GM changed the oil. Engines keep failing. (Page 2 of 2)
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Originally Posted By Foxtrot08: 100% a cover. You know this more than me lol. Originally Posted By Foxtrot08: Originally Posted By Alacrity: Originally Posted By Foxtrot08: Originally Posted By jough43: So potentially GM determined the wrong root cause? No. GM issued the wrong fix for the issue. The root cause stayed the same. 100% a cover. You know this more than me lol.  ) see it as well.What's a shame is 500 new posts to cover ground previous and rehash all the shit in about 20 different previous threads covered comprehensively. It was incredibly unlikely mitigating dilution, increasing film thickness (IIRC the X-axis of the Stribeck curved but fuck me I don't want to consider the math) and whatever Micro-EHL behavior? they were hoping for wasn't going to solve issue related to poor finishing. See I almost paid attention in those threads  But what it did do was buy time for intermediate cases and create both a legal remedy path, while delaying a portion of failures to the future. The outcomes were pretty well predictable and no one should have believed this was an entirely effective remedy. But I beleive a number said that in those threads. So none should be surprised there's further failures. Given the nature of the testing. What we'll never know is the interval of extension nor the number of intermediate cases delayed. Maybe some significantly - tho doubtful permanently. I hope Toyota exercises their BONK test in a sufficiently useful fashion and correctly diagnoses engines failing. I'm very disappointed to see them go from 'Every engine will be replaced' to an intermediate solution backed by a conditional testing result. |
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Originally Posted By xd341: I wasn't either. It was bullshit to get NHTSA off their back for a while. So I guess that falls under "cover" You are in this industry....how in the blue fuck do you make millions of the same part, a part you've been making in some form, for 75 years...and fuck it up his bad? Surface finish and profile tolerances aren't a new thing. Originally Posted By xd341: Originally Posted By Alacrity: Was it a remedy, or was it cover? So I guess that falls under "cover" You are in this industry....how in the blue fuck do you make millions of the same part, a part you've been making in some form, for 75 years...and fuck it up his bad? Surface finish and profile tolerances aren't a new thing. Tho I think it was a strategic move as was Ford's availing themselves of almost the full administrative process for the valves which were ground without proper temp controls. You could say GMs 3+ years of reports and subsequent investigations, surely was strategic as well. I know of two L87 that have seized first hand, so this isn't entirely removed from me like the Toyota, Nissan, Jeep, and Ford situations were. I do a very good job not speculating. So I'm not going to here with no concrete, direct knowledge. But we can all guess what happened given what's been reported at the supplier, GMs arc recently, and the general issues in supply chain that manifested during COViD which still resonates. |
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Originally Posted By mancat: Friend of mine bought and "built" a big ass jacked up Sierra Denali a few years ago. He is now in the process of offloading it before SHTF. I'm seeing more and more of these trucks (and Tahoes/Suburbans) with the little Duramax. If I was buying a GMC truck I'd be looking at that engine and nothing else. Problem is you can't get a good transmission with any of the options. lol don’t look up the baby max issues then |
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Originally Posted By xd341: Everybody has had production issues. Make millions of something the cheapest way possible and you're going to have a some leakers. This was literally hundreds of thousands to a million pcs that are no good.  It's that bad, and it was that discoverable. |
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Originally Posted By Karankawa: The old TBI engines were the most durable I’ve ever seen. They don’t make enough power to hurt themselves. They did have bad valve seals that would leak after shutdown. Checking for blue tailpipe smoke after sitting a few hours. I don’t know much about other engines but have big respect for the old boring TBI small block. My '87 Silverado 350 did that. It would give a puff of smoke after startup. I kept the oil checked regularly. |
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Originally Posted By xd341: A bright GM engineer identified the problem early on, then spent a year trying to explain it to retards in management, then after the retards in management realized just how big of a cluster fuck it was they spent a year trying to come up with a financially palatable solution. They never did. So they designed a new engine and started the financial engineering required to hide the loss in the EV program. All of this caused by a desire to save 10% on crank machining. I just pulled all of that out of my ass, but if it happened exactly like that I wouldn't be shocked. Being fair, cranks are not easy to fixture and grind. Not that it’s an excuse for a company that has been doing it well for a decade but resonance over a part that long is a real thing. |
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Originally Posted By Alacrity: https://media4.giphy.com/media/1XYC52rwtqDja/200.webp?cid=8dc8958cg5o4wuwl23lj9h1sl6o8lq0vm97zxxyjivk64hw1&ep=v1_gifs_search&rid=200.webp&ct=g It's that bad, and it was that discoverable. I'm involved in a big project in the after market taking the now abundant and cheap LT heads, which are excellent and adapting them to other things. Re-purposing the DI ports for cooling, little weld, little machining...nice light weight block....a slide valve ITB..180 degree headers..and drop it in a 997 GT3.  You'd be surprised how little it takes to bolt Ford stuff to GM stuff....everyone just keeps reusing ideas. |
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Originally Posted By xd341: The new LS series was on it's way I'm sure. The LTs are a dozen years old now, they went about as long as the Gen IV "LS". But I'm sure that played a part in the poor decision making. Just had to white knuckle it until the LS6. It's sad because the various versions of the LT are otherwise really nice engines. It was really just the L87 that ate shit. I'm involved in a big project in the after market taking the now abundant and cheap LT heads, which are excellent and adapting them to other things. Re-purposing the DI ports for cooling, little weld, little machining...nice light weight block....a slide valve ITB..180 degree headers..and drop it in a 997 GT3. You'd be surprised how little it takes to bolt Ford stuff to GM stuff....everyone just keeps reusing ideas. Love that Bolded. |
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Originally Posted By GoGo: Mexico, not China. ETA- it's kind of unfair to say, but being involved in powertrain operations in the automotive industry, I have to say sometimes Mexico does OK compared to the US. For GM, it's the people at General Motors Global Propulsion Systems that was the problem. Originally Posted By GoGo: Originally Posted By Lieh-tzu: How many made-in-China parts in the engine? ETA- it's kind of unfair to say, but being involved in powertrain operations in the automotive industry, I have to say sometimes Mexico does OK compared to the US. For GM, it's the people at General Motors Global Propulsion Systems that was the problem. Having worked in Manufacturing Engineering for a couple of Tier 1 suppliers, I have to disagree. The Mexico operations I dealt with had a few good engineers and techs, but as a whole they were way short on technical horsepower. And they don't seem to learn from experience because they never leave anyone with any skills in the same competency long enough to really learn the ropes. They also tended to be pretty arrogant, which is a bad trait to combine with incompetence. |
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Originally Posted By TheOtherDave: Being fair, cranks are not easy to fixture and grind. Not that it's an excuse for a company that has been doing it well for a decade but resonance over a part that long is a real thing. Not sure what a production process looks like. Machine, grind, polish? Or maybe just machine and polish if you've got your shit together?  Mastering the Art of Crankshaft Machining The errors that are showing up strike me like a machining process gone bad and the polish step (if there was one) just made them into shiny....shit. Nobody actually checked anything any better than a set of mics could do. Supposedly they had cranks with over sized journal radii. Those are the motors that didn't make to their first oil change. I mean c'mon. |
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i spend time looking at youtube videos about cars and motors. its scary. the toyota twin turbo supposedly is a horror story. this gm motor has issues. then you look at videos where mechanics get a car that has a misfiring issue and the engine has to be removed from the car to check for just about everything. and i just watched an old video done by PCA with a experienced porsche mechanic. listening to him describe all the computers, and how you have to connect to porsche to diagnose and how even porsche knows there is a problem with a subsystem but dont know the root cause so they end up replacing parts. was an older vid but the mechanic was talking about a 360 camera system and the cameras would start flaking out and couldnt determine the root cause and just started replacing parts, including re-wiring cable runs and not replacing wiring looms because replacing the looms cost as much as the car. and one of the fixes was to simply run new wires to problematic cameras (just the wire). the diagnostics on new cars is like something from a f35 jet. sheese. in the past i had a 240z and an datsun 510. i rebuilt both motors. i could diagnose problems easily and reach things in the engine bay easily. i wish things like that, but modernized would come back but they never will. between the EPA and CAFE the days of easy-to-work-on-cars is long gone unless you have and older car and then finding parts can be an issue. |
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Originally Posted By heavy260: Probably trace it back to bad surface finishes or poor assembly, I’m going with bad surface finishes. Changing viscosity was never going to fix it. proudly union made, union quality? |
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GM and Chevy and Ford as well all have issues, a lot of it brought on by the f'ing government and climate BS. Take the 5.3 and others that shift from 8 cylinder to only run on 4 at different times to save f'ing emissions. Throw in bad lifters that fail, cams and shitty transmissions. FWIW I have a 2021 GMC Elevation with the 10 speed transmission. At 52,000 now with no issues so will see. I do oil changes every 3 to 4000 not 10,000 which was recommended by GMC and probably Chevy. |
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Originally Posted By Alacrity: Not entirely rhetorical. Im curious how people who know shit (read: you ) see it as well.What's a shame is 500 new posts to cover ground previous and rehash all the shit in about 20 different previous threads covered comprehensively. It was incredibly unlikely mitigating dilution, increasing film thickness (IIRC the X-axis of the Stribeck curved but fuck me I don't want to consider the math) and whatever Micro-EHL behavior? they were hoping for wasn't going to solve issue related to poor finishing. See I almost paid attention in those threads But what it did do was buy time for intermediate cases and create both a legal remedy path, while delaying a portion of failures to the future. The outcomes were pretty well predictable and no one should have believed this was an entirely effective remedy. But I beleive a number said that in those threads. So none should be surprised there's further failures. Given the nature of the testing. What we'll never know is the interval of extension nor the number of intermediate cases delayed. Maybe some significantly - tho doubtful permanently. I hope Toyota exercises their BONK test in a sufficiently useful fashion and correctly diagnoses engines failing. I'm very disappointed to see them go from 'Every engine will be replaced' to an intermediate solution backed by a conditional testing result. Toyota's problem is much bigger in my opinion. I think either the main bearings are undersized, or the block itself has stability issues under load (the Lexus SUVs apparently have a much lower failure rate?). If so, the architecture of the engine itself is so compact there's really no way to fix it short of a redesign. |
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Originally Posted By Kubota3430: proudly union made, union quality? Originally Posted By Kubota3430: Originally Posted By heavy260: Probably trace it back to bad surface finishes or poor assembly, I’m going with bad surface finishes. Changing viscosity was never going to fix it. proudly union made, union quality? At Questum Macimex in Mexico? |
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Originally Posted By Bloviator: Toyota's problem is much bigger in my opinion. I think either the main bearings are undersized, or the block itself has stability issues under load (the Lexus SUVs apparently have a much lower failure rate?). If so, the architecture of the engine itself is so compact there's really no way to fix it short of a redesign. |
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Originally Posted By jough43: Never seen a bad head casting? It was a thing on 2004 5.3 Chevys. I had one. Cracks allowing coolant into oil. Was a certain casting number. Aluminum heads. I had to pay to replace my 2005 Chevy 5.3 engine for this reason. Coolant finally worked it's way into my crankcase. |
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Originally Posted By tortilla-flats: indeed Originally Posted By tortilla-flats: Originally Posted By TaxPayer77: Pre-AFM/DOD LS engines will outlive us all. The best engines ever designed and built. Never again will an engine be this good. |
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Originally Posted By Alacrity: Better or worse than 2 iterations of ignition switches under the same part number? But none of them were GM execs, so . . . |
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Originally Posted By mancat: Friend of mine bought and "built" a big ass jacked up Sierra Denali a few years ago. He is now in the process of offloading it before SHTF. I'm seeing more and more of these trucks (and Tahoes/Suburbans) with the little Duramax. If I was buying a GMC truck I'd be looking at that engine and nothing else. Problem is you can't get a good transmission with any of the options. If you make it to 100,000 with less than three turbos it’ll be a miracle. |
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Originally Posted By jough43: So potentially GM determined the wrong root cause? Oh they probably knew. They just didn't want to replace engines, and they also didn't want to look like they were doing nothing about it, so they changed the oil as either a last-ditch effort or just a stall tactic. |
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Originally Posted By Spartan16: To drop $90k on a truck and the engine fails anything short of 250k miles, let alone a few thousand. Scorched fucking earth. If someone wants to pay $90k for a $60k truck, they don’t seem like the kind of person who thinks that far ahead. |
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Saw that the other day. Just as the non-OEM side starts to present enough evidence of the real root cause GM moves to a different engine. They did admit the cranks will be from a 3rd party vendor. It would be great if the vette bottom end holds together for me. It’s rare, but there have been some to let go. I’m also sending in oil samples from the V35A starting this week to keep an eye on that shit show of an engine. Originally Posted By st0newall: i spend time looking at youtube videos about cars and motors. its scary. the toyota twin turbo supposedly is a horror story. this gm motor has issues. then you look at videos where mechanics get a car that has a misfiring issue and the engine has to be removed from the car to check for just about everything. and i just watched an old video done by PCA with a experienced porsche mechanic. listening to him describe all the computers, and how you have to connect to porsche to diagnose and how even porsche knows there is a problem with a subsystem but dont know the root cause so they end up replacing parts. was an older vid but the mechanic was talking about a 360 camera system and the cameras would start flaking out and couldnt determine the root cause and just started replacing parts, including re-wiring cable runs and not replacing wiring looms because replacing the looms cost as much as the car. and one of the fixes was to simply run new wires to problematic cameras (just the wire). the diagnostics on new cars is like something from a f35 jet. sheese. in the past i had a 240z and an datsun 510. i rebuilt both motors. i could diagnose problems easily and reach things in the engine bay easily. i wish things like that, but modernized would come back but they never will. between the EPA and CAFE the days of easy-to-work-on-cars is long gone unless you have and older car and then finding parts can be an issue. I believed the Toyota BS of “It’s all been taken care of.” Meanwhile engines replaced this year are still taking shits. Were they built during the time before they were supposedly fixed? I’d like to think they haven’t become that shitty of a company, but my faith is almost completely used up. I’m just sending in oil samples & making a paper trail in the event the motor starts showing issues. |
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Originally Posted By DevilsEggAdvocate: The change in viscosity was just to get vehicles past the warranty period. That is such a cynical solution that the management that came up with it must be slimebags. They also extended the warranty to 10 years / 150,000 miles…. |
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Originally Posted By NwG: They also extended the warranty to 10 years / 150,000 miles…. Originally Posted By NwG: Originally Posted By DevilsEggAdvocate: The change in viscosity was just to get vehicles past the warranty period. That is such a cynical solution that the management that came up with it must be slimebags. They also extended the warranty to 10 years / 150,000 miles…. Their solution probably was the best available option for that shitshow. |
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Originally Posted By Bloviator: Toyota's problem is much bigger in my opinion. I think either the main bearings are undersized, or the block itself has stability issues under load (the Lexus SUVs apparently have a much lower failure rate?). If so, the architecture of the engine itself is so compact there's really no way to fix it short of a redesign. Originally Posted By Bloviator: Originally Posted By Alacrity: Not entirely rhetorical. Im curious how people who know shit (read: you ) see it as well.What's a shame is 500 new posts to cover ground previous and rehash all the shit in about 20 different previous threads covered comprehensively. It was incredibly unlikely mitigating dilution, increasing film thickness (IIRC the X-axis of the Stribeck curved but fuck me I don't want to consider the math) and whatever Micro-EHL behavior? they were hoping for wasn't going to solve issue related to poor finishing. See I almost paid attention in those threads But what it did do was buy time for intermediate cases and create both a legal remedy path, while delaying a portion of failures to the future. The outcomes were pretty well predictable and no one should have believed this was an entirely effective remedy. But I beleive a number said that in those threads. So none should be surprised there's further failures. Given the nature of the testing. What we'll never know is the interval of extension nor the number of intermediate cases delayed. Maybe some significantly - tho doubtful permanently. I hope Toyota exercises their BONK test in a sufficiently useful fashion and correctly diagnoses engines failing. I'm very disappointed to see them go from 'Every engine will be replaced' to an intermediate solution backed by a conditional testing result. Toyota's problem is much bigger in my opinion. I think either the main bearings are undersized, or the block itself has stability issues under load (the Lexus SUVs apparently have a much lower failure rate?). If so, the architecture of the engine itself is so compact there's really no way to fix it short of a redesign. It really is one of the biggest let-downs in bottom end designs I’ve seen since the LS showed how it was supposed to be done. Not even a 360 thrust bearing…. Wish I would have known before buying one. The power of the iForce Max is impressive in a 6k lb truck, but fuck me they made a shit engine. |
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Originally Posted By gtfoxy: Saw that the other day. Just as the non-OEM side starts to present enough evidence of the real root cause GM moves to a different engine. They did admit the cranks will be from a 3rd party vendor. It would be great if the vette bottom end holds together for me. It’s rare, but there have been some to let go. I’m also sending in oil samples from the V35A starting this week to keep an eye on that shit show of an engine. I believed the Toyota BS of “It’s all been taken care of.” Meanwhile engines replaced this year are still taking shits. Were they built during the time before they were supposedly fixed? I’d like to think they haven’t become that shitty of a company, but my faith is almost completely used up. I’m just sending in oil samples & making a paper trail in the event the motor starts showing issues. Originally Posted By gtfoxy: Saw that the other day. Just as the non-OEM side starts to present enough evidence of the real root cause GM moves to a different engine. They did admit the cranks will be from a 3rd party vendor. It would be great if the vette bottom end holds together for me. It’s rare, but there have been some to let go. I’m also sending in oil samples from the V35A starting this week to keep an eye on that shit show of an engine. Originally Posted By st0newall: i spend time looking at youtube videos about cars and motors. its scary. the toyota twin turbo supposedly is a horror story. this gm motor has issues. then you look at videos where mechanics get a car that has a misfiring issue and the engine has to be removed from the car to check for just about everything. and i just watched an old video done by PCA with a experienced porsche mechanic. listening to him describe all the computers, and how you have to connect to porsche to diagnose and how even porsche knows there is a problem with a subsystem but dont know the root cause so they end up replacing parts. was an older vid but the mechanic was talking about a 360 camera system and the cameras would start flaking out and couldnt determine the root cause and just started replacing parts, including re-wiring cable runs and not replacing wiring looms because replacing the looms cost as much as the car. and one of the fixes was to simply run new wires to problematic cameras (just the wire). the diagnostics on new cars is like something from a f35 jet. sheese. in the past i had a 240z and an datsun 510. i rebuilt both motors. i could diagnose problems easily and reach things in the engine bay easily. i wish things like that, but modernized would come back but they never will. between the EPA and CAFE the days of easy-to-work-on-cars is long gone unless you have and older car and then finding parts can be an issue. I believed the Toyota BS of “It’s all been taken care of.” Meanwhile engines replaced this year are still taking shits. Were they built during the time before they were supposedly fixed? I’d like to think they haven’t become that shitty of a company, but my faith is almost completely used up. I’m just sending in oil samples & making a paper trail in the event the motor starts showing issues. I Do Cars on youtube just did a teardown on a failed engine with 2026 date codes....  WAS TOYOTA RIGHT? I Dive DEEP Into a Failed 2026 Replacement Tundra V35A Twin Turbo V6 Engine! |
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Originally Posted By ExtraHardTaco: I thought it was pretty well known that GM turns out garbage. Originally Posted By ExtraHardTaco: Originally Posted By dangerranger61007: I thought this was pretty well known all along and that the viscosity change was a bandaid. I thought it was pretty well known that GM turns out garbage. There's that too, but it seems all the major automakers have had issues in recent years. |