Are these trucks ticking financial bombs?

[sasquatch094]

yea, anything to anyone to any car something can always happen. just bcuz you pay 10 grand on a car or 100,000 dollars on the next doesn't guarantee anything failing..

 

[carl B]

Wow... doomsday approach... At any time any part on your vehicle can fail... especially in locations where rust is an issue. A spare tire falling off on the highway isn't going to end life as you know it. I understand your concern, but... it's not that big of a deal. Dude, I've lost a 16' x 7' steel one-piece garage door off the top of my work truck several years ago. It hit no one... didn't get in trouble... everything was fine... does that mean I didn't carry garage doors on the top of my truck? Nope... that means I didn't secure them to the same location that allowed it to fly off at 65MPH.... replaced my straps and went on my merry way. I think ty had a good solution... yearly maintenance including changing out the spare tire carrier. If you're worried about it being a "ticking time bomb"... then you should worry about EVERY vehicle you own when you live in a place where rust is a big deal. What happens when your lugnuts get eaten by rust? What about your brakes? brake lines? etc.

LOL, was this good advice? You had a improperly secured door fly off at 65 and say it wasn't a problem because nobody got hurt? The same argument could be used to defend a winning game of russian roulette. Do you now secure garage doors the same way you did when it blew off using the same straps? No. Then why recommend I do exactly that with my spare? Because nobody got hurt the first time it fell off?

I'll replace the cable; that's a given. I'll do something else in addition to that because I try to learn from experience. I may get sued for killing a garage door installer who lost my door panel but I won't get sued for dropping a spare tire on the highway.

Once again, the 'ticking bomb' is the thousands of rusting cables (out of my immediate control) on the roads now and the potential for any one of them to fail at an inoppurtune moment. If it hasn't happened already, sooner or later someone will get hurt or killed and the owner of the vehicle will be found liable. Seeing mine fail and knowing the accident free condition and care of my truck I'm convinced of this. If a ticking bomb doesn't describe this accurately I don't know what does.

The integrity (or lack thereof) of that cable is not obvious by inspection. I think this has to be handled more like a timing belt where once you hit 50k it should just be replaced independent of its condition. Especially if you live in the snow belt.

PS: The $700 swinging tailgate spare poses a slight clearance problem in my garage as does any roof mounted solution. But thanks for posting constructive feedback.

 

[Nnaboy]

Haha :lol: I may need some popcorn for all this :yesnod:
Its about time this thread is done for

 

[sasquatch094]

There once was an accident awhile ago by me, a semi truck driver was driving on the freeway and this whole rear axle come off and was rolling down the freeway, and off the side of the freeway was a baseball field which had tons of ppl on it that were playing a game. The axle was flying at a guy and the guy didnt have the opportunity to get out of the way and ran him straight over. He busted sh*t up and got hurt really badly from it, does this mean i have to replace all my rearends in alllll my cars i own. No. It just happened to be a technical failure. sh*t happens.. everything and anything can break at any given time.... theres nothing you can do about it/

 

[Yuke2K]

Shall we sum up the information gleaned from this thread?

1. Carl owns a couple fancy cars that don't require much maintenance, and a Yukon Denali that he has spent much more money on in maintenance costs.

2. Carl races one of his fancy cars, a BMW, on occasion.

3. Carl is an engineer.

4. Carl's spare tire fell off, and he is concerned that it will inevitably happen to every other Tahoe/Yukon/Suburban/Escalade/etc. currently on the road with this setup.

5. Carl has joined this site to see if anyone else has had this problem, and if so, what solutions are out there to fix it.

6. Alot of the stuff posted in this thread has been an off-topic "who's dick is bigger" contest. (I personally don't care what other kinds of cars ANY of you drive, or what you do with them on the track, etc...this is the Tahoe forum last time I checked)

Look, Carl...not many of us have heard of this problem. I'm SURE that it's happened before on these vehicles, and that we have not heard about these occurances. Thats the nature of mechanical things - they break. But the simple fact is that if these things were failing constantly and spare tires were falling off left and right, causing bus loads of nuns and school children to go careening off the highways to their deaths, I'd imagine that GM would have issued some kind of recall by now. That may be a foolish assumption (we all know what happens when we ASSume things), but for the vast majority of us, this has never, ever been a problem. Even you have said that the research you did led you to more info regarding failures on Ford trucks rather that GMs.

I applaud you for trying to come up with a solution though, and when you do, I fully invite you to share it with the forums. I would like to apologize if I've been a bit of an ass about the whole thing, but it obviously concerns you much more than I. When you come up with a decent fix for it, let us know and we'll add this to the list of things to check during our yearly maintenance. That being said, I fully agree that this should be a "replace every so often regardless of condition" type of thing, which has already been suggested several times.

ETA - I think some people are interpereting the latter portion of my post as sarcasm - it is not. I am serious when I say that if you find a decent solution for this problem, please share it.

 

[sasquatch094]

haha damn..

 

[EZStreet]

My driver side window is squeaking when I roll it up sometimes and I'm not really sure how I feel about that. Actually I do know, it seriously concerns me about the longevity of my Yukon and it smells of inferior engineering. And I know....b/c I'm an engineer and I'm in the know. How am I supposed to sleep soundly in my bed at night when the possibility exists that the other windows may start to squeak eventually? My friend had a Lexus with more miles on it than my Yukon and his window didn't squeak at all. That's not fair. Why does my window squeak and his doesn't??? What kind of sick joke is God playing on me to have this happen to me?? What if I'm on an important phone call and have to roll down the window at the Starbuck's drive through to get my latte? What if my wife is trying to tell me something really important and I can't hear her over the squeak?? What if the window squeaks when I have a headache and it makes it worse? Its like I'm waiting for the nuke to fall on my head b/c there are so many unknowns out there, its not fair General Motors...why me?! I found myself screaming at the sky last night seeking answers to my fate...through the sunroof. Nobody responded. Man I regret buying this POS Denali, my 2008 Bimmer is far superior. I'm going to try and return it tomorrow, the dealer will have no choice but to take it back after they see the mess I'm dealing with.

 

[fco_gonzo]

**sitting back and enjoying the show**

 

[tybardy]

opc:opc1:

this is the best thread since that dude that was hawking that hydrogen fuel system

 

[notch8]

:smilielol: jk jk

 

[DarkTahoe00]

Yea what happen to all that after Justin tore in to him I never seen or heard bout it again!

 

[danimalmax]

is this thread for real?

 

[Yuke2K]

:smilielol: jk jk

*falls out of chair laughing*

 

[carl B]

I guess that's to be expected for joining a forum of 'truck guys'. Hasta...

 

[BLACK_DENALI]

Have you ever herd of a PDI (Perfect Delivery Inspection) this is done at the dealership. It is performed before the vehicle is put on the lot. Sometimes it is performed by a certified technician and other times it is performed by the after hour oil tech. Some people are not as thorough as others and miss things along the way during this process. Take your spare tire for instance it could have been over tightened at the factory and undue stress was put on the cable (over time) causing it to break.

I think that an engineer could comprehend some sort of failure like that due to improper torque specifications.

I always check the spare tire after I purchase a new/used vehicle along with my own version of a whatever point inspection. All of this is done before I leave town on a big trip.

On my latest purchase an 03 Denali I did just that, tried to lower the spare tire and couldn’t get it to budge, Click,Click,Click, I finally put some elbow grease in to it and bam it dropped 1/3 the way down and didn’t budge from there. Nothing was rusted it was simply over tightened from the factory and had never touched the ground before in its life!

One thing I don’t understand is why the spare tire on a Denali AWD SUV is a 245/75/16 and the other 4 tires are 265/70/17. One year older, 02 denali the spare tire is a 265/75/16 they are both listed on the placard on the drivers door.

Engineer me that, .07 cents x 200,000 units

 

[Yuke2K]

I guess that's to be expected for joining a forum of 'truck guys'. Hasta...

Hrm....when you basically come right out of the gate saying "my GMC is a POS compared to my foreign cars...but hey, help me fix it", what kind of reaction would you expect from us?

I hate crapping on new members like this, but this thread was bullsh!t to begin with.

Don't let the door hit ya...

 

[RenegadeTahoe]

I guess that's to be expected for joining a forum of 'truck guys'. Hasta...

LOL... yeah... that is to be expected by asking us "inferior" guys to fix your Denali... the answer is simple... fix the cable, and be done with it... or re-engineer it... I call BS on the "engineer" claim, since you had to ask us "truck guys" how to engineer a solution for you. I'm an IT System Admin... I'm not going to ask a bunch of car guys for advice on what specs I should have for my servers... that's my area of expertise.

I'm not too worried about mine... I haven't heard of this happening much.... it's obviously not the first time, but it's not something that happens all the time.

 

[Rollin Thunder]

I LEAVE FOR ONE DAY AND YALL GO AND GET IN TO A FIGHT WITH A NEWBIE. WTF GUYS. YOU NEED MANNERS


lol.


IM about the tire chain. INstall two chains, not likely both will fail at once.


Let me tell you about longevity.

Im on my 8th gm full size suv. 6 of those 8 took me well past 400k miles with little to know work. Other than tires, oil, brakes, and a starter or fuel pump here and there. I got an Mercedes benz that takes on average 500 a month sometimes more, sometimes alot more. to keep it going. JSYK. My GF had a honda civic that at by 24k it had already had a new tranny, rear brakes, alternator, odometer, fuel line, and ac compressor. All warranty but she was with out her car. Finally totaled it and got a CTS. Much better.

my 07 is perfect except for a strange window noise. It sounds kinda bad going down.


Let the flaming begin.

 

[EZStreet]

Lol, what do you expect? The guy is perfectly fine driving around w/o a spare tire in his Bimmer because BMW gives him free "road assist". Hope you dont ever get caught in the middle of nowhere with no cell service and a flat tire....cause its going to be a big problem.

Farewell sweet Carl B. Leave us dumb "truck guys" to talk about our inferior American vehicles and go hit up Starbucks for a $7 cup of coffee. Don't let the latte burn your delicate tongue on the way outta here.

 

[Rollin Thunder]

my corvette has no spare. I have somthing better than roadside (but I also have GM roadside with onstar. lifetime as well for 200 bucks a year its worth it)

I have run flat tires. I can go up to 50 mph for 50 miles. Just like they were normal. So there. GM out did BMW on somthing. :smilielol: