they sprayed wax all over tailgate handle and stained the handle white. GRRR Had to make a road trip last week so I took the truck and the dealership agreed to take care of the handle at a later date. Make arrangements to have it picked up tomorrow and decided I had better look at the shim job before they wrench on it again as I told them i wouldn't accept shims under the bed of this truck- fix the problem.

 

When I crawled under the truck this evening the first thing I noticed was the GM shim kit was nothing more than stacks of washers, -seriously. Next thing I noticed was a loose bed mount bolt in the rear, and when I crawled out from under the rear bumper I sat up and noticed the bumper to tailgate gap.

 

Every bed to frame mount on the right side was washer-shimmed. The half inch drop at the rear window has now relocated to a half inch rise in the bed over the rear bumper as shown in the picture. Right side gate to bumper is 2", left side is 1.5" stopped by the dealership and they all measure 1.5" on both sides.

 

Can this be anything but a bent frame on a new pickup? I can't see how it could be anything else. This was originally reported to the dealership when the truck had less than 100 miles on it. Logic tells me the entire right frame rail from the cab back has to be lower than the left.

 

I did start a claim with GM on or about the 2nd business day after buying the truck as i was concerned something like a bent frame may be involved. They have been very interested in updates but keep telling me the fix will have to be determined by the dealership as they are the "qualified repair technicians".

 

 

Why does the mount look rusty?

 

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G900A using Tapatalk

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Maybe if the rear bumper and box were level to begin with, the cab may have been mounted improperly (askew).

 

Definitely have a collision shop check out the frame and go from there. If the frame is straight then I'd check out the cab mounts too.

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My drivers side leaf spring was cracked from.the dealer ship. I didn't see it until I pulled the truck apart to lower it. Sucks but I had already pulled the truck apart

 

To the OP, Nasty maybe onto something with the rear springs. Way back in 1984 I speced out and factory ordered a K20 HD camper special and it was about a month after taking delivery that I finally noticed that the whole drivers side was sitting low. The dealer agreed, checked with GM, and since the dealer was a small operation and didn't feel qualified to tackle the problem they sent me to a specialty frame/spring shop where they got it pretty close to perfect I believe by working with the spring shackles. If I remember it was quite a job and took some trial and error as the camper special had 8 rear leafs including the overloads and it had a solid front axle with 3 leafs on each side.

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I think that the body shop is chasing the wrong problem. It should be pretty simple to measure the frame height on both sides, then measure the body/bed height and then start locating the cause. Chances are its in the suspension, but it could be as simple as having a smaller diameter tire on the RR vs LR. Like others said, take it to a GOOD frame shop and have them take a look.

 

There no way in HELL that I would accept a bunch of washers shimming up one side of the bed.

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