Freudie1

Thought I'd close the loop on this saga of woe:

So FIRST, the issue with the fuel pump magically disappeared (as in we got busy and the SES light went out and never reappeared so we never went back to the dealer for the replacement at the tune of $600 our share).

Second, **** GM:

At 90,000 on the odometer exactly we started getting a flashing SES light (i.e. imminent issue/random misfires). I pulled the codes and this time it was the infamous P0300 and P0308 (random misfires and misfires on cylinder 8). Long story shorty very rarely would we get a flashing SES for all of 10 seconds on a 2 hour car trip about once a month (always P0308/cyl 8 misfires). Figured **** plug or wire or coil pack on the cylinder and I'd address it later by swapping coils/wires/etc to see if the problem "followed" to another cylinder (standard troubleshooting crap).

Well after the non stop flashing SES at 90,000 I decided to take it to the GMC dealership as I bought this as a "GM Certified Pre-owned" vehicle and yes I knew damn well it came with a 6/yr 100,000 mile powertrain warranty.

Why you might ask did I think it would be a powertrain (read: engine) issue? The dreaded AFM lifter disaster scenario came to mind. In fact when I mentioned the details the service advisor blurted "Might be a lifter" before I could even ask when they planned on pulling valve covers to look for the rocker arm not moving.

TWO WEEKS later (they gave us a **** loaner amen): Dealership calls to tell me "Not a lifter, it's a small crack around cylinder 8's injector boss which is allowing coolant to leak around the injector causing the misfires on #8). Solution: Replace passenger side cylinder head.

The funniest part is that this was an issue on the previous generation (IV?) with GM outsourcing cylinder head production on their 5.3's (yeah that's right G-*******-M OUTSOURCES cylinder head manufacturing...."Castech" was the company at the time) and was found to be a porosity issue, however that issue was always around the head bolt holes, not injector.

None the less, dealer gets the job done, truck runs fine, we take it home.

FINAL UPDATE: Enough is enough with this piece of government subsidized out-sourced bullshit. I detailed it in our driveway and took it to a Lexus dealer where the wife got a nice "Certified" Lexus RX 350. Comes with 3 years/unlimited mileage bumper to bumper warranty and I don't have to hear **** about the GMC falling apart (again).

BEST PART OF ALL THIS? Sitting in the Lexus dealers show room waiting for them to check out our trade in (the Yukon). Guy comes back with a clip board looking worried and says, "Yeah I don't think your air conditioning is working, it's not cold at all.". I go out to verify as I figured he didn't know how to set it correctly. NOOOOOOO....completely ambient air temperature indeed. No a/c at all.

So I call the GMC dealership (we had the car for a total of a week back when this all went down) and asked if some dumbass prematurely evacuated the a/c lines because they thought they might be pulling the cam through the front of the grill (i.e. remove radiator and condensor) when it was a suspected lifter and resultant cam damage (turned out not to be the case BUT I can see this being possible).

What does the dealer tell me? "No, I just talked to the tech, his notes say he never touched the a/c and he didn't have to because he only replaced the cylinder head on the passenger side".

I took a $300 hit on the trade-in due to this "gem". Funniest part was Lexus figured it just "needed to be recharged", but of course during negotiations wanted ME to get it fixed. Yeah, I didn't do that and made them give me the trade-in price I wanted regardless.

So end of the day.......GMC is garbage like I suspected and I believe I finally found a vehicle that was WORSE than the Mercedes GL350 (diesel) we had years ago. AMAZING.

P.S. Besides AFM being a **** technology, I got to see first hand how great the new "Direct Injection" concept is. Service guy goes, "Man there was a TON of carbon buildup on the valves in that head we replaced!". I said, "Yeah no **** Sherlock....that's what happens when you spray fuel AFTER the valves and the detergents in the "tier 1" fuel GM recommends never get a chance to actually clean the backside of the valves". He laughs, I groan.

00pooterSS

iTrader: (40)

I hear ya man and that sucks. But pretty much every component of the vehicle is outsourced.

And even lexus has direct injection woes, look into the Lexus IS250 that has an engine recall due to the direct injection. The valves on those get so coked that they literally wont run at all. Piston rings get so packed with carbon the loose compression. I ran a program in the service department of a lexus dealership when that recall was going on and they had a couple of techs that were doing 2 engines a day at times. It was crazy. Anyway

Congrats on the RX350. It's a really really REALLY good vehicle. Shouldn't have much if any issues at all with that one.

I've been pretty bummed about some of the things on my truck but I knew what I was getting into. I have long wished toyota/lexus built the Sierra, or at least any Japanese manufacturere built the truck, but I just am not a fan of the titans and tundras. I like being able to tune and modify and there's no better engine and pcm platform for that than the LS and LT motors. So I suck up the rest of the BS that comes with..... not being japanese quality.


Thanks for the info too, never heard of the cracked boss issue but glad to add it to my mental notes, I'm a tech and knowing things like that helps with my job.